Orders of the Day — Trunk Roads Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 8 November 1945.

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Photo of Mr William Morrison Mr William Morrison , Cirencester and Tewkesbury 12:00, 8 November 1945

I think this is the first Bill which the right hon. Gentleman has introduced in this House, and I should like to take the opportunity of congratulating him on the position which he occupies, and I am sure everyone in the House will hope that he will make a great success of the heavy and important task which he has undertaken. When hon. Members address this House for the first time they are generally granted, by custom, a certain consideration and indulgence, in return for which they avoid in their speeches the more injurious controversial methods of expression, and I think it is a fortunate thing that the right hon. Gentleman's first Bill comes to us in a form which does not arouse any violent opposition in principle in any part of the House. He has reminded us of its respectable ancestry, and I am bound to say that hon. Members on this side are not likely to find anything very revolutionary in a proposal to add some more miles to the roads directly controlled by the Crown, particularly when we remember that for the last 800 years our highways have been called "the King's highway."

There is very little in this Bill which is novel in principle. It is, as the right hon. Gentleman has told us, really an extension of the Trunk Roads Act, 1936, and it proposes, as I understand it, to add some 3,658 miles to the 4,500 odd miles which the Trunk Roads Act included in the trunk roads system. But we ought to remember, as the background to this proposal, that there are about 180,000 miles of roads in the country and even with the additions proposed by this Bill I do not think that the proportion to be made trunk roads is at all unduly high. If my reckoning is correct it is between one-fifth and one-sixth of the classified roads of the country. Indeed, I am doubtful whether this proposal goes far enough to give the country what it really requires, which is a well planned, a complete and an integrated arterial road system. I am bound to admit that there is perhaps some wisdom in the right hon. Gentleman limiting his engulfment by his powers of mastication, and it may be that the House would prefer to leave roads in the hands of enlightened highway authorities if the alternative were their transference too rapidly to an overburdened central State Department which was unable to make a good job of them.

In the Bill itself, which has been so lucidly explained by the right hon. Gentleman, there are, of course, some points which we shall want to examine further in Committee. I was interested to hear his account of the process by which he arrived at Clause 1 (2) which allows him to add new roads to the system by Provisional Order—that is a condensed description of it. I should be interested to know the views on this matter of the local authorities concerned, how far they are in agreement with what is proposed, and we should also like to hear what financial provision is intended to accompany these transfers of highway responsibilities. The proposal to include in the trunk roads system arterial roads which lie within the boundary of a county borough is no doubt right in principle, but again we should like to know how far this is agreed by the boroughs concerned and what are the financial provisions to go with it. The meat of the Bill is in the Schedule, of course, and the right hon. Gentleman must be prepared for Amendments moved in Committee drawing attention to his sins both of omission and commission. The Schedule is sonorous with names of our British countryside, and hon. Members from various parts of the country will, no doubt, bring their local knowledge to bear on the matter and be able to improve the Bill.

Subject to Amendments in Committee and further discussion there, I do not myself see any great objection to the powers which the right hon. Gentleman seeks. I think the anxiety of the House will centre on what he will do with these powers when he gets them. I cannot emphasise sufficiently, from my own experience, how vital it is that the arterial road plan of this country should be speedily determined and published. It is impossible in many cases for local planning authorities to set about the great tasks which confront them until they know where these new roads are to run. It is idle to plan for satellite towns, to plan for that dispersal of our congested cities which involves a regional survey not only of the city authority's own population but of the surrounding countryside—itis impossible to do that adequately unless there is a clear picture in the mind of the authority, and until there has been an authoritative statement about where these roads are to run. To take the Bill as it stands, with all the roads enumerated in the Schedule but without such a clear statement of Government road policy, it does give an unfortunate appearance of tinkering with a vast subject, adding a road here and there. What we want is the wider policy, definite demarcation and delimitation of the road system, so that we can see whether it is adequate or not.

All sorts of problems are involved. The problem of motor ways, roads dedicated to motor traffic alone, has been raised. It is not an easy problem, but it is one upon which the Government must make up their mind and say what their view is, because whether we should have such roads or not is a matter which must be very present in the minds of every local planning authority and, no doubt, in the mind of the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Town and Country Planning. The Bill does contain welcome references to planning and the avoidance of ribbon development, but planning is impossible without a definite statement as to communications. Ribbon development, we all agree, is a very bad thing. It destroys the roads for traffic purposes and, at the same time, it provides a housing estate or a set of dwellings dangerous to the inhabitants. No good is served by it, but two great evils are brought about, and in previous Governments steps were taken to enable that evil to be combatted. These are continued in so far as the right hon. Gentleman proposes to be the highway authority. But there is a little more in it than that, and I hope he will use his influence with his right hon. Friends who are concerned with planning and with housing to see that housing estates are made as difficult as possible for the speeding motorist to get through. It is not enough to preserve the present speedways from encroachment by ribbon development. We must see to it that when creating a housing estate there is no inducement but every deterrent to through motor traffic. That is the other side of the ribbon development problem; it is the positive treatment of it as well as the negative. I hope we shall hear later from the right hon. Gentleman a definite pronouncement on road policy and that local authorities will know for certain where their roads are to be. The Department of which the right hon. Gentleman is the head has done a great service to the nation. During the recent war it has had to confront problems of transport of immense variety and complexity, and I hope that now that it is relieved of a greater part of its wartime burden it will concentrate on this question as a matter of first priority.

I will conclude with a few remarks on two subjects, the first being safety. When we are considering making our roads safe for traffic we should bear in mind the estimate given two years ago by the then Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of War Transport. He said that in the Department they expected that by 1963 there would be 12,000,000 motor vehicles on the roads. It is obvious to anyone who reads the present distressing day-today accounts of casualties on the road that our roads are not safe enough for the existing traffic, and it is, therefore, abundantly clear that if in 1963 all those 12,000,000 vehicles have come forward and the roads are in anything like their present inadequate condition, we must expect a perfect holocaust of killing and maiming. I say that in order to encourage the right hon. Gentleman to take a wide view of this problem. It is not merely a question of improving the roads so that they stand up to today's traffic but of making such plans as will cope adequately with a largely increased number of vehicles. In this respect I welcome the provisions of Clause 4 with its powers to remodel junctions and crossings, and to stop up junctions of other roads with trunk roads.

I would like now to refer to road surfaces. One of the causes of motor accidents, which are most prevalent when the road is in any degree treacherous from ice or wet, is the sudden variation in surface that sometimes occurs when a road passes from the jurisdiction of one highway authority into that of another. Before the motorist is aware of the fact that he is on a different system, the skid occurs. One of the benefits of having our main arterial roads under a central authority is that a uniformity of surface can be imposed upon the whole road system; but uniformity of itself is no great blessing unless what is made uniform is the best. Before the war there was a road research station operated by the right hon. Gentleman's Department and situated on the Colnbrook by-pass. Until the dreadful convulsion of war put an end to many laudable activities for the time being, some very valuable and interesting experiments were being carried out by that station to determine what is the best all-weather non-skid road surface. Has the right hon. Gentleman any news to give us of further developments at that station? Has its work been carried on during the war, and if so, are the results available to us in any way? During the war our roads have stood up marvellously to an almost complete absence of maintenance and to loads and numbers of vehicles for which they were never designed. Some of the American vehicles that came here were of such size and apparent complexity that one was left wondering whether to marvel at their immense weight or to perplex oneself by trying to imagine what useful purpose they could serve. Yet our roads stood up to them. The real point is that if this work of research and observation on road surfaces has been continued during the war, those responsible for conducting it must have had a varied experience of all sorts of vehicular traffic, and I hope that the research will be pressed forward and that we may be told what are the results.

My last word is on the subject of beauty, to which there were references in the right hon. Gentleman's speech, as there are in the Bill itself. A road need not be an ugly thing. A fine highway is a noble thing, and a thing that has inspired some of the finest images both in sacred and profane literature. I hope that the Minister will remember that the responsibility which he undertakes in creating these permanent structures which will last into other generations carries with it the responsibility of seeing that they are as beautiful as possible. I urge upon the right hon. Gentleman the consideration of the proper planting of trees and shrubs. In my own experience it is not enough just to plant any old tree in any old way. An immense improvement can be brought about by properly selecting trees that tone in with the landscape and by spacing the trees in the most artistic and natural manner. I hope that in all these matters those responsible will consult with people who make the subject their special study and care. I remember a case in Lancashire where a local highway authority, in creating a great double-carriage highway, had the foresight, when planting trees and shrubs, to consult the local branch of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England and handed over the job to them, and the result was certainly very good. It has to be remembered that a man may be the finest road engineer in the world but not know much about this particular facet of life. I conclude by saying that we could have wished for a fuller statement of the Government's road policy. We urge upon the Government the necessity of giving the public and those responsible as soon as possible a defined arterial roads plan. This Bill is a step in the right direction and we agree that it should be given a Second Reading