Draft Heavy Commercial Vehicles in Kent (No. 1) (Amendment) Order 2021 Heavy Commercial Vehicles in Kent (No. 2) (Amendment) Order 2021

Tracey Crouch Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2021 General Committees

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary, and I welcome the Minister to her place.

I grew up in Folkestone. My right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) is right about the disruption that Kent has faced over many years because of challenges at Calais or bad weather. Travel disruption is not a new phenomenon in the county. Now, as an MP further up, with two motorways—the M20 and M2—going through my constituency, I know that any travel disruption causes major issues.

As my right hon. Friend said, it is clear that Operation Brock is better than Operation Stack, although it is not perfect. To reiterate his point, we should maximise the agility of the system to ensure that it can be removed as quickly as possible after being exercised, because although residents of the county accept that it is an alternative to Operation Stack and something that can provide a better flow of traffic along the major networks, it does cause problems in itself.

Finally, I thank the members of Kent Resilience Forum for all they are doing to support the flow of traffic through the county. It is an exceptionally difficult job working with all the different partners and indeed with Government, and we appreciate the hard work that they are doing.