Road and Rail Transport

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 2:06 pm on 2 July 2003.

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Photo of Bob Blizzard Bob Blizzard Labour, Waveney 2:06, 2 July 2003

The situation to which my hon. Friend refers is the same all over the country, but it is especially dangerous in my area because many of the roads are nothing more than winding country lanes. When people go along them at ridiculous speeds, they crash; our road accident figures are frightening. The answer is not just road safety measures; we must also modernise and upgrade those roads, especially when they provide key economic links to important towns such as Lowestoft.

The absence of good transport links only accentuates the peripherality of the area that I represent. By comparison, when industries close in what I describe as the "thoroughfare" of the country, other industries often move in quickly, so employment remains quite buoyant in those areas. However, that is not the case in the coastal regions.

Obviously, we cannot alter our geographical position—nor would we want to do so, because there are many beautiful features of life on the coast—but we must improve the road links. At one time, the roads to Lowestoft were as good as those anywhere in the country, but despite the investment that has occurred, although roads in many other areas have improved over the decades, there have been no improvements in north-east East Anglia.

Earlier, we heard from the Opposition about their new fair deal for the road user. What sort of deal has East Anglia received from the Conservatives in the past? In an intervention, I pointed out that the White Paper "Roads to Prosperity", which was published in May 1989, promised that the A12, which serves my constituency, would be dualled to Lowestoft by 1999. The White Paper never really got off the drawing board and only a few schemes were prepared—a couple of village bypasses and the famous third crossing of the river in Lowestoft. Once the Conservatives had won the 1992 general election, those schemes were gradually given lower and lower priority. Then a special category called "longer term" was invented, and they were all placed there until, in the mid-1990s, they were abandoned completely. That caused my predecessor to ask the House, at the end of a debate with his Transport Minister:

"What can I take back to my constituents, who have been deeply affected by the change in the economic base in the past decade? With their great hopes of investment in the area's infrastructure from taxpayers wiped out—at least for now—what can I take back to my constituents?"—[Hansard, 17 January 1996; Vol. 269, c. 717.]

He was able to take nothing back to his constituents from the party who were then in government—now the Opposition—because there was no fair deal from the Conservatives then, just as there would be no fair deal now, only continued neglect.