Tom Blenkinsop
Main Page: Tom Blenkinsop (Labour - Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland)Department Debates - View all Tom Blenkinsop's debates with the Department for Transport
(13 years, 11 months ago)
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Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
How much of the Highways Agency budget has been, and will be, spent on procuring salt, grit and potash from British suppliers such as Boulby potash mine in my constituency, as opposed to overseas suppliers which the Secretary of State mentioned earlier?
Mr Hammond
The point I think the hon. Gentleman is trying to make is simply not valid. The problem last year was that domestic suppliers could not keep up with demand. Local authorities ran down their stocks, in some cases to nil, and during the summer they needed to rebuild those stocks. To have had the Highways Agency trying to build a strategic stockpile in competition with them would have been deeply unhelpful. We took the decision to import the large part of the strategic stockpile, even though that means paying very considerably higher prices, so that local authorities could restock and the strategic stockpile could be built in parallel.