It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Robert Largan) for bringing such an important topic to the attention of the House. He is a fantastic advocate for the people of High Peak, which is an area I know well, as it is just over the hill from where I grew up. I was on holiday there last summer. It is an area of outstanding natural beauty, with fantastic communities, but not one where anyone would want to be stuck on an ungritted road with a steep slope. My hon. Friend is quite right to bring this important issue to the attention of the House. I was haunted by the image in his speech of the ambulance stuck in the snow, which is exactly what we all fear.
I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution, and my hon. Friends the Members for Hyndburn (Sara Britcliffe), for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) and for North West Durham (Mr Holden), and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for their important contributions. As several of them pointed out, the Department for Transport has overall responsibility for the approach to gritting. I am sure Ministers in that Department will be paying close attention to our debate.
In terms of current requirements on local government, my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton pointed out that the Highways Act 1980 includes the requirement
“to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that safe passage along a highway is not endangered by snow or ice.”
It would be impossible for central Government to mandate exactly how often every single road in the country should be gritted, but Members of Parliament play an important role by highlighting where there are problems and where particular roads should be gritted more often.
I am sure the issues around Leadgate, Consett and Burnhope in north-west Durham, and around Mow Cop, which my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton mentioned, will now be firmly on the radar of those local authorities, who, I hope, will take appropriate action. Normally, local authorities tend to focus on A roads and busier B roads, but there are always particularly important roads that do not fit under those headings.