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Road Schemes

I congratulate the hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh) on securing the debate. He and my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper) have made a powerful case for the Ormskirk bypass, as part of the hon. Gentleman’s more general comments about the regional funding allocation process. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that I have a connection with the area—I was born in Ormskirk hospital, which makes me wonder why anybody would want to bypass the place. I would have thought that everybody would want to go there, perhaps to see the blue plaque that my hon. Friend is arranging to have put on the hospital wall any day now to honour my place of birth. Before I address the specific points that have been raised, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I make a few points about the contribution that the Government have made to local transport schemes and to schemes such as the one that he mentioned. There was significant under-investment in local transport, so in 2007-08 we have provided more than £1.25 billion of transport funding to local authorities, including £683 million for highways capital maintenance to improve local road conditions and £571 million for smaller transport improvement schemes. That represents a trebling, in cash terms, of Government support for council investment in local transport projects since the late 1990s. The north-west region—the hon. Gentleman mentioned once or twice that the sum that it had received was not as large as he would like—received £76 million in 1997 and £213 million in 2007-08, an increase of 180 per cent. That is being translated into delivery on the ground, and it has enabled councils to deliver far more projects for the benefit of their areas. Across the country, there have been 2,889 new junction or junction improvement schemes, 210 new or improved access roads with specific regeneration or social inclusion benefits, and considerable increases in the length of cycleways and bus lanes as well as corridor improvements.