Transport Infrastructure: Devon and Somerset

Debate between Sarah Dyke and Ian Liddell-Grainger

Tuesday 23rd April 2024 Westminster Hall

[Mr Liddell-Grainger]

My hon. Friend has championed Devon for longer than I have had the opportunity to do so, and I greatly welcome his gentle advice about the situation on the roads. I am very grateful for the work he has done. I know he has worked very hard with the leader of Devon to make sure we secured the money—I say “we”, and that is a very grand collective “we”. I know that you, Mr Streeter, were involved in that. It is a very good piece of news indeed, and I am grateful to Devon —£72 million is a huge amount.

That just shows, however, that it has become endemic that we never have enough money to do this. Although the claims are there, the reality, which I know from driving around Devon—I certainly know it from the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Simon Jupp)—is that this is a never-ending battle, and one that we all must fight. Funnily enough, I do not blame either Somerset or Devon for the situation we are in. This has gone on for so long that it has become almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. We have aspirations all the time—

[Sarah Dyke (Somerton and Frome) (LD)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Liddell-Grainger]

I give way, with worry.

[Sarah Dyke]

That is very generous of the hon. Member for—somewhere in Somerset.

Adverse weather has also massively contributed to the number of potholes in Somerset, which I am sure the hon. Gentleman will come on to. Does he agree that the Government must recognise and focus on improving the future resilience of our roads, and that local authorities may need specific funding allocations to improve the resilience of roads, rather than just pothole funding? I will leave him to the remainder of his prepared speech.

[Mr Liddell-Grainger]

I will just reiterate again what I have already said about the number of potholes in Somerset, because obviously the hon. Lady was not listening—but never mind; no change there. I just reiterate for the record that there were 60,000 potholes in 2022.

I have worked with the leader of Somerset county now for 25 years, who covers a major part of the Levels, where we know the roads move all the time because of the peat. It has been a never-ending battle in Somerset to try to stabilise roads that are unstable. The cost of rebuilding those roads after the ’14 floods was simply astronomical, but we cannot not do it. As peat is a natural resource, we cannot pile—we cannot get deep enough—so whatever we do is a problem. Somerset county has spent hugely on roads over many years. I am not complaining; that is the situation. I am saying that the money has to keep going. Unfortunately, as I said, it does not really work.

I was interested to note that on the Devon county website—my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon helped me on this—there is a quite incredible interactive map. I did not know this existed—I know that you will, Sir Gary—but people can actually look up the potholes on their street. If they go to fixmystreet.com, they can look at these maps, find out exactly where their pothole is, and anybody can report it. We can then zone in the counties. Somerset does not have that. I looked at the Somerset website—which has been there for years, by the look of it—which starts off with a highway safety inspection manual. It always worries me when I get that, on any website, because I just know that whatever is behind it will be a worry. I accept that there is a system behind it, but it is not as good as the one I have seen in Devon. I will be urging Somerset county to adopt that system.

I know that the Minister will reply, quite rightly: “We can give what we can give. There is no more.” One of the ways around this is to use technology. I was googling some quite remarkable machines that fill in potholes. They can do the middle, so they can deal with all the pothole types I named earlier—they basically gouge out and redo it. Last night, the Minister was very kindly telling me a little bit about some of these machines. On his recommendation, I actually went away and looked them up, and they are amazing. Maybe—just maybe—Devon, Somerset and Cornwall, for instance, could look at buying some machines together as a collective, and they could then work the three counties. It does not have to be three counties; it could be whatever we want—it could be a region if we so wish, although that would be a bit big. We could use that technology to deal with these holes.