John Cooper

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Sir Roger, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Lewis Cocking) on securing this very important debate. Tonight, drivers in my constituency of Dumfries and Galloway will set what I think is a record. At the stroke of 8 pm, traffic cones will close the A75 road to motorists and force them to undertake a 96-mile—yes, 96-mile—diversion. That must surely be among the longest diversions ever forced on drivers. The overnight closure between Newtown Stewart and Castle Douglas is not a one-off; it is just the latest in a round of closures that will continue into November. A journey that normally takes 40 minutes will become a two and a half hour epic. Although transport is devolved to the Scottish Parliament, I raise this issue in this Chamber because the A75, which is grandly titled the “Euro route” although it is often more akin to a cart-track, has significance for every one of our constituents. Sir Peter Hendy’s Union connectivity review identified the A75 as the key link between Northern Ireland, Scotland and England, as it serves the busy ferry port of Cairnryan in my constituency. It is of UK-wide importance. Estimates vary, but perhaps as much as 60% of Northern Ireland’s trade grinds along that road. Maintenance, as we have heard, is welcome and vital, but diversions such as the one I mentioned treat the public with contempt. Surely we can do better. The other road that services the port of Cairnryan is the A77. It too could be a record breaker, for it had, according to the A77 action group, three closures for road accidents and 161 for works—and that is only between January and September of this year. It was shut on Monday and again on Tuesday; once for a lorry on fire and once for a lorry off the road. Further, the A77 still hangs by a thread in Glen App, where literally years of roadworks have failed to cure a landslip risk. Scotland’s First Minister has agreed to visit Galloway to discuss roads from hell, which are screaming out for investment beyond mere patch-ups, and the £5 million in today’s Budget for the A75 is a start. I have invited the Secretary of State for Scotland to drive the A75 and the A77 too. He says his busy schedule will not allow it, but might someone from the Department for Transport make time to see how awful those unenviable record-breaking roads are? We hear boasts that Labour has reset relations with the SNP, so perhaps they could share a car with the First Minister. Finally, I want to make an early plea that should anyone suggest a traffic cone tsar, we should instead call the position the cone arranger.