26th October 2007

We’d invest in roads like the A1.

Alan was in Newcastle on Thursday the 25th of October in his role as Shadow Minister for Tyneside, to see the traffic problems affecting the A1. The day before, the government had appeared to put on hold any possible expansion of the road, after Transport Secretary, Ruth Kelly, had indicated that the government will concentrate on the M1 and the M6.

The road is in need of expansion as drivers suffer severe delays during rush-hour and the road is also economically vital to the region, given the fact that it is the main route to Scotland and London. Alan warned Labour MPs to improve the A1 and to ‘stop taking the North-East for granted’.

Alan said: ‘Good infrastructure is vital to the North-East economy and Labour has to realise this. Ruth Kelly has said there will not be any improvements for at least five years. But she will not be here two years from now’.

‘I can’t promise anything today, but we will look very closely at this. We are committed in principle to investing in bottlenecks like this. Compare that to the Labour MPs in the North-East who have collectively achieved nothing for the region’.

These types of infrastructure improvements are vital for the region and they have simply said no and once again taken the region for granted’.