Road and Rail Projects

Martin Wrigley Excerpts

Tuesday 8th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Heidi Alexander]

I am really pleased to be able to announce today the green light for the Middlewich bypass. I know that that new 2.5 km of single carriageway bypass to the east of Middlewich will make a big difference to my hon. Friend’s constituency, unlocking swifter, easier journeys and more routes to employment and opportunities for his constituents for which he so powerfully advocates.

[Martin Wrigley (Newton Abbot) (LD)]

I thank the Secretary of State for greenlighting the work on the A382 into Newton Abbot. That will be a massive improvement when it is completed. May I congratulate the successful teams at Teignbridge and at Devon county council, who have been working on the project for some while? However, I am disappointed to hear that Dawlish is not on the list and will be put back. Indeed, although I am pleased that the Government will be continuing to fund the monitoring of the cliffs, may I draw it to the Secretary of State’s attention that it was a single catastrophic shift, rather than a gradual increase of the situation, that caused the collapse of the cliff at Dawlish that shut the railway for eight weeks, causing approximately £1.2 billion of damage to the south-west economy?

[Heidi Alexander]

As I said in response to the hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling), we have already heavily invested in securing the cliffs and making the coastline more resilient in Dawlish. We are keeping that final phase of work under review, and it will be possible to determine the next course of action only once that further cliff monitoring and drainage works have taken place. None the less, I can assure him that we will keep it within the pipeline of schemes that we are considering for future investment.