Robert Courts
Main Page: Robert Courts (Conservative - Witney)Department Debates - View all Robert Courts's debates with the Department for Transport
(7 years, 5 months ago)
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Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Gillan. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) on securing this important debate. I shall take hon. Members through the issues affecting my constituency, travelling through them quickly, as it were—which is more than anyone could do trying to travel on the roads themselves. I assure our excellent and generous Minister that, despite what may be heard from other hon. Members present, there is no project more worthy of investment than the A40 running through West Oxfordshire.
As anyone who has visited West Oxfordshire or spoken to a local MP will realise, the A40 is the pre-eminent issue there. Not only do my constituents spend hours stuck in traffic doing the short journey from Witney to the centre of Oxford, but the economic potential of an enormously successful area is being constricted. One need only look at Carterton, where world-beating industries such as Boeing and Airbus are present on the base, but where the slip road access to the A40 is restricted; or Eynsham, where Siemens, with its word-beating medical engineering, is restricted in relation to travel on the A40. There are many other businesses there, as is shown by the West Oxfordshire business awards, but I cannot mention them all because time is limited. They are restricted in the economic growth that they could deliver, because of the road.
The A40 is the central issue in West Oxfordshire, but not the only one. It has spin-off side effects. Traffic trying to avoid the A40 travels, for example, on the A4095 through Bladon, where I live. It is a world-famous village because it is where Winston Churchill is buried, and we have many coaches per day. Visitors are of course welcome, but through the narrow pinch point and the coach parks further on there is excessive congestion. There is also particular congestion in Burford, with its world-famous hill, with traffic backed up along it.
Hon. Members will realise that that high street is called the gateway to the Cotswolds; nearly every building is listed, and there are HGVs stacked up on it, because there is nowhere to go. A bypass for Burford would also be high on the list for residents in that part of the world. Horsefair in Chipping Norton and Bridge Street in Witney are two areas in West Oxfordshire that have high levels of pollution, and a bypass around Chipping Norton to remove the weight of traffic—figuratively and literally—is absolutely necessary.
There is also a great need for public transport. We have already heard from the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) about cycle paths, and I would like the B4044 cycle path to happen. I cycled from my home in Bladon to Oxford, when I worked there, along the A44. There is an excellent cycle path there, but we need more of them. I have now concluded my quick canter through issues of health and economics, in relation to road infrastructure, and I am grateful for the opportunity to speak.
Several hon. Members rose—