Minister clueless, ill informed and dodging the question on pot holes

During a debate on the floor of the House of Commons yesterday night, Anne Main, MP for St Albans, called on Transport Minister Sadiq Khan to address the poor state of Hertfordshire's roads.

Anne said:
“Statistics show that there around 1.6 million potholes in England and Wales, and the roads in St Albans are in a dreadful state. We need fairer funding for our area to address this and local roads need urgent repair.

Hertfordshire Highways has been given a good rating for what it does with the funds available, and Hertfordshire County Council has allocated more funding to the problem, but lack of adequate funding from central government has meant our roads have suffered for many years. This is why the situation has reached breaking point, and this is why I felt it was important to challenge Ministers directly.

I had to constantly keep pressing the Minister to address the question about potholes and road funding in Hertfordshire, and he repeatedly requested that I did not interrupt him to ask him questions, so that he could get back to reading his speech. He obviously had no intention of listening to what I had to say as his script was pre-prepared and he was incapable of deviating from it. When asked specific questions, he dodged them and resorted to cheap political points scoring.

The Minister was clueless about the fact that Hertfordshire County Council was the first county to have a traffic management plan and did not need to play ‘catch-up’ on best practice. He was ill-informed about the potential to garner a utilities road repair levy and he dodged my questions on the funding formula and the perilous situation for cyclists, motorcyclists and, indeed, all road users. I was frankly disgusted at his performance.”