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A3 (Hindhead)

: The hon. Lady again makes an important point—the implications of not having a tunnel stretch way beyond my constituency. Her city is trying hard to catch up with the affluence that is common to the rest of the south-east, but in which Portsmouth has so far been unable to share. She will know that the city is one of the 50 most deprived areas in the UK; that it ranks just 31st in the south-east in average weekly earnings; and that there are 25,000 people of working age in the city without a job. There is not just the economic cost to Portsmouth; there is also a massive environmental cost to the region. The Devil's Punch Bowl at Hindhead is an area of outstanding natural beauty, of national and international importance, and of special landscape value. Let me tell the Minister some of the benefits of a tunnel, as identified by his own Department. There would be a positive economic cost-benefit ratio of 2.8 through reduced journey times. A tunnel would meet the policy objectives to"““provide an efficient and effective road system and reduce congestion””" and to ““conserve and enhance biodiversity””, and there would be a substantial reduction in the number of accidents—estimated at 40 fewer accidents a year. One accident nearly every week would be avoided. A tunnel would have a large beneficial impact on driver stress and would create a reduction in noise levels in Hindhead and the surrounding areas, providing substantial benefits to the historic landscape of Hindhead common and an opportunity for townscape enhancement, including visitor gateways to the common and the Devil's Punch Bowl. Most importantly, more pedestrian and cyclist trips would be encouraged. The final argument that needs to be addressed is whether the tunnel is of regional or national significance. It apparently fails to meet three of the four criteria necessary to define it as of national significance, but it does so for the chicken-and-egg reason that those criteria cannot be met as long as there is a bottleneck. The volume of traffic flows—fewer than 60,000 vehicles a day—the low proportion of freight traffic and the route's lack of inclusion in the trans-European route network are all because of the bottleneck. If the bottleneck were removed it would become the route of national significance that its function as the connecting road between London and Portsmouth demands. I conclude by telling the Minister of the terrible price that my constituency pays because it happens to sit right in the middle of that transport disaster zone. The village of Hindhead, home to only 3,000 people, is sheared in half by the A3. If one is on the wrong side, it is quicker to go to nearby Haslemere for one's shopping than to use the local shops. A huge amount of pollution is generated throughout the day by cars idling, slowing down, revving up and starting at the Hindhead lights. Rat-running is destroying the local villages, and there is a huge problem with planning blight. The lights sit on the main road between Haslemere and Farnham. They are two important towns in the area, but connections between them are massively hampered by the difficulties of travel over the junction. What I have said is fully supported and endorsed by my right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot). He is not present today, but he speaks with great passion about the issues faced by his constituents, particularly in Grayshott, the town next door. I hope that I have demonstrated to the Minister the seriousness of the situation. In his reply, will he address some of the concerns throughout the region about the procedures used to decide the fate of the tunnel? For example, why has the inspector's report on the public inquiry, which was completed in January, still not been published? Despite my arguments today, why has the scheme been downgraded from supposedly of national significance to only of regional significance?