Highways (Financing) Bill (Third sitting)

Shivani Raja Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 3rd November 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Greg Smith]

I will start with amendment 78, which was tabled in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton. The hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage hit the nail on the head regarding why we tabled this amendment. We have come back to what I fear will be a familiar theme as we go through the clauses of this Bill in Committee: the openness, at times fuzziness, of the drafting, which leaves too much open to the imagination.

Ill-defined legislation that then gets caught up in the courts forever, with lawyers forever arguing over what was really meant, gives none of us, certainly none of our constituents, our local authorities or those areas of the country that have mayors—mine does not—the clarity that they need and want from this Bill. So amendment 78 really is a very clear and straightforward amendment. It was not tabled with any intent to undermine or derail the Bill, or push it off course, but to give the Government an opportunity to lock in something that gives clarity to the important institutions out there that we and our constituents rely on to deliver local services.

Local authorities and councils—in my case Buckinghamshire, which is also the highways authority covering my constituency—and in other parts of the country, mayors like the Mayor of London, where we are right now, and as per my earlier reference, the Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, should be locked into the process. I cannot see a single argument why the Government would not want that clarity in the Bill. If they have an in-principle opposition to that, there needs to be a very clear and compelling reason not to simply include the status quo of local authorities, mayors, mayoral combined authorities and the emergency services, as the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage said, in the Bill. I cannot see us moving away from a local authority and mayoral model, but in any future Government—we cannot predict changes—I am sure it will not be difficult to update the legislation to bring those authorities and institutions into effect.

[Shivani Raja (Leicester East) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that if a proposed highway scheme touches an area or impacts local traffic nearby, the local authorities covering that ground need to be kept in the loop? The amendment simply ensures that local highway authorities, combined authorities and mayoral authorities get a copy of the notice right at the start. It ensures that local councils responsible for the surrounding roads are not left out of the loop so that they can plan for traffic and protect local roads for the local people.

[Greg Smith]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, which goes to the heart of what we are talking about here: projects not on the strategic road network but that are important to local people—roads or indeed other forms of transport, as the Liberal Democrat spokesman spoke of—will be integral to getting traffic flows and people on to the new schemes that the Bill would enable. Not shutting out and turning our back on the other authorities that are part of the all-important jigsaw puzzle of our road network in its entirety, which feeds into and feeds off the lower Thames crossing or other schemes that the Bill would enable, surely has to be all important.