Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether he has made an assessment of the potential impact of building new roads on climate targets.

The Government always considers the climate impact of its actions, which is why the UK has been so successful in reducing our carbon emissions to date. In the case of road building, that involves looking at embedded carbon, where DfT projects have pioneered reducing the carbon associated with construction, and carbon from vehicles operating on a new road. Where new road infrastructure can alleviate serious congestion, this offers a prospect of reducing carbon emissions from vehicles.