Highways (Financing) Bill

Jim Dickson Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 15th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Holden]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. We do not yet know who will fund the project. Would the Minister like to intervene on me to say if any companies have been lined up and who is looking forward to funding this project under the proposed legislation? He does not want to at the moment, so I do not think my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) will be getting an answer to his question today.

[Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Holden]

I have just given way several times, so let me make a little progress before I give way again.

The Secretary of State is too busy to bother about motorists until they become useful cash cows for Labour’s ballooning welfare budget, which shows no sign of changing under the new Prime Minister, no matter how many pints he poses with. The Transport Secretary could not even be bothered to mention fuel in her speech at the Labour party conference, even though diesel has just hit £2 a litre for the first time ever. To be fair, she did mention drivers once, but only to tell us that railways are the drivers of change—whatever that means.

Make no mistake: Labour does not care about Britain’s motorists, unless it is making a tax, a charge, a new fine or a new yellow box junction. Labour—its Government, its Back Benchers and its councillors—will never stop trying to fleece motorists. This Bill proves that in spades with its open-ended approach to what could happen. There are new sweeping powers in the Bill for road charging right across England, with next to no future parliamentary approval. It is not even as if the Secretary of State has been out there banging the drum for Britain’s automotive sector; otherwise, we would have seen the changes to the zero emission vehicle mandate that so many in the industry, and some Labour Back Benchers, are demanding. In fact, we have seen Labour turn the screw on this issue even further since it came to power.

We know that some Labour Ministers—such as the hon. Member for Stockton North (Chris McDonald), who is a Minister in the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade—are on the side of motorists. However, the Department for Transport has shown absolutely no indication that it is on the side of Britain’s car industry or those who work in it in good jobs, often with trade union representation, up and down the country. It is not on the side of those who go out and drive for work or for leisure day after day.

What have this Government done? They have been busy merrily cooking up a story with the Treasury and pressing ahead with plans to put an extra 6p per litre on fuel in the new year. They have been busily slicing out road scheme after road scheme and road upgrade after road upgrade. So much for the road investment strategy that the Minister talks about! Under this Government, how can we have any confidence that they will deliver the scheme at all? We have just seen the A303, the Blyth relief road, the A31, the A10, the A12, the A17, the A454 and the A127 growth corridor cancelled, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) just mentioned, as well as many more. The Government have cancelled their own growth corridor!

The Transport Secretary—although she is not here—expects us to swallow the idea that the Government will suddenly be on the side of motorists and road users with this new scheme, which opens the entire road network to potential road charging. As soon as any new enhancement is put in—it may be a central reservation enhancement—it can be opened up to potential road charging.

I read the other day, to my amazement, that National Highways has banned diesel from construction sites on the lower Thames crossing. Are this Government absolutely mad? Are they trying to keep the costs of this project down?

[Mr Holden]

My right hon. Friend makes a good point.

The Government have devised a new cunning plan. They are not just banning diesel—oh no; they are banning hydrotreated vegetable oil. You heard that right, Madam Deputy Speaker: they are going to wipe out vegetable oils being repurposed as diesel from the sites. The sites will have to be all electric. How much cost will they ram through on to this scheme? In the end, who will pay for that? It will not be the private company that runs the scheme; it will be everybody who crosses the Thames. That is what the Government are doing: driving in costs from day one. This is the biggest road scheme that this country has done in decades, and the Secretary of State is not even here to talk about it.

[Jim Dickson]

The shadow Secretary of State keeps mentioning the fact that the Secretary of State is not here. Is he aware that one of the first things she did on assuming her role was to agree the development consent order for the lower Thames crossing? The last Government failed to do that over 14 years, because they were not prepared to stand up to the environmental groups who slowed the thing down and allowed dither and delay.

[Mr Holden]

The last Government fought tooth and nail through the courts to deliver the scheme and get the planning consents all the way through. I think the hon. Member should take note of that. This is not something that this Government have dreamed up overnight and delivered. They are ramming costs right into the heart of the scheme, and it is his constituents who will pay for it in the years to come, because of the way in which it will be constructed.

This is neither the time nor the place for one of Baldrick’s cunning plans. Does the Minister know how much this scheme is going to cost? If not, why not? Why on earth will any private sector company look at investing in the scheme if it has an open-ended cost? The Government say that they want to deliver growth, but instead they spend their days screwing over motorists, cancelling road schemes and calling Heathrow expansion a “hypothetical” or “a matter for London”.

Labour is not a serious party intent on delivering growth. They are only fit to whack up the welfare budget and leave the rest of us to pay for it. My party has set out a clear plan to tackle some of the costs of infrastructure, including leaving the Aarhus convention, which we discussed at the Conservative party conference.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)]

My constituents will be delighted to see this piece of legislation before the House. It is, as others have said, key to unlocking new infrastructure and finally ending the traffic chaos that plagues my Dartford constituency daily. The new lower Thames crossing is planned to be the first new road project funded in this way. The Dartford crossing and the M25 motorway, which along with the A282 provides access to the crossing, cut across the heart of my constituency, providing, as has been said by others, the one crossing over the Thames east of London. This represents a single point of failure, and fail it often does.

The Dartford crossing was designed for 135,000 vehicles a day, but as the Minister has said, the crossing now averages 150,000 vehicles a day and needs to be carefully managed around the clock. When failure happens, it is the residents of Dartford who pay the highest price. When the crossing has to close, which happens regularly, it leaves the town at a complete standstill. Journeys that should take 10 minutes can take four to five hours. Children cannot get home from school, tradespeople cannot get to jobs, and medical appointments are missed. Dartford residents have been waiting for years for this to be addressed.

Earlier this year, on 23 January, an over-height lorry somehow evaded the sensors designed to detect and halt such vehicles and caused significant damage to the roof of one of the tunnels, leading to a closure of more than 30 hours and absolute chaos for residents on both sides of the crossing, as traffic backed up for miles around. Even when there is not a major issue such as a tunnel closure, most days see heavy traffic. For those heading northbound in the evening, 95% of journeys feature delays, with two thirds taking twice as long as they should.

The high amount of slow-moving traffic also has health impacts on Dartford residents, with air quality far below what we should expect. For our country more widely, delays at the crossing affect goods coming to and from ports in the south-east, and the delays are estimated to cost the UK more than £200 million every year in time lost sitting in traffic. It is therefore incredibly welcome that the building of the lower Thames crossing is now proceeding rapidly forward after moving slower than traffic over the Dartford crossing on a bad day under the last Government.

We now see a reasoned amendment to the Bill, which would decline to give it a Second Reading, because the Conservatives do not believe the Government can deliver it on time. That is quite some accusation given their record of—how can I put this kindly—glacial progress on the project. Their 14 years of dither and delay are followed by an active attempt to block progress today. That will go down really well in Dartford, and I have no doubt that Dartford Conservatives will be ecstatic at the antics of their colleagues in the House today.

The new crossing, when finished, will take away more than 10 million vehicles from Dartford, freeing up almost a full lane of traffic. It will be hugely beneficial for the local economy. Thousands of jobs will be created during construction, with half the workforce recruited locally. I hope that that will kick-start a whole generation of new careers in construction for young people across north Kent and Essex. Once built, the new road will increase access to jobs for those living on both sides of the Thames, providing crucial employment opportunities for my constituents and others living nearby.

The campaign to get this piece of infrastructure up and running has been the single biggest priority in my time as Dartford’s MP. I welcome the Bill as a crucial step forward in getting the crossing built and open. I send my thanks to residents, businesses large and small, organisations across Dartford and north Kent, national trade bodies including Logistics UK, local government representatives and colleagues across this House and in the other place for their support with the campaign. I also thank the Secretary of State for Transport and Treasury Ministers, including the previous and present Chancellors, for the planning and funding decisions that they have made.

I appreciate the time the Roads Minister took to discuss the project in the summer and hope that he will indulge me by answering just a few outstanding queries that I have about the operation of the Bill and its impact on the new crossing. Most importantly, on tolls, local residents in Dartford and Thurrock are entitled to discounted use of the Dartford crossing. Will the Minister clarify whether the Bill has any impact on the operation of a future residents’ discount scheme for both the Dartford crossing and the new crossing? It is crucial for my residents that the tolls across the two crossings are set at an equal value and remain affordable via the discount scheme. I would be grateful for any assurance that the Minister can provide on that issue. The arrangement clearly will not work if there is a financial incentive for goods vehicles to use one crossing rather than the other.

It is important to recognise that, at its core, the Bill allows private companies that are licensed by the Government to charge tolls on newly built roads—the mechanism by which we unlock capital to build much-needed new infrastructure. British motorists already pay substantial revenue to the Government through fuel and vehicle excise duties, so does the Minister agree that although it is right to use tolls on new infrastructure in certain circumstances such as this, we do not want to see new toll roads created on currently untolled highways? I am sure that the Minister will give us reassurance on that.

I have some concerns about the vulnerabilities highlighted by the Government’s final stage impact assessment with the Office of Rail and Road, which has been appointed as the independent regulator. How will Ministers address the concerns that have been raised about information asymmetry, such as the concern that in some cases, private firms bidding for and then building and operating the development may possess more detailed information about actual project delivery and operational costs than the ORR, which might allow them to inflate costs, with knock-on inflation in the charges that users will eventually pay? Some reassurance on that would be useful.

Notwithstanding those queries, which I am sure the Minister will answer, I am happy to support this very welcome Bill. I know that it is widely welcomed as the key to unlocking the critical funding needed to build such a vital piece of new infrastructure.