Part of Orders of the Day — Queen's Speech – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 30 October 1969.
Mr Fergus Montgomery
, Brierley Hill
12:00,
30 October 1969
I am grateful to have been allocated some time by you, Mr. Speaker, to raise a subject on the Adjournment. As you know, I originally intended to raise an issue of development in my Constituency but as the Staffordshire County Council has issued a writ against the Ministry of Housing on this issue, the matter is now sub judice. You very kindly said that if I could find another subject I could still have time for this Adjournment Debate.
There is another subject which concerns my constituency vitally and it is the question of necessary improvements in the Lloyd Hill area on the A449. When I returned to this House in 1967 my first Parliamentary Question was about the need for improvement of this road. This matter has been dragging on for a considerable time, long before Ireturned to the House. I want to give a little of the background about this road. Lloyd Hill is a stretch of road a mile long on the main Wolverhampton to Stourbridge Road. On either side of Lloyd Hill there is a dual carriageway and the result is that Lloyd Hill becomes a bottleneck. It is also part of the link road between the M5 and M6 and locally it is known as "the missing link", rightly so.
In 1966 the A.A. said that this was probably the biggest road in Britain outside the Home Counties. In that year the Ministry of Transport issued figures showing that the road was overloaded by 480 Per cent. This I presume means that the volume of traffic using the road is 480 per cent. more than the road is capable of taking safely and comfortably. If I am wrong in that assumption no doubt the Joint Parliamentary Secretary will correct me when he replies to the debate. Over the year the bottleneck has created more and more diffuculties.
Whenever we have an accident on the Lloyd Hill stretch the result is that we have chaos and traffic jams. I know for a fact that in the mornings the milkman has to drive his milk float on the pavement because, driving at a slow speed on the road, he would create more chaos among motorists who were driving to work at Wolverhampton. I live in my constituency and use this road a great deal. I am well aware of the inconvenience for motorists using it and also of the inconvenience experienced by local residents who live on Lloyd Hill. These people have great difficulty during busy times in the day in getting their cars from their driveways into the road.
An adjournment debate is a short half hour debate that is introduced by a backbencher at the end of each day's business in the House of Commons.
Adjournment debates are also held in the side chamber of Westminster Hall.
This technical procedure of debating a motion that the House should adjourn gives backbench members the opportunity to discuss issues of concern to them, and to have a minister respond to the points they raise.
The speaker holds a weekly ballot in order to decide which backbench members will get to choose the subject for each daily debate.
Backbenchers normally use this as an opportunity to debate issues related to their constituency.
An all-day adjournment debate is normally held on the final day before each parliamentary recess begins. On these occasions MPs do not have to give advance notice of the subjects which they intend to raise.
The leader of the House replies at the end of the debate to all of the issues raised.
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In a general election, each Constituency chooses an MP to represent them. MPs have a responsibility to represnt the views of the Constituency in the House of Commons. There are 650 Constituencies, and thus 650 MPs. A citizen of a Constituency is known as a Constituent
