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A417 Traffic Improvement Scheme

I will come on to the issue of whether a road is identified as a road of national or regional importance in a few moments. It is sometimes implied—I know that this is not what the hon. Gentleman is suggesting—that if a road scheme is on the edge of a region and is close to other regions, and therefore evades the attention of the regional transport board, that is reason enough for it to become a road of national importance. As I am sure he will accept, the fact that a road is on the edge of a region is not enough in itself to make it a road of national importance, however important the road is to one or more regions. If the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that the Government should show leadership and give advice to regional transport boards on prioritisation, that is something that the Government can and will do. If he is suggesting that the Government should make available significantly more money than is already available through regional funding allocation, I will have to disappoint him. That was certainly the suggestion made when the prioritisation took place; some people claimed that there was no way that prioritisation could be given to the improvement of the Cowley to Brockworth section of the A417, given current spending commitments. I hear similar arguments from every region in relation to many other schemes, and that makes me think that we have been reasonably fair in dividing the pot among the regions. It could be argued that the regional pot should be bigger, but it would have to be made clear where the money would come from, whether from tax increases or from cutting investment somewhere else. Politicians in this place often go round in circles arguing about which scheme we should cut in order to promote another scheme. Unfortunately that is the truth of the argument, and the issue is not just one of party politics. When it comes to funding, there is a circle to be squared, and we have to be realistic. The Government do not have unlimited funds and sometimes tough choices have to be made. The RFA process helps us to make those choices in the best and most sensible way. Following the RFA's advice, the south-west region assigned funding to a total of 31 schemes in the period up to 2016, including three schemes in Gloucestershire —the Elmbridge integrated transport package, the Gloucester and Cheltenham park and ride and the Gloucester A40 improvements and widening. The region advised us that the Cowley to Brockworth improvement on the A417 may well prove to be a long-term priority, but will probably not come forward before 2016. I understand why the hon. Members for Cotswold and for Tewkesbury will be disappointed with the outcome, but we nevertheless accepted the region's advice. We will ask regions later this year to consider their priorities and tell us whether they have changed. The Highways Agency has already made its report available to the region so that it can take into account the benefits and value for money offered by options, including the lower cost options.