Road Maintenance

Kirsteen Sullivan Excerpts

Monday 7th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Kirsteen Sullivan (Bathgate and Linlithgow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate, because the state of our roads is absolutely critical for safe travel, transportation and logistics, particularly in communities that rely on the road network.

As a former councillor, I greatly welcome the Government’s provision of £1.6 billion for road maintenance in England, and I am sure that colleagues who have been councillors will agree that few topics flood local politicians’ mailboxes more than potholes and the condition of our roads. Motorists, cyclists and pedestrians alike have been failed by consecutive Conservative Governments, with council budgets slashed to the bone, and their Scottish counterparts are no better off.

A report by the Local Government Benchmarking Framework found that the continued budget pressures on local councils have resulted in a 20% reduction in spending on road maintenance, and we see the budget cuts physically etched into the tarmac across our cities, towns and villages. Hon. Members have spoken about the need to resurface roads, rather than just fill in potholes. Although that is ideal in many situations, the reality is that councils have not been able to afford to do so, so they fill in potholes that break up a few months down the line.

I recently met councillors in the Bathgate and Linlithgow constituency to discuss how years of Scottish Government austerity have left our roads in a dire condition. From Bo’ness to Bathgate, we see it all over the place. Councillors are frustrated, hard-working council staff are really frustrated and local residents are frustrated and angry.

As my former council role trying to deliver road improvements highlighted, the state of the roads all comes back to local government funding. The hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) borrowed a few of the adjectives I had noted down. In Scotland, we have had 18 years of savage cuts, chronic ringfencing and brutal underfunding of local services by the SNP Government.

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)]

I have huge sympathy with what the hon. Lady is saying about the underfunding and lack of support from the Scottish Government, but would she sympathise with me? In the London borough of Havering, we have the Mayor of London and the Greater London Authority, which take huge sums of money from my constituents, yet we do not see much of it spent in places such as Romford. Roads such as the A12 and the A127, which the Mayor of London is meant to look after through Transport for London, are often neglected. So there is a common theme about these higher authorities that take money away from our constituents, but do not spend it on the people paying the costs.

[Kirsteen Sullivan]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, but it will be no surprise to him that I cannot agree with him, given the years of massive underfunding that former Conservative Governments inflicted on councils across England.

We have had years and years of chronic underfunding of local services, so I know that the £1.6 billion will be appreciated by councils across England. However, it is yet to be confirmed that the resulting additional funding for Scotland will reach local government. I wrote to the Deputy First Minister earlier this year to find out when the money would be passed to councils in Scotland. In her response, she made it clear that it is for the Scottish Government to decide how that additional money will be spent, and that there was no guarantee that it will make it to councils, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur) has also discovered.

As so often with the SNP Scottish Government, funding is passed over from the UK Government and it is never heard of again. It is used to plug mismanaged white elephants, to fund a research unit on independence or to finance shadow embassies overseas. While receiving the largest ever Budget settlement for Scotland, the Scottish Government have not yet committed to the very basic steps of repairing our roads and delivering a safer environment for motorists, cyclists and pedestrians alike. People across England will benefit from the huge investment of this Labour Government, and the SNP Scottish Government must not stand in the way of this Labour Government delivering improved roads for the people of Scotland. Our motorists, cyclists, residents and councils deserve the same commitment and ambition to improving our roads as this Labour Government are showing in England.