Mr Richard Holden

I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “That” to the end of the Question and add: “this House, while recognising the urgent need to deliver the Lower Thames Crossing, declines to give a Second Reading to the Highways (Financing) Bill, because it has no confidence in the Government’s ability to deliver the project on time and on budget, given its record of cancelling major road schemes across the country; believes that, without withdrawing from the Aarhus Convention, the costs of the Lower Thames Crossing, and therefore potential costs to its users under this Bill, risk spiralling further out of control; further believes the scope of the Bill should be strictly limited to financing the construction of the Lower Thames Crossing, and rejects the sweeping powers the Bill would grant Ministers to impose new road-charging schemes across England through secondary legislation; and also believes that the Government should not be permitted to introduce additional road-charging schemes across England without parliamentary approval and corresponding reductions in fuel duty to offset those charges.” We are here today primarily to debate the measures to deliver the lower Thames crossing, an infrastructure project that, I think it is right to say, has support from Members across the House. It will deliver the jobs, growth and economic opportunities that local communities in the region, including my own constituency of Basildon and Billericay, are crying out for. However, I am afraid that that is not all that we are here to debate. Labour could have brought a project-specific piece of legislation to the House that would get this project over the line, but instead we are here partially to challenge this Labour Government as they open the door to a road charging scheme to hammer motorists. The Minister has said that the Bill concerns only existing big toll roads, but we say that that is obviously not the case. In fact, motorists all over the country could be forced to stomach another blow to their wallets and to fork out their hard-earned cash, as the Bill’s sweeping powers mean that anything new on the road—a new smart motorway camera, perhaps, to replace one of those that currently does not work on 400 miles of our road network—can be swiftly followed up with a new toll. The Minister said that the Bill applies only to trunk roads, but clause 81 allows the Minister the “power to direct” any road to be made a trunk road, which opens up the entire road network of the country.