Contribution
Roads are crucial to life in the Scottish Borders. They are a lifeline. My constituency stretches from Cockburnspath in the north all the way down to Newcastleton, just north of Carlisle. It takes the best part of two and a half hours to drive from one end of it to the other. Excluding trunk roads, in the Scottish Borders there are 1,857 miles of local roads that the council are responsible for. In addition, there are many more miles of trunk roads, which the Scottish Government’s Transport Scotland is responsible for. Looking around the Chamber, I ask whether any other Member present can challenge that figure of 1,857 miles of local roads that the council is responsible for; it is a uniquely high figure.
Roads are essential for people in the Borders to get around, see friends, go to school, get to work and go to hospital appointments. It is crucial that we have good-quality roads to just exist, never mind enjoy any of the luxuries in life. It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that I receive so much casework from constituents expressing concern about the quality of some of the roads and the lack of investment, which I will come on to. Also, when I do surveys and knock on doors each week, doing my residents doorstep surgeries, consistently potholes will be the No. 1 issue that local residents raise with me.
I do not think any other Member has yet paid tribute to the hard-working council employees who do a very good job of fixing the roads under very difficult circumstances. They might not have the resources or all the equipment that they need, but they are doing the best they can in very challenging circumstances to make the roads as good as they can be. They often go above and beyond what is their job to ensure that the roads, which are often in the communities that they live in themselves, are maintained to the best possible standard.
Very often, what makes such employees’ life even more difficult is the fact that electricity, gas or broadband companies come into their communities and dig up the roads. The council employees might come and fix a road one week, then discover that a few days or weeks later, a utility company will come through and dig up the road again. Much more needs to be done, both by the UK Government and the Scottish Government, who are responsible for this policy area in Scotland, to ensure that these types of utility companies are under a much tougher obligation to restore roads to the standard that they were in prior to the work being carried out, or indeed bring them up to an even better standard. If they choose to do the work, they need to invest in the road so that it is brought up to a good standard once they have completed it.
My council, Scottish Borders council, has invested in the JCB Pothole Pro equipment, which the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner) mentioned. Amid growing concerns about the state of the roads in the Borders, the council felt that it was a good investment. They bought one, and have now hired a second. This machine carried out 1,889 road repairs between April and the end of December last year, which resulted in a significant improvement in the local road network. There is still a huge backlog of road repairs, thanks largely to the lack of investment by the SNP Government; I will come to that shortly. Scottish Borders council has also set up a new interactive map on its website of the whole council area. People can identify roads and provide evidence of potholes that need to be fixed.
As a consequence of that investment, a recent freedom of information request to all United Kingdom councils showed that Scottish Borders council has spent millions of pounds on fixing potholes across the Borders. In 2020-21, it invested £2.5 million; in 2021-22, it invested £3.2 million; and in 2022-23, it invested £3.8 million, totalling over £9.6 million over three years. I commend my Conservative-controlled council for making this level of investment. But on the other side of the equation, it has had to pay out more than £17 million in compensation to road users and car drivers because of damage caused by potholes. Although the council has achieved a lot, there is much work still to do. I pay tribute to my Conservative colleagues on Scottish Borders council for what they have done.
Like many other councils in Scotland, Scottish Borders council is under severe financial pressure because the Scottish nationalist Government in Edinburgh are not investing in local councils, particularly rural councils like mine in the borders. The Scottish Government often ignore the needs of rural communities across Scotland and invest instead in the central belt.
Indeed, the cuts that the Scottish Government have imposed on local authorities, including my own, were recently described as “brutal” and “savage” cuts on local authorities, resulting in many, if not all, councils across Scotland having to make very difficult choices between investment and supporting vital local services.
Although a few Labour Members representing Scottish constituencies are present for this debate on road maintenance, it is telling that SNP colleagues representing rural constituencies like my own are not here to talk about the very challenging road networks in their constituencies. The fact they are not here to defend the Scottish Government’s decision to cut road investment—their Benches are empty—says a lot.