Lower Thames Crossing

Louie French Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

I do not plan to speak for as long as colleagues. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Adam Holloway) for securing this debate. I listened carefully to his points and those of other colleagues, and I know his passion for representing the lovely people of Gravesham in Kent. Alongside other colleagues, he continues to lobby the Government and National Highways to secure improvements and mitigations from the crossing.

For those less familiar with the geography of south-east England, my own wonderful constituency of Old Bexley and Sidcup is on the edge of south-east London and north Kent, and the most southerly point of Bexley lies roughly 12 miles from the proposed crossing. The busy A2, which runs through the centre of my constituency, is the main road link to the existing crossing at Dartford— that is the problematic one we have heard about—and the proposed crossing to the east of Gravesend. I therefore know the area fairly well, as well as the challenges we face with congestion, albeit to a lesser extent than colleagues who are at the coalface when these issues occur.

My hon. Friend mentioned the expansive consultation done by the team at the lower Thames crossing. They have had somewhere in the region of 47,000 responses, which shows the lengths to which they have gone to engage with the wider population in Essex, Kent and south-east London who will be impacted by the proposed crossing. The team deserves a lot of credit for their extensive work, and they engaged with me in my role as a councillor in Bexley long before I even became a Member of this place. They have done a lot of good work in trying to engage with the local community. We all experience the traffic build up and congestion at Dartford, which can cause great misery—indeed, we heard about an extreme case.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

My hon. Friend is right to say there has been extensive consultation, but it has been pursued on the basis that this is a national infrastructure project, so it has been a national consultation. Does he agree that rather more attention should have been paid to representations made by the local community, instead of treating all representations the same?

[Mr French]

I completely agree, and everyone who is directly impacted should have their voices heard. I hope that the Department will listen closely to those calls. Getting that balance right between a national project and the local impact is difficult for any Government.

Dartford congestion causes complete misery, backing up even as far as where I am in Bexley. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham said, if the wind blows one way or the other way, the bridge closes and we have congestion, and it is complete misery for people, whether they are commuting home or trying to see family on either side of the bridge. As our population continues to grow in south-east London, Kent and Essex, it is vital that we secure the supporting infrastructure and make sure it is in place to support the people in these areas—both the current population and the new population who might be moving in.

Today’s focus is on transport, but the issue extends far wider. My big cause is ensuring that we secure the health provision we need for the growing population of Old Bexley and Sidcup. We have to ensure that, as a country and a Government focused on levelling up, our part of south-east England is not forgotten.

[Adam Holloway]

My hon. Friend mentioned, as I should have, that when the wind blows the bridge going from north to south can be closed; that was one of the arguments deployed in favour of having the second crossing further down. But I would have thought that that could be simply remedied. If we had what we should have had—a new bridge going from south to north, so we would have two bridges—we would still have two tunnels. In extremis, those could be used.

Anyway, the new bridge will have a new design to sort out the wind issue. We would still have two tunnels that could be used going from north to south in the event of inclement weather. I just wanted to address that other nonsense that has been raised.

[Mr French]

I clearly do not have the same level of detail about that issue, but I take my hon. Friend’s point, which is valid. We must ensure that whatever is introduced stands up to scrutiny and actually works. That is the main point of today’s debate. All MPs in the area recognise that something needs to be done; the issue is working out what that is and how it will work best and have the most impact.

In conclusion, we all see clearly that the Mayor of London is failing miserably at one of his primary objectives: to keep London moving. He has been closing roads and creating far greater congestion. As a Government, and particularly as Conservatives, we have to ensure—I implore Ministers to meet all relevant colleagues—that the project has maximum impact and delivers the goal that we all want to achieve: solving the congestion at the Dartford crossing and its impact on our communities and neighbourhoods, whether in south-east London, Kent or Essex.