Thames River Crossings

Mike Penning Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mike Penning)]

It is a privilege to respond to this important debate that my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) has secured. She is absolutely right that we have had many robust discussions on this in the House and when I visited Thurrock, and similar discussions on the other side of the river when I visited Dartford. As she knows, I am acutely aware of the situation in Thurrock, not least because I was a parliamentary candidate for the constituency in 2001 and a fireman in that part of the world for many years. Although I probably do not know the situation quite as well as she does, I did spend my teenage years in that part of the world and so understand the issues there. Many of the concerns raised with me when I was a parliamentary candidate have been raised with me on my more recent visits to Thurrock and Dartford, which is why we desperately need to have this debate and this review. My hon. Friend—he is my friend—the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), the shadow Minister, is sitting opposite me, and he knows that I hardly ever do party political stuff, but the previous Government did duck this issue, and they know that they did.

There is a capacity issue at the crossing. We always talk about the bridge, but going north there are two tunnels, one of which is the original. I remember going through when there was only one tunnel, that is how old I am, but going north the inner tunnel is a smaller bore, which causes problems for high-sided vehicles, and that is one reason why the Government have committed themselves to looking at another crossing, either by tunnel or by bridge.

The existing tunnels and bridge were designed for a capacity of 135,000 vehicles per day, but usage has hit 180,000, and one reason why it is not even higher—businesses tell me this, as I am sure the businesses in my hon. Friend’s constituency tell her—is that some businesses shy away from using the bridge. They can work in the cost of the tolls, but not the cost of the delays. For many businesses and many people, however, there is no other option.

I listened carefully to what my hon. Friend said about Dover, and Dover is interesting, because it is predominantly a roll-on, roll-off port. It is not like the port of Tilbury, or like DP World’s new port—incidentally, it is about to finish the first phase of that project, and I had the privilege of being at its launch. At Dover, however, the lorries are driven on and driven off. Some are on skids, but at the end of the day the freight is on wheels, which are going to roll, and if they are going to go north from Dover there is only one way they can go.

The crossing is significant, with Thurrock to the north, and, to digress for a second, everybody talks about it being the Dartford crossing, but that is only one side. The other side, the northern side, is clearly in Thurrock, but no one talks about the Thurrock crossing very much, apart from those who live in Thurrock, and that is something I have always picked up.

The crossing is of national significance, however. It is part of our national motorway network, and, even though I fully understand that the Mayor of London’s proposals, which we support, will take on some capacity, I do not want to divert larger HGVs and through traffic off the motorways. That is what the motorways were designed for, why they are so successful and why they are the safest roads in the country—because they were designed for their current use. The issue is that they are very successful, so we are expanding them and sweating their assets.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that both sides of the motorway are being expanded, albeit without hard-shoulder running, which is what I would have liked to see. The orders were signed off long before I became a Minister, and the Audit Commission said that there was a massive overspend on the project because we were not able to use the asset as we should have—either by widening the motorway and using the hard shoulder, or by using just the hard shoulder. We did not need to do both, but we could have saved an awful lot of money and spent it more wisely elsewhere.

I am not going to be drawn into a debate about where the crossing should be, because further down the line some bright lawyer will drag me through a judicial review, stating that I have expressed a view too early on, but the business case will be significant. The infrastructure to which there is a connection, and the cost of developing it, will be hugely significant, and the effects on the environment—I am acutely aware of the green belt and the pressures on it each side of the river—will be taken into consideration.

What will also be taken into consideration is the effect on the local communities each side of the river and, particularly, on their local road network, because if we do not do so there will be no point in moving on from where we are today. The reason why we managed to secure significant investment from the Chancellor during the spending round was by, first, having a short-term look, today, at what we can do to alleviate the concerns of my hon. Friend’s constituents regarding pollution, in particular, and congestion. One of the biggest things on which MPs and colleagues throughout the country write to me is congestion, its environmental aspects and its knock-on effects on business .

[Gareth Johnson]

The Minister mentions pollution in the area around the Dartford crossing, but may I press him on noise pollution in particular? When he reviews the situation along the east Thames corridor, will he look at the surfaces on the M25 to see whether there is a way of minimising the noise pollution that emanates from those surfaces near the Dartford crossing?

[Mike Penning]

I was going to move on to other sorts of pollution, including light and noise. I give hon. Members an assurance that when the tarmac needs to be replaced, or the soft surface, as some people like to call it, it will be replaced with low-noise tarmac. That commitment was given by the previous Government and we have continued with it. It is fractionally more expensive, but it removes a huge blight. It is not silent, but it generates about 50% less noise than normal tarmac. The noise is an enormous amount lower than that on concrete surfaces, but the sad news is that concrete surfaces last much longer. They are a huge success, but the road noise from them is hugely significant.

As I was saying, if we get this right, initially by removing the barriers and then by realigning the motorway going south where there is the dog-leg at junction 1A, people will be able to cross the river with confidence, particularly going south—I will return to the problems going north later—without having to search around for change, throw money into a pot and worry about whether the machine has counted it properly. There is currently the smart facility to go through with a DART card, which I encourage people to use. If we can get rid of the barriers, it will significantly free up time for people going through, particularly as different vehicles currently have to pay different fees. There is a debate about how much time it will save. However, that will not alleviate the problem in the long term.

Interestingly, hauliers tell me that the better I make the Dartford crossing, the more they are likely to use it. People would also be likely to invest in the area. There is a significant ferry employer in Thurrock which owns a significant amount of land on the other side of the river in Dartford that it does not use because of the congestion on the bridge. I am not going to say that investment would immediately go up, but the indication that I have is that the congestion going north and south is inhibiting investment in that part of the world. We can alleviate the congestion, and if we do not alleviate the congestion locally, there is frankly no point in doing this. We can build into what we are doing with the removal of the barriers, thus freeing up more capacity.

As I said, the Chancellor has given us the money to look carefully at where a new crossing could be sited. We are rightly supporting the Mayor’s new crossing, which will be excellent news for east London. However, a lot of the traffic that we are considering, particularly the growth in HGV traffic on the M25 through Dartford and Thurrock, will not go that way. That crossing will alleviate the amount of traffic to some extent, but by nowhere near enough.

Members who were here for the previous debate know that I passionately believe that we need to grow ourselves out of the economic situation that we are in. It is right that I need to get as much traffic off the roads as possible, but there is no point in making our motorways wider and wider, managing them and getting them to flow all around the country if, in the most significant spot in the country, with HGVs unable to go anywhere else, there are barriers, toll booths and a northbound crossing that does not have anywhere near the capacity of the southbound one.

We will consider very carefully where the new crossing should go, and we will ensure that any effects on the local infrastructure, particularly junctions 30 and 31, are addressed in the early plans. As my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock knows, we have looked very carefully at the protracted, but in the end successful, negotiations with DP World over those junctions. I thank DP World for its investment in UK plc. Creating 36,000 jobs in that part of the world is a massively significant boost to the economy, and if we get the crossing right it will be a boost for the economy on both sides of the bridge because a lot of people living south of the river will probably come north to work.

If we can get the crossing right, it will be great for communities on both sides of the river environmentally and in terms of lifestyle, because they will be able to commute and do more things. It will be even better for UK plc, and if we can get it right I am determined to do so as early as possible. We need no more delays, and we have the money to do the early work. We will have long discussions with hon. Members about how the project is structured and how it can work, but UK plc needs a new crossing on the lower Thames and that is what it will get.

Question put and agreed to.