I beg to move,
That this House has considered funding for highways in Essex.
I am delighted to be granted this debate and pleased to see you in the Chair, Sir Roger. I welcome the Minister, the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), to her role. She and I have already been in correspondence about a range of highways issues—there will be a big file on me in her Department, no doubt about it. I look forward to not just this debate but future ones, because Essex is always at the forefront of making the case for infrastructure investment schemes.
It is important for the Minister to be aware of the strategic and economic importance of the great county of Essex. It is a county of entrepreneurs and an engine of economic growth for the whole country. I have made the point consistently for 14 years in this House that we are net contributors to the Treasury. We have a gross value added of more than £40 billion and 75,000 businesses supporting more than 700,000 jobs. We have key ports and airports in Essex, and I have spent near enough over a decade supporting them, being an advocate for them and helping them on business cases, including for inward investment. I am very proud of that work, and we as a county and a country should be grateful to the many firms involved for the investment that they bring.
As the Minister will be aware, Stansted airport is the third or fourth largest and busiest passenger airport in the country, with around 28 million passengers a year. It is also the second largest cargo airport and I pay tribute to it. The Minister will no doubt have seen the Government’s press release about the £1.1 billion investment to support the expansion of Stansted to accommodate around 43 million passengers a year. I appreciate that there was that press release on Monday, but I have been working with Stansted on its plans: the scale of the investment was actually announced and widely published last year, when the planning process was completed. I also supported Stansted on that. I look forward to the implementation of the plans. They are really important, and Stansted is an incredible airport. I have been supporting and championing investment in and new routes for Stansted since 2010.
We also have Southend airport and various ports, supporting and facilitating international trade: Harwich, Tilbury and DP World London Gateway. I have spent over a decade working with friends and colleagues at DP World. I will continue to support them; my relationship with them goes way back in terms of supporting their business and investment case. As with Stansted, we had the announcement this week from DP World, much of which was already in train.
How can I put this politely? I am very conscious of the sensitivities of some Secretaries of State, namely the Transport Secretary and the deputy Prime Minister, that led at the end of last week to some of the more negative responses from businesses such as DP World. Those businesses are important investors in the United Kingdom and we should never undermine them. They are the ones that have brought capital investment, as well as jobs and growth, to our great county and our country.
Of course, the reason why those companies locate to Essex is its close proximity to London and everything else that that brings. We have Felixstowe to the north, in Suffolk, and of course Dover in Kent. All these ports are significant to the health and economic wellbeing of the whole United Kingdom, as well as London and the south-east. The containerised goods that they bring in are moved through our region, the east of England, and through Essex in particular. We are a buoyant hub for international trade.
Consequently, businesses and investors know that, because of our favourable strategic location, Essex is a place to do business. However, for significant economic growth, new investment and further job creation— I never tire of speaking about Essex and the economic dynamics of our county—the strategic road network must be supported. I want to touch on a few particular schemes. One of the most pressing road investment schemes is the widening of the A12 between junction 19 at the Boreham interchange and junction 25 at Marks Tey. I have no doubt that the Minister has been briefed extensively about the background to the scheme, but it has a long history. I know that this is only a short debate, so I will just summarise that history.
Back in 2014, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer gave a commitment to fund the widening of the A12 scheme to improve safety and, importantly, to reduce congestion, to enhance our region’s economic growth and capability. The scheme was well under way and being developed. As part of their local plan processes, local planning authorities were considering a garden community. That had an impact on the entire scheme; actually, it delayed it. Not just one local authority was involved, but two, and their political composition was mixed. Until those planning processes were resolved, the development consent order application could not be submitted. If those planning issues had not come up, the scheme would have been built and completed by now, which was always the intention. However, despite those delays, Ministers in the previous Government were always consistent and firmly committed to the scheme. Investment plans were already laid and pretty much there.
The Minister will also know that we had a legal challenge; indeed, she wrote to me about that over the summer. It came from an environmental activist, who basically brought greater delay to the scheme, but the challenge was dismissed by the courts this summer. Of course, the general election also delayed and postponed further development. The Minister wrote to me on 2 August; I have her letter with me today. She said:
“The Secretary of State has commissioned an internal review of the capital spend of DfT’s capital spend portfolio. This review will bring in external experience and move quickly to make recommendations about current and future schemes.”
I asked for more details about the review, undertaking, costs, assessment criteria and timetable, and received a response on 24 September. It stated:
“The Department is not currently able to provide the information you have requested.”
That concerns me, and it concerns us in Essex, primarily because of the long history of this road, extensive work that has taken place and large amount of public money that has been committed to the work, consultations and studies.
We need this scheme. If we are going to have more housing, planning, growth and development, which we support, then all this needs to come together. We do not want any delay or scrapping that leads to greater cost, or even to other schemes going back to the drawing board.
I have been engaging with the Department and National Highways, and I should add that the scheme is widely supported by communities, local residents and businesses across the region. I am pretty certain that the Secretary of State has recently received a cross-party letter supporting the scheme and encouraging the Department to get on with it, signed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale); my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin); the newly elected hon. Members for Colchester (Pam Cox) and for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman); the former Member of Colchester, who is now the chair of Transport East; Essex county council; Braintree district council; Colchester city council; Chelmsford city council; and Maldon district council. We are all united, because we recognise the long-term benefits of the scheme. Can the Minister at least confirm whether her Department is championing it?
The road is currently being patched up in places. Because of the lack of investment over decades, National Highways is working on refreshes on some parts of the route. The scheme is, to coin a phrase with which the Minister will be familiar, shovel-ready. In the light of some of the re-announcements around DP World and Stansted, it will obviously bring great benefit.