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A419 and A417

I thank the hon. Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) for raising this important issue, and for his diligent and unflagging campaigning for the scheme. I thank also his colleagues, the hon. Members for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson) and for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper), for their interest. The Government and I recognise the importance of improving this key strategic route. Indeed, that is why bypasses have been provided for Latton, Cirencester and Brockworth; there has been an online improvement between Stratton and Nettleton; the Brockworth bypass, at the northern end of the route, has provided a new junction with the M5; and further major improvements are under way at the southern end of the route. The hon. Member for Cotswold specifically referred to the Blunsdon improvement scheme in an intervention in an Adjournment debate about the missing link six years ago, and I am pleased to say that work to construct that long-awaited bypass north of Swindon started last month. I do not know whether it is any consolation to him that such projects start six years after he makes an intervention, but at least he knows that his words were taken seriously. Taken together with the Commonhead junction improvement, which is due to open to traffic next year, this will leave only the missing link—the hon. Gentleman’s phrase, which I am happy to use—on the A417 near Gloucester requiring improvement to complete the upgrade of the entire route. The reasons why the last section remains to be comprehensively improved after so many years are clear. Traffic from Gloucester has to negotiate a rise of more than 600 ft from the Vale of Gloucester to the top of the Cotswold escarpment. Topography is not the only challenge for road builders there, however. The missing link is located within the Cotswold area of outstanding national beauty, close to sites of special scientific interest, scheduled monuments of national importance and land owned by the National Trust. The Highways Agency has reviewed opportunities over the years to carry out localised improvements wherever possible to address safety and congestion along that length of road, as the hon. Gentleman acknowledged. The work at Nettleton Bottom, carried out in 2000, provided a right-turn lane for the Golden Hart public house. Combined with a 40 mph speed restriction throughout the steep gradients in and out of Nettleton Bottom, it has reduced accidents by about 50 per cent. The Birdlip junction has been progressively improved over the past decade to make it safer, and at the Air Balloon roundabout, two lanes have been added uphill near the junction to improve traffic circulation and increase capacity. The Highways Agency is considering how to improve journey time reliability by way of further, smaller-scale improvements at the Cowley roundabout, Birdlip bypass, Birdlip hill and Crickley hill, alongside the possibility of further work at Nettleton Bottom and the Air Balloon roundabout. However, the difficulty is that substantial environmental constraints and the steepness of the topography, in combination with high traffic flow, conspire to make typical localised improvements that would be achievable elsewhere either environmentally unacceptable, uneconomical or capable of providing only short-term relief. I know that the hon. Gentleman is a staunch supporter of a major scheme that would comprehensively address the shortcomings of the missing link, and that he has followed every twist and turn in recent years as possible solutions have been considered. He has made a strong case today on congestion, the strategic importance of the scheme and safety, and I acknowledge it entirely. He suggested that the Highways Agency is uncomfortable with the existing situation, and I have no hesitation in confirming that both it and the Government are uncomfortable. We would like very much to see major improvements, but in recognition of the exceptional environmental sensitivity of the scheme, we instructed the Highways Agency in 2001 to commission a study examining the environmental aspects of plans to improve the missing link. As the hon. Gentleman said, two surface options and one tunnel option were identified. Although there was considerable support for a tunnel, including initially from him, we had to reject the idea because of its high cost and poor value for money. It would have been effectively undeliverable, and I believe that he now accepts that it was not a realistic option. The favoured surface option was further refined, in an iterative process of development, impact assessment and extensive consultation, to the present scheme, in 2004. For the first time, importantly, the Highways Agency had a major scheme design, and the Countryside Agency, the Environment Agency, English Nature and English Heritage were all content to see it proceed to the next stage: entry into the targeted programme of improvements. In my experience, it was probably the first time in national history that anyone had managed to get those four agencies to agree on such a sensitive matter, so that boded well, but that was before the Government asked the south-west region for its advice on transport priorities in 2005. It is important for us to ask regions for their advice, as Ministers in Westminster are often not the best judges of which are the most important schemes to go ahead. The advice that we received in January was that the Cowley to Brockworth bypass improvement should be included in the longer-term category, outside the 10-year programme to 2016. On the positive side, the region recognised the need for an improvement of the missing link and requested that the Highways Agency examine whether there was any possibility of a lower-cost solution than the present scheme with its high-cost estimate of £150 million. We announced our response to the south-west region in July, accepting its advice on the prioritisation of the scheme. We wanted, wherever possible, to stick as closely as possible to advice from the regions. The challenge is now to identify an improvement solution that is affordable to the region, environmentally acceptable and deliverable. It will be difficult; were it not, the missing link would have been delivered a long time ago. The next step is for the Highways Agency to commission a thorough review of the major scheme design and the possible smaller-scale improvements to which I referred. That work will not be constrained by what has already been considered, and the agency will adopt a holistic approach to ensure that all options are thoroughly explored. We will, of course, wish to engage our stakeholders in the work once the review has been completed. The agency will then extend invitations to key stakeholders to attend a structured value management workshop, which will be arranged for early next year. The results of the work will be made available to the South West regional assembly and it will then be for the region to consider recommending that we reprioritise any more affordable scheme that may have been identified when it is next asked for advice on its transport priorities.