AN important announcement was made in the Commons recently which will be good

news for many of my constituents. The Government, as part of its 10-year transport plan, will double the amount of money spent on repairing roads and pathways to £1 Billion.

This is great news and comes after a considerable amount of lobbying by MPs who were concerned that not enough money was being made available to councils like Bolton for road repairs. It is no small wonder, therefore, that, whenever I visit areas like Blackrod, Daisy Hill or Smithills, the same complaint is made that not enough money is spent repairing roads and paths. In fact, I recently organised the delivery of 20,000 questionnaires across my constituency and allocated space in which constituents could tell me about local complaints. There were no surprises when the majority of those returned cited the conditions of roads and pathways as a key concern.

Following this, I recently obtained a commitment from Bolton Council that all the major roads in Blackrod will be resurfaced within the next five years. Some roads in Daisy Hill have also already been resurfaced with more work to come. However, councils like Bolton have limited resources available for this kind of work, which is why it pleased me so much to see that this budget would be increased dramatically. Unfortunately, there is a word of caution in all this. A fortnight ago, when addressing the CBI, Michael Portillo refused to commit a future Conservative government to Labour's transport spending plans. At the moment we can only guess where Chancellor Michael Portillo would make savings to achieve his £16 billion of cuts to public spending. Following this development, it seems that money for roads would be one of the first casualties of a Conservative government.

On a different note, the much awaited Queen's Speech will be read next week. If any of my constituents want details, they should contact my office on 01204 523920 and I will post some out.