Stuart Anderson

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that excellent point. We have to look at rural counties, which are not being given the fair consideration that they need. The Government are currently holding back almost £46 million, I believe, from Lib Dem-run Shropshire council, because it has not met their stringent criteria. The council has an amber rating at the moment, and we are not getting the money that we need. Long-term certainty is required to ensure a more proactive approach to road measures, rather than just short-term solutions. A report published just today by the Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance survey states that the backlog of repairs in England and Wales is worth more than £18 billion. The Government need to provide longer-term highways maintenance funding for councils through to 2032, as the previous Government planned to do. That would provide councils with the certainty they need to effectively plan and undertake repairs to roads. The decisions made by this Labour Government have taken millions of pounds out of South Shropshire. The second issue is that the Lib Dem-run council now fixes only about half the potholes that were fixed previously. As per its press release last week, the figure was 25,000 over the last year, but if we go back one, two or three years, then we were averaging 38,000 to 41,000.