Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing) I will remind Members of
the procedure for Select Committee statements, because it is still
fairly new. The Chair of the Transport Committee, Huw Merriman,
will speak for up to 10 minutes, during which no interventions may
be taken. At the conclusion of the statement, I will call Members
to put questions on the subject of the statement and call Mr
Merriman to respond to those in turn. Members can expect to be
called only once....Request free trial
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
I will remind Members of the procedure for Select Committee
statements, because it is still fairly new. The Chair of the
Transport Committee, , will speak for up to 10 minutes, during which no
interventions may be taken. At the conclusion of the statement, I
will call Members to put questions on the subject of the
statement and call Mr Merriman to respond to those in turn.
Members can expect to be called only once. Interventions should
be questions and should be brief. Front Benchers may take part in
the questioning.
1.15pm
(Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
I am very pleased to be able to make this statement, and not just
to commend a set of recommendations from the Transport Committee
to the House, but to welcome the acceptance of every one of them
by the Government. In so doing, I would like to thank my
predecessors as Chair of the Committee. Back in 2016, when I was
a member of the Committee, the then Chair, , made a series of
recommendations that were not accepted by the Government. Those
calls were correct back in 2016, and if they had been accepted, I
contend, we would have been in a better place. In 2019 my
predecessor as Chair, the hon. Member for Nottingham South
(), continued to shine a
light on some of the failings of smart motorways. These
recommendations are therefore the result of the endeavours of
three successive Transport Committees. I would like to thank not
only the Chairs, but the members and staff of the Committee, for
their tireless work and commitment over the past six years—I see
that my Committee Clerk is at the Table, keeping a watchful
eye.
By way of explanation, all smart motorways have design and
technology that helps to control the flow and behaviour of
traffic, but there are three types that differ in how they treat
the hard shoulder. First, all lane running motorways do not have
a hard shoulder at all but rely on a series of emergency refuge
areas for stranded motorists. In 2019 there were 141 miles of all
lane running motorway, with a fatality rate, measured from 2015
to 2019 per 100 million vehicle miles, of 0.12%. Secondly,
controlled motorways have a permanent hard shoulder. In 2019 they
accounted for 141 miles, with a fatality rate of 0.07%. Thirdly,
there are dynamic hard shoulder motorways, where the hard
shoulder is switched to a lane at busy times of day. In 2019
there were 63 miles of this design, with a fatality rate of
0.09%. The remaining 1,500 miles or so of conventional motorway
has a hard shoulder but no smart design. It has a fatality rate
of 0.16%.
The data between 2015 and 2019 therefore suggests that smart
motorways have lower fatality rates than conventional motorways.
However, taking 2019 on its own, when more smart motorways had
been rolled out, shows that the reverse is true. Of the three
smart motorway designs, all lane running had the highest fatality
rate.
The Committee launched its inquiry in February last year and
reported in November. The Government shared their response with
the Committee this week. In the response, the Government agreed
to the following key recommendations. First, to pause the
roll-out of all-lane running motorways yet to commence
construction until five years of data is available for those
built before 2020. Secondly, to pause the conversion of dynamic
hard shoulder motorways to all-lane running motorways and revisit
the case for controlled motorways.
Thirdly, to retrofit emergency refuge areas to existing all-lane
running motorways to make them no further than 1 mile apart—the
Government have announced £390 million of funding for this.
Fourthly, to grant powers to the Office of Rail and Road, the
roads regulator, to evaluate the Government smart motorways
project plan. Starting this year, the regulator will report on
progress annually and carry out an evaluation of stopped vehicle
detection technology and other safety measures.
Fifthly, to introduce an emergency corridor manoeuvre into the
highway code to help emergency services and traffic patrol
officers to assess incidents, subject to consultation. Sixthly,
to investigate the granting of new road safety powers to the
roads regulator before changes to design or operational standards
are implemented on our motorways and key roads. Finally, to
revisit the entire business case and rationale for smart motorway
conversion.
The headline is, of course, the pausing of new smart motorways,
but during this time, the Government and National Highways will
not just be evaluating whether smart motorways are safe enough to
meet our high standards, but, for the 141 miles that are all lane
running, be retrofitting emergency refuge areas, stopped vehicle
detection technology, and CCTV technology to make these smart
motorways safer than they are at present.
It is on this retrofitting exercise that I wish to reflect, and I
suggest that the lesson must be learned. In the six years that I
have been following this project, I have been struck by the focus
on creating capacity in the motorway network. That is
understandable. Traffic on the strategic road network is
projected to increase by up to two thirds over the next 30 years.
Ministers and National Highways have argued that a failure to
deliver extra capacity, such as can be done via removing the hard
shoulder, would cause congestion that could ultimately cause
drivers to switch from motorways on to less safe local roads.
However, there is another set of targets and statistics that
needs more focus. National Highways has a target of zero harm, by
which it aims to reduce the number of people killed or seriously
injured on the strategic road network to a level approaching zero
by 2040. As part of that commitment, there is a target to reduce
the number of people killed or seriously injured on the road
network by 50% in 2025, compared with the baseline figure of 2005
to 2009. I see conflicts in this target, just as I saw flaws in
the roll-out of smart motorways. Let me give a couple of
examples.
First, back in 2016, the Committee was assured that stopped
vehicle detection technology would be fitted going forward. By
2019, only 18% of all lanes running motorways had this
incorporated. Secondly, we recommended that smart motorways
should adopt the specification used in the M42 pilot, with
emergency refuge areas every 500 metres. However, these are now
typically spaced every 2.5 km on all lane running motorways. It
therefore comes as no surprise that 40% of all breakdowns on
those motorways occur on a live lane, because at 2.5 km
intervals, it takes 75 seconds to reach an emergency refuge area
driving at 60 miles an hour, versus the 30 seconds it would have
taken had our spacing recommendation been followed. It also
follows that, on average, it takes 17 minutes to reach a motorist
stranded on a live lane. It comes as little surprise, therefore,
that 79% of drivers interviewed by the RAC are concerned that
they would not reach such a refuge area.
The upshot is that, instead of drivers using less congested smart
motorways and coming off more dangerous local roads, we are faced
with the opposite—drivers not feeling safe using smart motorways
and moving on to those less safe local roads. This could have
been avoided had equal emphasis been placed on safety technology.
Instead, the roads were reopened before such measures had been
completed. When the Committee put this to the chief executive of
the agency in 2019, he maintained that drivers wanted to try the
road once the tarmac had been delivered. This culture of capacity
first and safety mitigation later needs to be eradicated. I
believe that it will be, and I welcome the response of the
current chief executive of the agency to our report. He could
have been very defensive. Instead, he assured the Committee in
his response that he would take on board the recommendations.
I recognise that, for some, this report and its recommendations
do not go far enough. Some would like to see the hard shoulder
brought back immediately. To those I have this to say. First,
hard shoulders also kill. This is why it can be argued that all
lane running motorways have a lower fatality rate than
conventional motorways with a hard shoulder. Secondly, the new
lane of a smart motorway cannot be just turned back to the hard
shoulder without substantial engineering works. This would take
years. Thirdly, closing the motorway could cause chaos on local
roads where the fatality rate is that much greater. However, with
the commitment to revisit the business case and the safety
performance over the coming years, this may be an action that is
required in the years to come.
I can assure the House that the Transport Committee will continue
to monitor the delivery of these recommendations. One of the less
reported measures is the granting of powers to the Office of Rail
and Road to give more independence. Currently, the regulator does
not have the powers over road safety in the same way that it does
over rail. Indeed, of the regulator’s 350 employees, only 19
focus on roads; the rest focus on rail. This balance will need to
change, but I agree with the Government that we need to get the
inclusion of regulation right. With every new road, there will be
a danger. We cannot use this as a reason to halt road
building.
I am delighted that the Government have accepted the Transport
Committee’s recommendations. It demonstrates that Select
Committees can not only scrutinise, but see reason and reasonable
recommendations turned into policy. I thank the Secretary of
State for Transport, the Roads Minister Baroness Vere, and the
Minister who is here today—the Under-Secretary of State for
Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland ()—for doing so. Thank you
for allowing me to make this statement, Madam Deputy Speaker. I
am happy to take questions from Members.
(Slough) (Lab)
The Labour party has long warned about the serious flaws with
smart motorways, but it is thanks to the dedication of bereaved
families and the hon. Gentleman, the Chair of the Transport
Committee, and his Committee that the roll-out has been paused at
all. Does he share my assessment that alongside the botched
roll-out, the failure to install critical technology, which can,
for instance, identify stopped vehicles on smart motorways, is
absolutely scandalous? Does he believe that lives have been lost
as a result?
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his points and for being very kind
about the work of the Committee. It has been a frustration for
the Committee that, on matters such as stopped vehicle detection
technology, assurances were given to the Committee in 2016 that
those would be delivered but that did not occur. In my view, that
is one of the greater failures. It also points to a defensive
attitude and a culture of building first and implementing safety
second. As he will know, it is very hard to implement that
technology once a road is open.
(New Forest East) (Con)
I congratulate the Committee on its work and thank the Government
for having listened to the recommendations so positively. Will my
hon. Friend put a little more flesh on the statistics? Can he
give us some actual figures—if not now, then subsequently—on what
point-nought-nought-something per cent. means in actual lives
lost? Do those statistics show any significant differences
between hours during daylight and after dark?
I thank my right hon. Friend for his words. Like him, I think
that the Government deserve a huge amount of credit for accepting
all the recommendations. He will know from chairing a Select
Committee that it can sometimes be disappointing to receive the
responses, but this one was fantastic. He makes the correct point
that this is all about the statistics. There is a perception that
smart motorways are not safe, and we have to get that right,
otherwise people will not use them. If we use the data from 2015
to 2019, we see that there is indeed a better fatality rate, at
least. The serious collision rate is perhaps a little more
patchy. If we then take 2019, we see that the reverse is true.
For that reason, we called for a pause until we can get to the
bottom of that.
My right hon. Friend asked about the statistical measure—for
example, I referred to the 0.12% figure on all lane running
motorways. It is measured per 100 million vehicle miles. It is
important to recognise that this is on a proportionate basis. It
does not compare a small amount of the network with a much larger
one in terms of fatalities. I do not have the data on day and
night, but I will write to him with that.
(Easington) (Lab)
I commend the Chair, members and staff of the Transport Committee
and, unusually from my lips, I also welcome the Government’s
response in accepting its recommendations.
My question is about the promises that were made to install
stopped vehicle detection technology on the existing stretches of
smart motorways. I ask because, in 2019, only 18% of all lane
running motorways had had stopped vehicle detection technology
advanced cameras installed. The Transport Committee has now been
told that this roll-out will not be complete until September
2022—that is six years behind schedule. What confidence can the
Committee, the House and the general public have in the ability
of National Highways—which many of us know as Highways England,
as it was previously—to realistically deliver on this and other
road safety improvements in future?
The hon. Gentleman—my friend—is right to praise the role of
members of the Committee. He is a great one of us, and I thank
him for everything he has done in this regard. He is also right
to point out the target delivery date. That was one frustration
that the Committee experienced. There had been a commitment to
roll out the stopped vehicle detection technology for the whole
of the existing network by 2023, but the date was then brought
forward by a year, to 2022. That was regarded as a positive—which
it is—but, as the hon. Gentleman will know, we had received a
commitment that from 2016 onwards all new smart motorways would
have that technology, so we regarded the date as not one year
early, but six years late.
The hon. Gentleman is right to focus on that issue, because we
understand—we will look into this further, as will the Office of
Rail and Road—that once the road has been built, installing the
technology when the lanes are running will be much more
difficult, time-consuming and expensive than it would have been
had it been done in the first place. I am also intrigued by the
question of whether there is enough technology in place to be
delivered, from a supply perspective. I think that the hon.
Gentleman and I will work in the Committee to investigate that
further.
(Kettering) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend and his Committee on a superb
report, and on persuading the Government to change their mind.
The Committee is an exemplar of how a really effective Select
Committee can persuade a Government to change their policy.
It seems to me that retrofitting emergency refuge areas is the
most important way of addressing the safety of all lane running
motorways. I welcome the Government’s commitment to spending £390
million on an extra 150 emergency areas—at just over £2.5 million
a go—by 2025, but they have made no commitment to retrofitting
the remainder, and are saying that that must be considered as
part of road investment strategy 3. Is my hon. Friend as worried
as I am that the Government might try to wriggle out of
retrofitting the remainder after 2025?
I thank my hon. Friend for his kind words. I agree with his first
point, but I have learnt lessons from this as well. I have
learnt, for instance, that the way to engage with Government is
not only to scrutinise—which the Government would expect of those
of us on the Back Benches—but to make the case with reason, and
to work alongside them. I commend the Government in that regard,
because previous Governments have perhaps been less willing to
engage, and I believe there are Ministers in the Department for
Transport who might have shared the concerns that my hon. Friend
and I have had.
As for the point about emergency refuge areas, I share that
concern, too. I believe that the spacing should be identical on
every single stretch. If the £390 million does not cover that,
more funding will be needed. What is key with smart motorways is
a uniform set of rules that people understand so that they know
they will able to reach an emergency bay. We will be keeping a
careful eye on this to ensure that it is delivered, as it would
have been already if the pilot had been followed. That is the
frustrating aspect of the project: it has just slipped. Corners
have been cut, and things have not been delivered. We will focus
on that, and ensure that we hold the Government and, indeed,
National Highways to account.
(Warwick and Leamington)
(Lab)
I thank the hon. Gentleman and his Committee for the report. I,
too, want to focus on refuges. It is great that the Government
have adopted certain changes, but the proposal to reduce the
spacing to 500 metres—which I believe was the original concept
behind smart motorways—has apparently not been accepted. I assume
that the Committee heard evidence from the RAC and the AA; I
should like to know whether they recommended 500 metres, a mile
or some other measure, and what the cost would be if the spacing
were set at 500 metres throughout the network.
I thank the hon. Member. He has completely roasted me. My memory
is that we did indeed take evidence to find out what the
different bodies felt the best spacing would be, which is how we
arrived at the “three quarters of a mile to a mile”
recommendation. The Government have said that the three quarters
of a mile should be introduced where it is possible, but one mile
is probably their standard approach. As for the cost of returning
to the original M62 pilot spacing, we will look into that and
write to the hon. Member. This is something that we will have to
do pursuant to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for
Kettering (Mr Hollobone) about the costing of the Government’s
£390 million commitment, but I will do the same calculation for
the hon. Gentleman’s 500 metres.
(Wellingborough) (Con)
I had a very sad constituency case in which a hard shoulder had
been opened up because of congestion and a car broke down on it.
Some of the people were able to leave the vehicle and go over the
barrier, but there was a disabled person in the car. By the time
someone in the control room had put the red x on, a heavy vehicle
had ploughed into the car, killing that person. Does my hon.
Friend know whether that situation has changed? Are there still
motorways that rely on someone in a control room switching a
button to put the x on, or do we have automatic detection on all
motorways now?
My heart goes out not just to the family to whom my hon. Friend
referred, but to all who lose their lives on the roads. In any
event, where there is a hard shoulder, it is where one in 12
motorway deaths occur. To those who point out that we need a hard
shoulder, I say that they are also dangerous.
My hon. Friend asked whether the technology is in place for
automatic detection. No. That is what we need to see delivered by
the end of this year, if that is to be. We also have to make sure
that the CCTV operates. The Daily Mailhighlighted that. It had
somebody go under cover and work in the CCTV control rooms, and
it was clear from the evidence that it was not being
monitored.
By putting all that together in one package—the emergency refuge
areas to ensure that people can get in faster; the
stopped-vehicle detection technology, which means that the lane
is closed within a minute; and the CCTV operation and proper
staffing—we will make motorways even safer.
(Strangford) (DUP)
Further to the comment from the hon. Member for Wellingborough
(Mr Bone), I have also had the opportunity to listen to a very
distressing emergency call from a father panicking about where to
pull over the car safely after breaking down on the motorway. I
could hear the impact of another car hitting the car he was in
with his children. I thank the Chair and the Select Committee for
all that they have done, but I have grave concerns about the
safety implications. Does the Committee believe that the
emergency refuge area will address such dangers? As the roll-out
has been paused for five years, has the Committee looked at what
can be done in the interim period—in that five-year pause—to
improve safety?
Again, I add my condolences to those whom the hon. Gentleman
mentioned. The emergency refuge area, as I said, it is absolutely
crucial. Statistically, if a car is travelling at 60 mph when it
breaks down and the driver needs to get off, it will take 75
seconds under the 2.5 km spacing. If we were to bring that down
to the 1 km mentioned, we would see it reduced to about 30
seconds. That could save lives, so I really believe that the
emergency refuge area is absolutely crucial and integral.
The hon. Gentleman is right to focus on the pause and what it
could mean for delivering the technology. Rather than just
resting on our hands and looking at data, which is absolutely
required, and then making a decision on whether to start building
again, I hope that all the effort that was going to be put into
building new smart motorways will now be put into retrofitting
these safety measures. I assure him that, as a Committee, we will
continue to monitor that.
(Worthing West) (Con)
I congratulate the Chairman of the Select Committee on how he has
answered questions. He has made the point that even motorways
with hard shoulders are dangerous. In my time, a third of the
deaths on motorways were secondary deaths. If a running motorway
stops running, the traffic jam goes backwards at 30 mph. People
need to be aware of that, and they also need to be aware that if
traffic is kept off motorways and put on other roads, the dangers
are significantly greater than the difference between the
different styles of motorways, with or without recessed emergency
refuge areas. Will my hon. Friend emphasise to the Government
that, as well as the pause, making sure that motorways attract as
much traffic as possible should be a key Government priority?
I thank the Father of the House. He is right to focus on that. It
is sometimes a very difficult discussion to have because we are
talking about the economic case, but as he rightly says,
motorways are the safest part of our road network, and getting
more traffic on to the motorways saves lives. There is an
economic case. It has been estimated that for every pound spent,
£3 is delivered by having additional space on motorways. It is
also true to say that might be just for the first year, as when
people know there is a better route to travel, more people travel
on it, but my hon. Friend is right that the more people who can
get on to motorways, the better. That, ultimately and
fundamentally, is why the Government’s response is spot on. They
recognise that there are concerns with smart motorways and that
people may not use them and go on to more dangerous roads. We
need to send the message out that smart motorways are safe. They
can be safer, but people should continue to use our motorway
network, because it is the safest network of all of our roads
system.
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for his assiduous and
thorough answers, which the House has appreciated.
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