I beg to move,

That this House
has considered the potential merits of a new Lower Thames Crossing.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford. I start by thanking the colleagues from neighbouring constituencies in Kent, Essex and the wider Thames estuary who are present in the Chamber. I also thank representatives of businesses across our region for joining us in the Public Gallery; there is an impressive number of people from Kent and Essex here to show their support, from the private sector, Government-sponsored boards and a variety of other organisations. They have come together in support of the lower Thames crossing, and the economic and skills potential that it would create for Kent, Essex and the UK economy.

I understand that the planning decision on the crossing is, as the Secretary of State for Transport has made clear to me, a quasi-judicial one, and that the Minister may not be at liberty to comment further than the written ministerial statement issued on 7 October. However, I am not here to talk about the planning process; we are here to talk about the merits of the lower Thames crossing proposal, the delivery of which not only is vital to my constituents, but will add £40 billion to our economy and be vital to the delivery of our Government’s core missions.

Before I come to the merits, it is worth reflecting on the impact of having only one crossing—a single point of failure—over the Thames east of London, effectively creating the largest bottleneck in the UK. It is nearly a given that every Dartford resident’s life will be disrupted in one way or another because of traffic gridlock caused by tailbacks from the Dartford crossing. The crossing operates continually over capacity, struggling daily with 50,000 vehicles on top of the capacity for which it was designed, so disruption is an everyday issue.

When the crossing goes wrong, as it did earlier last week, it goes disastrously wrong. Last Monday, a major technical fault at the tunnel left Dartford at a complete standstill for nearly 30 hours while repairs were made to one of the two tunnels. Trips that should have taken 10 minutes took four or five hours. That has a real impact on the lives of my constituents. It impacts residents trying to get to work, stifling local trades and businesses. Brian, a constituent I have been in contact with following Monday’s chaos, is a self-employed plumber from Swanscombe; the traffic meant that he could not get to his customers and lost out on a full day of work.

Children across my constituency are regularly late to school or lose out on extracurricular activity by being stuck in traffic. Rajiv, another constituent, wrote to me about his 12-year-old daughter, who arrived back in Greenhithe at 8 pm last Monday tired, hungry and confused, having left her school in Northfleet four hours earlier. For those unaware of the geography, that is a journey of 4 miles. A school bus service for children with special educational needs and disabilities was cancelled, which meant that those young people lost out on a full day of learning.

The disruption also impacts the health and wellbeing of residents. People miss out on GP and hospital appointments, and live in worry that, as it has before, traffic could cause a delay in getting to A&E should an accident happen. Another constituent of mine, a lorry driver with a pre-existing heart condition, made the decision to take a lower-paid job driving vans on one side of the river, as he was worried that if he got stuck in traffic and needed an ambulance it would not get to him on time.

With stories like those, it is no wonder the lower Thames crossing has such strong support in my community, with over 70% of those consulted backing the new route. It has huge support from business, with 73 organisations nationwide, including the Port of Dover, the British Chambers of Commerce and some of the UK’s biggest retailers, saying that the crossing must go ahead. There is clear support for the crossing. The need for it is clear to residents and businesses, and it has been for a long time.