THE Government is being pressed to clarify whether Mr John Prescott's transport investment blueprint could allow for the revival of proposals for an A1 motorway between Dishforth and Barton.

Mr Prescott's transport department was a major beneficiary of the comprehensive spending review announced by Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, and designed to inject an extra £43bn into public services between next year and 2004.

The deputy prime minister said a doubling of public capital investment in transport would represent the launching pad for a ten-year strategy to take roads, railways and bus services into the 21st century.

The comprehensive spending review would see investment rise from £2.3m for 2000-01 to £6.1m for 2003-04, with total spending on transport rising from £5bn to more than £9bn over the same period. This would help to lay the foundations for a £180bn ten-year transport plan involving both public and private money.

Mr Prescott said that over the next three years the funding would help to tackle the road maintenance backlog and improve bus services, particularly in rural areas. By 2010 it was hoped the ten-year plan would have made significant contributions to tackling congestion on the busiest roads, improving rail services and encouraging more people to use more frequent and better buses.

Six years ago the Highways Agency presented proposals for upgrading 24 miles of the A1 between Dishforth and Barton to three-lane motorway standard in two separate schemes.

Millions of pounds were poured into surveys, designs and public consultations. Agricultural land, houses and some businesses were bought up or put under threat and the Bedale Hunt pub near Sinderby was prematurely demolished.

The proposed upgrade was generally supported by local authorities and welcomed by leaders of North-East commerce, but in 1996 it was finally shelved by the Conservative government after £270m was slashed from the roads programme in the previous year's Budget.

The decision also meant the shelving by North Yorkshire County Council of a proposed relief road for Bedale, Aiskew and Leeming Bar, which would have run through a new A1 interchange to be built by the Highways Agency north of Leeming Bar.

A 50-mile stretch of the A1 between Bramham, near Wetherby, and Barton is now the subject of a safety study by consultants who are reviewing the previous motorway schemes and assessing the scope for improvements. The study report is expected in the autumn.

The only specific A1 motorway schemes included in Mr Prescott's package, and already known to North Yorkshire County Council, are from Ferrybridge to Hook Moor and from Wetherby to Walshford.

A memorandum sent to county councillors by Mr Mike Moore, North Yorkshire director of environmental services, last Friday is understood to have said only that Mr Prescott's blueprint provides for the outcome of the safety study between Bramham and Barton - whatever that might be.

Miss Anne McIntosh, MP for the Vale of York, said she had been conducting a sustained campaign with Lord McDonald, the transport minister, who appeared before the Commons select committee on transport on Wednesday.

She said Mr Prescott's announcement contained no timescales for any programmes and added: "I am asking for clarification of what is being proposed for the A1 between Bramham and Barton. Mr Prescott's announcement has raised a number of hopes.

"It is not just widening of the A1 which concerns me. There is also the question of Rainton crossroads, where there have been a number of accidents and some deaths."

County Coun Michael Heseltine, of Scorton, chairman of North Yorkshire highways committee and a leading campaigner for improvements to the A66 trans-Pennine route, said: "The A1 should be upgraded because it is of strategic importance to the whole of the North-East and Scotland.

Mr Mick Jewitt, head of planning policy and economic development at Hambleton District Council, said the authority was involved in the A1 safety study, the second stage of which was due shortly.