Transport: Investment

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bradshaw]

My Lords, I am not going to indulge in a lot of criticism, but I will ask a few technical questions, which I hope the Minister will address.

First, much of the paper is made up of words like “appraisal” and “value for money”, yet the system that the Government have adopted—the new approach to transport appraisal—is hopeless. I say this as an economist. The new approach puts value on a lot of valueless things, such as small time savings of a minute, half a minute or less, and it needs bringing up to date. Also, other road users such as bus users or cyclists need to be treated as valuable people. The new approach tends to assume that only car drivers are valuable people and therefore ascribes a lower value of time to those other users.

Secondly, will the Minister tell us something about hard-shoulder running, which is mentioned in the Statement? We do not yet know whether hard-shoulder running has proved to be thoroughly satisfactory from the point of view of both road safety and access by the emergency services to accidents.

Thirdly, I want to mention the PFI scheme, which is referred to in the Statement. Did the Minister see in the Sunday papers that the M6 toll road, which was built by PFI, is in considerable trouble because people will not pay to use a toll road when there is a free road beside it? The only solution, to my mind, is to introduce a system of road charging on our trunk motorways. Otherwise, there will not be many PFI investors.

Fourthly, road maintenance is in a disgraceful condition, and the Government should direct more attention to keeping the road network that we have in good and serviceable order rather than necessarily trying to expand it, because the road network does not work.

Fifthly, there are now lots of utility companies in this country, and all of them have near freedom to dig up the roads when they want and cause massive delays and damage to the road surface. There is supposed to be a system of traffic management, under which the utilities are supposed to apply to the local authority for permission to dig holes. Whenever they want to dig such holes, however, they put up a big sign saying “Emergency”, “Danger” or whatever. That does not mean that they do the job any more quickly, but it allows them to override the provisions in the Transport Act 2005 to regulate the use of the highway.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, it fills me with dread when the noble Lord says that he will ask me a few technical questions.

The noble Lord referred to some of the terms of our assessment and things like that. We need to ensure that the schemes with the best value for money, the best benefit to society and the best economic growth are the ones that go forward. The noble Lord has expressed concern many times, in both this Parliament and the previous one, about NATA. We are reviewing that process.

The noble Lord talked about hard-shoulder running. He will be aware of, I think, the M42 where the Highways Agency has trialled hard-shoulder running, which has been shown to work. I understand that the statistics have shown a safety improvement. Because it has been shown to work, there will be more hard-shoulder running schemes.

The noble Lord mentioned the M6 toll road, which is perhaps not getting all the toll income that it should. I remind the noble Lord that the M6 toll road is not PFI-funded but is a private road.

The noble Lord mentioned the condition of local roads, which is a matter of great concern. I think that the ICE’s State of the Nation: Infrastructure 2010 report states that the Highways Agency’s strategic roads are in quite good shape but local roads have serious problems.

Finally, the noble Lord also talked about the utilities. All noble Lords will be aware of the problem of utilities digging up the roads, sometimes in ways that are completely inconvenient. We are aware of that, but I will draw the noble Lord’s question to the attention of my ministerial colleagues.