M25: Dartford — House of Commons, 2016-11-14
Topic: Other
John Henry Hayes (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a great pleasure to respond to the debate and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr Holloway) on securing it. It is not the first time that he has raised these matters either in the House or with me. He is diligent in addressing the concerns of his constituents in this regard By the standard of Adjournment debates, we have already had an extensive exploration of the subjects before us. For that reason, and so as not to tire the House or delay those Members who wish to make strides towards other important and exciting events, I will abbreviate my remarks by responding closely to what has been said in the debate already. I have 10 points to make, some of which are contained in the text prepared for me and some of which are not; I say that chillingly, as far as my future is concerned, but it will be, I have no doubt, for the excitement of the Chamber First, my hon. Friend and other Members, including you, Madam Deputy Speaker, have known me long enough and seen me often enough to know that however he might characterise other members of the Government, heaven forbid, I am not a man who is a slave to the advice that I receive from my Department. I would not go as far as to say that I entirely share the views of my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) about experts, but I tend to that point of view. I believe that it is for Ministers to make key strategic decisions based on advice that they receive and sometimes based on advice that they do not receive. My hon. Friend can be assured that there will be no slavish adherence to any third-party view of these things. I make the views of this House and of my right hon. and hon. Friends from all sides of the House on such matters the guiding principle by which I go about my work Secondly, I am very familiar with the subject of this debate, having been in the Department before. My hon. Friend called for consistency. In that sense, I am the personification of consistency in this job because I have done it twice. I am not sure that many other people could say that about any job in government. I looked at these matters closely when I was first in the Department, as he will know. Since then things have changed, but they have changed only in one way: the problem of congestion has, if anything, become greater. He will know that there are now around 55 million vehicle crossings a year. The crossing is operating at overcapacity of around 117%. Even with free-flow charging, congestion is a very significant problem. There has been a 7% increase in traffic volumes in the past year alone I know how difficult the problem of congestion is for my hon. Friend’s constituents and others who use the crossing, including those who use it for national purposes. I was impressed by what he said about figures. I want those figures too, so I assure him that when I meet him later this month to discuss these matters, as I surely will, I want to explore those numbers and the split between local, regional and national traffic in as much detail as we reasonably can. These are not exact figures—we would have to count every vehicle and determine where it was going, why it was going there and where it came from to get those numbers pinpoint accurate—but we can work on broader numbers to his satisfaction The third point I would make is that there are no fixed views about this. There was an implication that the Government are entirely rigid in their approach to this matter. That is not true. The circumstances are changing and highly dynamic—I have already illustrated that in what I said about changing volumes—so it is important that we are open-minded. Where there is an absolute consistency—indeed, a certainty—is that we cannot leave things as they are.