EARLIER this month the Prime Minister confirmed in his speech to the Confederation of British Industry that the A303/A30/A358 corridor would be included in the Government's road building programme. The Government is investing £15bn between 2015/16 and 2020/21 in addition to the £9bn being spend over this Parliament. This is the biggest road building programme since the 1970s and will deal with around 100 of the worst pinch points of England's roads.
Anybody who has used the A303 and A30 to get in or out of the Westcountry knows that this road is not fit for the needs of road users, businesses or tourists visiting our beautiful county, and has needed improving for the past few decades.
Businesses in Devon rely on this road and an independent impact study by Parsons Brinckerhoff has shown that upgrading this road could boost the South West's economy by £41.6bn, deliver £1.9bn in transport benefits from reducing journey times and create 21,400 new jobs. When surveyed more than 650 South West employers say the unreliability of the route is harming their business. This unreliability also has serious consequences for the resilience of our transport network. Whenever there is an accident on the M5 the A30 and A303 becomes the only main route in or out of the Westcountry.
The recent storms and floods also demonstrate the vulnerability of the South West Peninsula's transport network to extreme weather events. Upgrading this route will improve transport resilience and help the peninsula cope with major traffic incidents and during floods. It is also calculated that these improvements will prevent more than 1,800 fatal or serious casualties over 60 years.
Regular readers will know that I have long campaigned for an upgrade to this road. I have met with Ministers on a number of occasions, I asked questions in the House, spoke in debate and even received a helpful letter from the Prime Minister.
I also drove the whole route of the 160-odd mile journey from London to Honiton along the A303 and A30 with the Transport Minister Robert Goodwill to show him the bottlenecks and congestion Devon motorists and visitors face on this road. Last week on November 20 I, along with a number of other South West MPs, met the Prime Minister at Downing Street to further make the case for upgrading this road. In particular we were keen to make the case that there is a strong economic and transport resilience case for upgrading both the A358 to Taunton and the A30 to Honiton. As we do not yet know the final shape of the road improvements we were keen to stress that these routes are complementary and both vital to the network.
I have also been asked to pass on a letter from the Local Authorities and Local Enterprise Partnership to the Transport Minister, the Rt Hon John Hayes MP, which states the case that "local authorities consider that a whole route improvement should include improvements to the 'swallow-tail', both the A303/A30 between Ilminster and Honiton, and the A358 between Ilminster and Taunton; particularly as the combined improvements have demonstrated very high value for money in the feasibility study".
I will be meeting with the Minister to make sure we can deliver a road network in the West Country that is fit for the 21st century.
In other news during Business Questions I called for a debate in Parliament on the recent drop in crude oil prices and making sure that energy companies, and in particular heating oil suppliers, pass on this drop in price to their customers.
Research from last November found that 76 per cent of people in the South West were worried about paying their energy bills last winter and in 2010, around 18 per cent of households in rural areas were in fuel poverty compared with 16 per cent of those in urban areas. Households in rural areas are more likely to be off the gas grid and reliant on potentially more expensive fuels such as heating oil.
The leader of the House, the Rt Hon William Hague MP replied that it was "important that oil for domestic heating purposes is reduced in price. I will remind my colleagues in the Treasury of the point that he has made."
