Asked by: Alex Burghart (Conservative - Brentwood and Ongar)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the oral contribution of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Transport of 14 May 2018, Official Report, column 99, if he will make an assessment of the compatibility of the 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Traffic with the (a) testing and (b) use of fully autonomous vehicles.
Answered by Jesse Norman - Shadow Leader of the House of Commons
Like many other countries who have ratified the 1949 Geneva Convention on Road Traffic, the 1968 Convention on Road Traffic, or both, the Government considers that neither convention prohibits the testing or use of automated vehicles. This applies to all automated vehicles, including fully automated ones where a person only decides whether to use the automated vehicle, schedules the journey, and chooses destinations.
Asked by: Alex Burghart (Conservative - Brentwood and Ongar)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment has been made of the potential effect on the Blick Mead archaeological site of the proposed alterations to the A303 around Stonehenge.
Answered by Jesse Norman - Shadow Leader of the House of Commons
Blick Mead is outside the existing highway boundary for the A303 and on land that will not be disturbed by the scheme.
Even so, Blick Mead is included in the extensive Heritage Impact Assessments that Highways England are carrying out to ensure the scheme brings benefits without creating an unacceptable impact on important local features.
As part of the development of the scheme, Highways England have been carrying out hydro-geological modelling of groundwater flows. This suggests that there will not be any adverse effects on the Blick Mead spring. This finding has been reported in the scheme’s Preliminary Environmental Information Report (February 2018), which was issued as part of the public consultation material.
Asked by: Alex Burghart (Conservative - Brentwood and Ongar)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answer of 26 April 2018 to Question 138336 on Roads: Stonehenge, if he will publish the terms of reference of the archaeological surveys planned by the independent Scientific Committee; and when he plans to publish the results of those surveys.
Answered by Jesse Norman - Shadow Leader of the House of Commons
The Terms of Reference of the archaeological surveys for the A303 Stonehenge project, in relation to works affecting the World Heritage Site (WHS), are set out in a series of Written Schemes of Investigation (WSIs).
WSIs are produced for each site on the scheme before any work is started, and are working documents that will undergo a number of updates throughout the lifetime of the surveys to encompass additional requirements identified as the work progresses. There is also a high level overarching WSI for the whole scheme. The initial WSIs will be published on the Scientific Committee’s website by the end of this month (http://a303scientificcommittee.org.uk).
The final iteration of each individual WSI will also be published alongside the survey results, to outline in full the investigations that were found to be required.
The reporting of the surveys in the WHS is likely to be finalised in the autumn when it will be published on the Scientific Committee’s website, alongside the already published archaeological survey reports that have been completed to date in relation to the WHS.