Lewis Cocking

I thank the Minister for her reply and thank all the hon. Members who have taken part in the debate. I also thank the hundreds of my constituents who replied to my survey online to tell me about their experiences. I will make a few final points. We really need to tackle the emergency works. As I said, they turn up unannounced. Most of our constituents can understand that if there is a real emergency, we should get the works done as quickly as possible, but when roads are dug up by utilities, which is quite often the case under emergency legislation, and residents drive past day after day and see no one working on the site, it is a real frustration. I will not repeat the language that I use when I am in the car by myself and I see that occurring in my constituency. Even worse than that, we drive past cones and traffic lights, but there will not even be a hole dug in the road—so not only have we had no one working on the site, but works have not even been started, even though cones have been put out what seems like weeks before, which causes disruption and makes people sit in traffic. As for planned works, because lots of organisations are involved, sometimes the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. It is like someone sat down and said, “We want to plan all these works all at the same time, so that you cannot move anywhere around the local area”. We really need to get better at planning all those works through the highways authority and the utility companies, particularly for emergency works. If we want to unlock economic growth in this country and get the economy growing at a really rapid speed, we will do that by keeping Britain moving. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the impact of roadworks on journey times.