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A3 (Hindhead)

: I am grateful to the hon. Member for South-West Surrey (Mr. Hunt) for securing this debate and bringing his concerns to the House. I think that we can start by accepting that there is some common ground. The stretch of road that we are talking about undoubtedly suffers from bad congestion, journey-time unreliability and a poor accident record, and I guess that we can also accept the social and economic importance of improving it. The points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, North (Sarah McCarthy-Fry) on freight, the opportunity cost of not proceeding with conferencing development and the benefits of the Olympics were well made. There is no question but that that stretch of road needs to be upgraded—we accept the fact—and there would be important social and economic benefits from doing so. If a cost-effective, affordable and easy-to-provide solution were obvious, and if the environment were not a factor, I have no doubt that the road would be being built as we speak. Indeed, it would probably have been built many years ago. Unfortunately, however, the environment is an important factor and a cheap solution is not available. The landscape, as both the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend know, is of high quality. It is part of the Surrey Hills area of outstanding natural beauty and owned by the National Trust on behalf of the nation. The Devil's Punch Bowl is a lowland heath site of special scientific interest and is part of the special protection area. It is not just any part of the country that we can drive a dual carriageway through, which is why a tunnel scheme was identified as a potential way to deal with the problem. Unfortunately, however, tunnels are very expensive and we have to take that on board. Environmental constraints have meant that we have spent 20 years searching for a solution to the problem. The hon. Gentleman was kind enough to offer me a history lesson on the development of the project, but he skipped over the fact that although the tunnel was identified as the correct solution in 1993, the scheme was stopped in 1995 by the Government of whom his predecessor was a member, because it was regarded as unaffordable. Following our review of the trunk road programme in 1998, we considered the feasibility of a toll tunnel to make the scheme affordable, but we decided not to pursue that option because of the likely diversion of traffic on to less suitable routes. So, in March 2001 the present tunnel scheme was put into the targeted programme of improvements as a conventionally funded project. Draft legal orders and an environmental statement were published in October 2003 and a local public inquiry sat for 29 days between 7 September 2004 and 15 February 2005. Although the hon. Gentleman implied that the public inquiry was finished nearly a year ago, the end of the public sitting is not when such an inquiry finishes. It finishes when the inspector delivers his report, which did not happen until close to the end of August this year. Before a public inquiry statement is put in the public domain, it is normal for the Secretary of State to make his or her views known. Because this project is of such great importance, there is not just one Secretary of State who has to take a position on the inspector's report, but three: the Secretary of State for Transport, the Deputy Prime Minister—because of his planning duties—and the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. All three Secretaries of State have to take a position before we can proceed further, and they are in the process, with their officials, of working through the inspector's report. Hopefully, they will come to a position as soon as possible and we will put that in the public domain.