Debate on the Address

My Lords, I broadly support what the Government are proposing under the headings of housing and planning. My remarks this afternoon fall under the heading of transport. I speak as a motorist and as someone who still believes that the freedom to get into a car and go anywhere at any time is part of the quality of life. I realise that that is a romantic view and that it struggles to compete with congestion and carbon emissions, but if it is hard to sustain in today's world, I nevertheless feel that the Government must not be allowed to leave the road system to its fate. Of course, the Government have a duty to promote public transport services by bus and rail, but that must not be at the expense of maintaining and, one hopes, improving the road network. The Local Transport Bill is concerned with the imposition of a variety of unspecified charges on motor vehicles that will not in themselves improve the road network and are unlikely to find favour with road users. Motorists like to feel that any charges or tolls that they have to pay are being ploughed back to the benefit of the road system. That is assumed to be the case with toll charges on continental motorways, and I imagine that tolls on our motorway system would be more acceptable to motorists than, say, urban congestion charges. One other lesson that the Government might take from our neighbours across the Channel is on road maintenance. Road works are managed there with the smallest possible impact on traffic movements, which is certainly not the case on our roads, where road works seem to be designed to cause the maximum traffic disruption. For example, driving up to London from Hertfordshire yesterday, I experienced a huge queue and long delays which, it turned out, were caused by red cones reducing to a single lane the two-lane carriageway in both directions for a distance of about a mile. Surprise, surprise, there was not a sign of any work in progress or of any service vehicles or workmen in the cordoned-off lanes in either direction. Given the fact of an ever-growing population of car owners, it is obviously impossible to eliminate congestion, but I am sure that we all know of situations where it seems obvious that traffic flows could be improved by appropriate investment. One such example is the daily afternoon congestion of northbound traffic at Junction 6 of the A1(M) on the approach to Stevenage in Hertfordshire. It is caused by the narrowing of the motorway from three lanes to two at Junction 6. The motorway reverts to three lanes at Junction 8, just north of Stevenage. The obvious solution is to widen the motorway to three lanes between the two. Here, I declare an interest as a resident of north Hertfordshire and the owner of a tourist business in the area. Widening the motorway between Junctions 6 and 8 has been the subject of a recent public petition to the Prime Minister, to which the Government have responded by quoting from an earlier London to South Midlands multimodal study that, "““widening on the A1(M) between junctions 6-8 would merely move congestion to other sections of the A1””." To all who know the area, that seems a weak excuse. Some traffic would exit to Stevenage at Junction 7, the motorway reverts to three lanes at Junction 8, and Junction 9 is the big exit for the A505 Baldock bypass to Cambridge, so there is no obvious reason for congestion. I apologise for going into that detail, but, on behalf of all those who signed the petition, I ask the Minister to look again at that example, which I am sure is one of many similar situations throughout the country. In conclusion, it is clearly a major responsibility of government to promote optimal public services by bus and rail, but it must not be at the expense of maintaining and improving the road system.