A120

Priti Patel Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

Good afternoon, Mr Sheridan. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, and I am grateful to Mr Speaker for granting me this important debate for the county of Essex.

I thank the Minister for his attention today. He is fully aware of the strategic importance and significance of the A120, in particular, as an economic and strategic link, not only throughout the county of Essex, but to Europe. It is part of the trans-European transport network route known as the UK-Ireland-Benelux road axis, and it connects with Stansted airport in the west—in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst)—which is Britain’s second largest air freight port transporting cargo worth £8 billion a year, as well as with Harwich International port in the east, which has trade links with northern Europe and serves about 1 million passengers a year.

However, the A120 is not only about connecting locations. It is important and strategic, because it gives people and businesses opportunities to access national, European and global markets. The importance of the road to the economic well-being of the region and the county of Essex cannot be understated. The road is particularly important to my constituents and to businesses there. Essex is a dynamic county of entrepreneurs with a vibrant mix of traditional industries, such as manufacturing, rural farming and innovative light businesses. Of course, entrepreneurs are the wealth creators not only for the county of Essex, but for the country, and are creating private sector jobs and prosperity in our economy.

In my constituency, small and medium-sized businesses are highly significant. The proportion is more than 80%, and they are growing, despite the economic downturn that we have had. I have to say—the Minister has heard me say this before, as have many other Essex colleagues—that we are a great county to do business in. Our strategic geographical location, our proximity to London, and our access not only to ports, but to Stansted and Southend airports has a lot to do with it. Our 20th century transport infrastructure, however, is holding us and, particularly, businesses back. Nowhere is that more evident than with the A120 and particularly the 12-mile single carriageway stretch that runs north to my constituency, between Braintree and the A12 at the Marks Tey end of the A120. That also touches the southern edges of the constituencies of my hon. Friends the Members for Braintree (Mr Newmark) and for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin).

The road is one of the most heavily used in Essex by the business sector. Some 56% of businesses responding to an Essex chambers of commerce survey indicated that they use the road regularly. However, the single carriageway section, as I have alluded to, is not fit for purpose. It is extremely congested, causes severe delays, is highly dangerous, and is a barrier to economic growth. Those delays harm businesses and damage small and medium-sized firms, not only in my constituency, but in neighbouring constituencies. For them, an extra half-hour delay in traffic can mean the loss of a lucrative contract. It can damage their reputation, prevent them from expanding and adding more capacity, and it adds hundreds of thousand of pounds to their running costs each year.

The Minister has been generous with his time, meeting me and other representatives from my constituency to look into the pressures on the road, but I would like to highlight that figures as far back as 2005 show that an estimated 25,000 vehicles use that stretch of road every single day, when single carriageway roads are typically expected to carry approximately 23,000 vehicles. Annual daily traffic flow data from the Department for Transport in 2010 indicated that on parts of the A120, some 14% of traffic is accounted for by HGVs, compared with an average of only 6% across Essex. That demand inevitably puts strains on the road and its junctions, leading to delays and a backlog on to smaller roads, affecting nearby villages.

In 2008, a report by Atkins, commissioned by the East of England Development Agency, examined those problems and stated:

“The single carriageway section of the route, between Braintree and the A12, is congested and suffers traffic delays.”

It noted:

“The A120 is currently constrained by the capacity of the single carriageway section of A120”,

and there is clear evidence that most traffic on that particular section

“has no real choice of route”.

There are no alternative routes where traffic can go. The report also highlighted that unless plans were put in place to accommodate increased traffic flows in future, stress levels as measured by the congestion reference flow indicator could reach 150% on the western section of the single carriageway.

To address those problems, it was recommended that the A120 was classified as a route of strategic national importance to attract funding from other sources and a wider pool, and crucially that the single carriageway section be dualled in a scheme which, at that time, would have cost approximately £500 million. The advantages of dualling were clearly laid out. First, it would enable the road to increase capacity and accommodate an average 25% increase in traffic in both directions. Secondly, with less congestion, journey times would decrease by between six and 11 minutes, which is significant for this 12-mile stretch of road. Thirdly, an upgraded and dualled road would lead to economic benefits, estimated at the time to be around £725 million for users, and with wider economic benefits of £106 million. At today’s prices, it is estimated that the benefits would exceed £1.1 billion. The proposed scheme would have delivered good value for money and, naturally, it would have unlocked wider economic potential, helping to create thousands of new jobs in the process and improving access to the Haven Gateway.

However, as my hon. Friend the Minister and other colleagues know, the A120 was not considered to be a priority by the previous Labour Government, who went on to scrap the scheme. We are now living with that local legacy, and there is huge disappointment locally. The Minister will be aware that we are coming together collectively with the Essex chambers of commerce, Essex county council, Braintree district council, the Highways Agency, Colchester borough council, Tendring district council and the Haven Gateway partnership, in particular, to start lobbying and fighting to make it a strategic route, and to get it listed as a strategic route on the priority scheme.

I take this moment to pay tribute to all my colleagues, and my local authorities and neighbouring local authorities. Despite the disappointment of what happened in the past, we are now adamant about building an even stronger economic and business case for dualling the A120. The Essex chambers of commerce has recently set up the Essex business transport and infrastructure forum to support businesses and the business effort in co-ordinating the development of economic arguments. I invite the Minister to come to one of our future meetings to discuss this important issue, and to support new and much needed road infrastructure for our county.

I want to touch on the A120 and the road safety implications. As the Minister has heard before, there are significant road safety issues relating to the A120 and to the single carriageway being dualled. Local parish councils along that route—Marks Tey, Bradwell and Coggleshall—along with local residents, to whom I would like to pay tribute, have set up a significant campaign called “Save Lives Not Time”, and they have campaigned to see the road become much safer. We have had lots of problems on the road, as I have mentioned, but they have done tremendous work to see that lives are saved and that accidents are prevented.

The Road Safety Foundation has classified the A120 as one of the 10 most dangerous roads in the country and figures from the CrashMap website, set up by the Government, also show the number and seriousness of road traffic accidents. There has been not just a high number but more than 50 further serious accidents in the period from 2005 to 2011, and further fatalities have occurred on this stretch of road. Naturally, we want to see that stopped. The Highways Agency has been very helpful and recognised that. It has in place a maintenance programme to address some hot spots—in particular, around the Earls Colne road junction. However, unless this road is upgraded and the capacity issue addressed, there will be further serious and life-changing accidents, all of which I believe can be prevented.

I would like now to come on to how we can fund the A120. I have touched on the fact that the cost of a previous scheme was estimated at £500 million. I appreciate that in the current economic climate and given the appalling state of the public finances inherited from the previous Labour Government, the current Government are prevented from doing what we would all like to see—investing and committing hundreds of millions of pounds to the A120. However, I have already said—the Minister has heard me say this consistently—that this should be treated as a priority scheme. I believe that there is an opportunity for the Government to consider innovative funding models.

The Minister will be aware that in recent years the Marks Tey consortium, known as Gateway 120 Ltd, has developed proposals that could unlock a considerable amount of money, through section 106 agreements and the community infrastructure levy, to help to provide private sector funding to support upgrades. Braintree district council has already said that it has allocated £5 million of new homes bonuses to contribute towards joint investment in this major infrastructure project. In addition, there have been discussions on and the development of a revised proposal, which differs from the previous scheme considered by the Highways Agency and could be much more cost-effective.

I believe—I would like the Minister to look into this—that funding may also be available through the European Union. The A120 is part of the trans-European transport network and may qualify for TEN-T programme funding or funding from the structural and cohesion funds. I urge the Government to look into that. The Minister will not be surprised to hear that I believe that Europe has had far too much of our money. I think that this is an opportunity for us to bring back some of that money and invest it in infrastructure, not just within the region but in our country. I urge that more work be done to investigate that aspect of funding.

I believe that spending public funds on upgrading this road will yield significant economic benefits, along with greater tax revenue for the Government. At a time of economic austerity, we need barriers to trade and private sector growth and investment to be removed; with alternative private funding models, such as that to which I have alluded, we can help to unlock that process. If the Government can commit to upgrading the road, that will naturally help to unlock the economic potential not just of Essex but of the eastern region and also the south-east of this country and unleash the power of the country’s wealth creators. But at the same time, we must look at alternative funding sources as well. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.