Road Connectivity: Teesside to Scotland

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

It is, as always, a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Gary. I congratulate the hon. Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden) on securing the debate. I very much look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say in response to so many of his colleagues’ passionate pleas for investment in their constituencies, so I do not intend to speak for too long.

It is incredibly important that we improve connectivity between the UK’s regions and nations. That should be absolutely at the heart of Government policy, whether in the south-west of England, where the seat I represent is, or in the north-east. I was slightly baffled by some of what the hon. Gentleman said about the 1951 county plan. I was not quite around in those days, but I am pretty sure that there was an election that year that was won by the Conservatives, and that in the 70 years since then, as much as I wish it were not so, the Conservatives have won far more elections than Labour—they were in Government for 46 years out of 70, by my rough calculations.

The things about which the hon. Gentleman spoke—investment in roads and rail, and he mentioned a local hospital and broadband—are by and large the responsibility of national Government. They are certainly reliant on central Government funding. I am not quite sure, then, why he is pointing the finger. Well, I am sure. I know why he is pointing the finger at a Labour-led council rather than the Government, but that does not reflect the true picture of why the area has not received the investment it needs.

I do not think it very helpful to dwell on that point. We should focus more on what we have in common than on what divides us, as my very sadly missed colleague Jo Cox would have said. We all have a desire to improve transport links to reduce congestion and to improve road safety, and I hope that we also share a commitment to environmental objectives. That is not to say that the Labour party would oppose all the road provisions, but we very much want to see them within the framework of tackling air pollution and reducing carbon emissions.

We had a debate in this room this morning on the much-awaited and long-delayed transport decarbonisation plan. I made the point that the Government are committed to that huge £27 billion-worth of spending on road infrastructure but the Transport Secretary ignored the advice of his civil servants to carry out an environmental impact assessment. It is not my role to take a view on what local projects are needed. That is for locally elected representatives, and I would not want them to do that in my patch. However, I hope that we measure things against the impact on the natural environment and overall contribution to getting to net zero, because that cannot be done just by a shift to electric vehicles. We have to discourage road travel and give people alternatives, whether that is investment in rail or buses, as has been mentioned, or other means.

There is also something to be said about spending on basic road maintenance, the budget for which has been slashed. There is now a £11 billion backlog for pothole repairs. Those sorts of things really matter to people in the villages that Members have talked about. [Interruption.] I thought the Minister was leaving—when I mentioned potholes, he put on his jacket and I thought he had had enough and was off. Those things really matter to local people, as well as flagship new bypasses.

On the A68, I am not familiar with that part of the world, although I did once go for a night out at Trimdon Colliery social club in the constituency of the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell), so I may have travelled on that road. Needless to say, it was when the then local Member of Parliament was also the Prime Minister and I was a constituency member of Labour’s national policy forum. We had a night out and I remember that lots of pies were delivered, which, being vegan, I could not eat, and then we went down the chip shop. Phil Wilson, the former MP for Sedgefield, delights in saying that the shop still talks about these strange out-of-towners and southerners descending on Trimdon Colliery chip shop, asking what the chips were cooked in. But I digress. Actually, I looked at a map and noticed that Toft Hill is very close to Barnard Castle, which is the other interesting fact I have to share about the area.

On the issue of road safety, I spoke to my Teesside colleagues, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), who said that the A68 is well known for the number of blind summits on route, and the statistics show that it is one of the most dangerous A roads in Britain, with an accident rate of 2.7 for every 1 million vehicles. I would welcome the Minster setting out what can be done to tackle that issue. People do not want to be stuck in the queues that the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison) spoke about, but road safety is absolutely imperative.

I will conclude by saying again that we all want to see investment and levelling up, no matter where we represent. The Government could do more, however, including by making rail affordable and creating the rail connectivity that we do not have. I am sure my former colleague Andrew Burnham in Greater Manchester bends Ministers’ ears very frequently—perhaps even more often than the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland. We all want to see improvements, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.