All-lane Running Motorways

Clive Betts Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2020 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the safety of all-lane running motorways.

Last year, in June, my constituent Jason Mercer said goodbye to his wife Claire at 8 am. Fifteen minutes later, he and another motorist were dead. Jason had been involved in a minor collision on the M1 in South Yorkshire, but in March 2017 the hard shoulder on that section of motorway had been converted into a full-time running lane, so, with no emergency refuge in sight, Jason and his fellow motorist were forced to stop in a live lane to exchange details. A steep bank immediately behind the safety barrier meant there was nowhere to move off the road, and instead they were left exposed. A lorry hit one of the stationary vehicles, killing them both instantly.

The safety features promised when the motorway was converted have still not been installed. Jason is one of the growing number of victims of so-called “smart motorways” on which the flow of traffic is controlled by remotely adjustable speed limits. Specifically, Jason was killed on the all-lane running, or ALR, motorway on which the hard shoulder has been permanently removed. Tragically, Jason is not the only victim of that ill-conceived scheme. That same 16-mile section of the M1 has seen five fatalities in just 10 months. Nationally, 2018 figures show 107 deaths across the whole of our motorway system and—let me repeat—I have had five fatalities in the past 10 months, in near-identical circumstances, on 16 miles of road. I acknowledge that ALR schemes can deliver capacity improvements, but they do so at the cost of motorists’ lives.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on raising this important issue. Does she agree that that could have been avoided had police advice been listened to? In the Parliament of 2010 to 2015, I went to see the Minister’s predecessor with the South Yorkshire police, who had said, “This arrangement is not safe.” Recently, Chief Inspector Darren Starkey of the South Yorkshire police wrote to me that

“any stranded vehicle, in any live lane or carriageway on any motorway or other strategic road presents an immediate safety risk”,

but that when there is a hard shoulder, those

“risks are less than being in the live lane”.

[Sarah Champion]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point and for all his campaigning on the issue. It was not only the police but the local authorities, the other emergency services, the RAC and the AA—everyone with any common sense knew that taking away the hard shoulder was going to lead to fatalities.

Hazards presented by the removal of the hard shoulder are manifold. The hard shoulder allows stricken motorists to stop in relative safety, outside the flow of traffic. In its absence, at a minimum, there should be emergency refuges along the carriageway. Mr O’Sullivan, the chief executive of Highways England, recently revealed to the Select Committee on Transport that 38% of all breakdowns on ALR motorways took place in live lanes, not in refuges. Even having refuges, therefore, does not keep people safe.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (George Freeman)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Paisley. I am standing in for the Roads Minister, Baroness Vere, who will be watching the debate closely, and I will meet her afterwards. Let me congratulate and thank the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) for raising this issue. I agree that it merits a bigger debate. The participation of colleagues across the House signals the strength of feeling.

Let me start by acknowledging the tragedy, pain and trauma suffered by the families of all those who have lost their lives on our roads—especially Jason Mercer, whose family are in the Gallery, and Dev Naran—and particularly, in the context of this debate, on our smart motorways. It is no good Ministers saying that all roads are safe; people need to feel safe and be safe. We need to ensure that safety remains our No. 1 priority. We accept there is a problem here. The Secretary of State is, as we speak, putting the finishing touches on a serious package of measures to tackle it. I cannot and will not pre-empt that, but I will deal with a number of points that were raised.

I would not be doing my job if I did not start by reminding everyone that safety is our No. 1 priority. Highways England’s objective in implementing smart motorways is to ensure that they are as safe as the pre-smart motorway network, which is already the safest bit of the road network, and ultimately safer. We are committed to developing an increasingly safe road network, and I am alarmed that the safety statistics showed a slight increase last year. I take the point my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) made about drilling down into that data, which I will raise with Baroness Vere.

[Mr Betts]

What the Minister has said is interesting, but given all he has heard, does he accept that smart motorways, or all-lane running—whichever he wants to call it—are as safe as building an extra lane and having a permanent hard shoulder?

[George Freeman]

That is one of the precise questions that the Secretary of State is looking at. I do not want to pre-empt that work, but I absolutely accept the hon. Gentleman’s reason for asking that important question.

Highways England is constantly monitoring, and it has introduced a number of measures. This is ongoing work. It is not something we think is done and dusted; it is live as we speak. The truth is that, for anyone involved, one accident is one too many. I want to ensure that no one ever dies in this way again, and that the legacy of the people who have died is that that sort of accident, and the situation in which it occurred, cannot happen again. That is why the Secretary of State announced an evidence stocktake soon after taking office. He has called in all the evidence and data, and he is looking at a package of measures to deal with this issue, which will be announced imminently. It would be sensible if, following the debate, we quickly reconvened the all-party group on road safety. Perhaps we might go further and create a taskforce for all colleagues who are interested in this issue, so we can listen to their concerns and ensure that that work is fed directly in.

I hope my hon. Friends and colleagues on the Opposition Benches understand that I cannot pre-empt the Secretary of State’s announcement, but let me make one or two key points in response to those that were raised. It is true that the principal rationale for smart motorways is to increase capacity, reduce congestion and reduce pollution. There are environmental benefits to ensuring that we maximise the use of existing motorways rather than building new motorway capacity, but there are real issues about awareness, information, the positioning of refuges, rescue, vehicle monitoring, and the safety of vehicles re-entering the highway. All those issues have to be got right, and that is why I am responding in the way I am.

Smart motorways have increased capacity. Since we introduced the scheme, more than 1 billion journeys have been made over the 250-mile network of smart motorways. I do not want people to think this is a very small patch of malfunctioning motorway; it is extensive, and over the last 15 years, millions of people have driven up smart motorways.