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Christmas Adjournment

I want to raise a matter concerning work that is being undertaken on parts of the M6 motorway in my constituency. I am doing so because I am very disappointed that the Highways Agency has not shown proper regard and consideration for my constituents, whose properties are virtually next to the motorway. Graham Dalton, the chief executive of the Highways Agency, which has authorised the work through the Department for Transport, has now, at long last, visited the borough, some nine months after the work started. Obviously, I expected that he would take the opportunity to visit my constituents, who have been so adversely affected. He knows the position, because during the past nine months I have written to him and faxed letters, sometimes twice or three times a week. Yes, there have been replies, but there has been a reluctance on his part to come and see what is happening. Another reason for raising this issue on the Floor of the House is that the residents were given no proper notification that the work was going to take place. That is accepted by the agency, which says that it was a mistake. All that happened was that some advertisements were placed in the regional press that residents were unlikely to see. Why were they not told beforehand that the work was going to take place? It is pretty obvious why not—it is because they would have put forward proposals to try to safeguard their position during the various stages of the work. The public liaison officer for the contractors carrying out the work for the Highways Agency has admitted that a mistake was made in not letting people know about this beforehand. He said, interestingly, that nowhere else had they come across properties so close to the carriageway, and obviously they should know because they do a lot of work on motorway construction and repairs. Hundreds of trees were taken down that had previously acted as a kind of barrier to the motorway, minimising noise and giving some protection for properties that were built before the motorway came into existence some years ago. Since then, the noise has been unbearable. We can only imagine the position of someone who lives just by the motorway where trees and other measures that provided some sort of protection have been taken away. They have to live through it, sometimes during the night as well. I have sent several letters urging that at least night work should not take place, and to some extent that has stopped, but not entirely. That is the nightmare situation—there is no other way to describe it—that several of my constituents have faced during the course of this year. In April, the chief executive of the Highways Agency wrote to tell me that he admitted that this was wrong and that a public meeting, or "exhibition", as it is described, had not taken place to explain the scheme beforehand. That comes rather late in the day. The work is started without direct notification to the people concerned, and then, when it is under way and the Member of Parliament undertakes his duties, as anyone else in this House would have done, there is an admission from the chief executive that a public meeting should have been held in the first place. If such a meeting had taken place, the residents would have had their say. In March, after considerable difficulty, I managed to get an on-site meeting. It is almost impossible to appreciate how difficult that was. The situation involves the publicly funded Highways Agency, the private contractors and the rest, but the Highways Agency, in particular, gave me all kinds of reasons why it would not meet me on the site itself. It was happy to have a meeting with a Member of Parliament, but why should it not be an on-site meeting? It was only as a result of an intervention by the relevant Minister's private office that finally, in March, an on-site meeting took place, which councillors and I went along to. It took a great deal of trouble and effort to get that meeting going. In the past few weeks, Mr. Dalton, the chief executive of the Highways Agency, told me that he was going to visit the borough. Excellent news—at long last he was going to visit. Then, last week, I got a phone call from his office asking if I would arrange a meeting with him. I said, "We will be meeting, will we not, on the site where the work is taking place?" "Oh no", I was told, "that can't happen. It will be a very brief visit. It's going to take place this coming Monday"—that is, two days ago. So at long last, the chief executive of the Highways Agency decides to come and visit to see what is happening with the work on the motorway—but as for meeting the residents, that is out of the question. The visit must be brief—he is too busy and cannot spare the time. What about my constituents, who have suffered such a nightmare? "Oh well, too bad," seemed to be the attitude. He was willing to meet me and wanted to make an appointment as quickly as possible, but what about meeting my constituents? Hence I decided that it would be right to raise the issue on the Floor of the House. I believe that the action of the Highways Agency has been absolutely despicable. It did not inform the residents beforehand, and for that matter it did not let me know so that I could tell the residents. There was great reluctance even to have the on-site meeting, which finally took place in March, and then the chief executive said that he did not have the time on Monday, when I assume he made a visit, to meet the people concerned. I have raised the issue and I hope that the Minister will perhaps persuade Mr. Dalton accordingly. I have no criticism of the private office of the Secretary of State for Transport, because there was the on-site meeting in March, which I mentioned, in my constituency arising from all this, which I imagine was due to his intervention. Last week's effort by his private office and civil servants to persuade Mr. Dalton to change his mind came to nothing.