5. Welsh Conservatives Debate: Roads

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:58 pm on 26 February 2020.

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Photo of Huw Irranca-Davies Huw Irranca-Davies Labour 3:58, 26 February 2020

I absolutely agree, and that's absolutely the case at it currently is, but I don't think either we should give up on having good, affordable, accessible, reliable, frequent public transportation in rural areas as well. It's a measure of how far we've got to shift this paradigm to say we should be tipping the investment into that.

One of the greatest fears of god that would go through Westminster parliamentarians when we used to have the now infamous petrol-price escalator—which was designed exactly to have a discouraging effect towards filling up your tank regularly and so on—was that we had mass opposition to that, not least led by Top Gear and other presenters, who would march on Parliament and say, 'This is a disgrace.' You're absolutely right, in terms of where we currently are, there's got to be an acceptance that for some people, it's unavoidable.

But, actually, for some of the discussion we've had today about some of the main transport networks, particularly on the south Wales corridor, all the way from Newport, all the way from Bristol, frankly, all the way to Pont Abraham services—that has now become, in effect, a de facto local transport network as well, with people nipping in and nipping off there. Now, surely, we have to do, in a sense, what Cardiff have—I'm glad Cardiff have launched the debate around, not only congestion charging, which has caused a lot of angst and debate and so on, but I'm glad they've launched that debate, I have to say. But it's also around car sharing, because my brother-in-law, who has worked in Cardiff for 30 years, shares a car with four other people, and they pick up along the way and they travel to Lloyd's Bank, and they've done that for year upon year upon year. If they can do it, why can't others? I know of a care home in my constituency that also has catering workers with it who have done exactly the same. This is in my constituency. And they travel along the M4 and they've decided they can't put up with what's going on there, so they've come together—partly for cost, to keep the costs down, because they're all in lowest, minimum-wage jobs, but they've come together to carpool. Now it's those options that are missing from this debate sometimes.

However, we do have to accept that there needs to be some investment in roads. There are some that are not fit for purpose; there are some that need upgrading and maintenance. I'm delighted that Welsh Government has given—I think it is— around £2 million to Bridgend County Borough Council. I hope that they will use that to fix places like Tonna Road. It needs major resurfacing, not just potholes done. So, that sort of money will continue to be needed. We must accept that some people will have no option but to have access to private transport, but let's not pretend we need to do anything other than turn the whole paradigm on its head and start investing in mass transport and then the car as an add-on, not the other way around, as we've done for 50 years.