They drive yellow vans flashing yellow lights carrying orange cones and men in hard hats and hooded tops but a leaked memo from Downing Street today has given the public its first glimpse of the insides of one of the country's most secretive organisations and appears to confirm the link between MI6 and Motorway Maintenance. The communique in question appears to have been a top secret email from number 10 to the chancellor, demanding funding immunity for a "..particularly sensitive road-building project".
A spokesman for the Highways Agency, however, dismissed the story out of hand, denying the existence of Motorway Maintenance as a sub-section of the Agency, all of which is controlled by the Ministry of Transport. "There is no conspiracy here," she said. "There's no case to answer."
There is no question over the role of the Highways Agency - there are budgetary records going all the way back to its inception in the late 1950s, when it was created to manage the construction of the country's first motorway, the M1. However, 'Motorway Maintenance' vehicles first appeared on the nations network of motoways in the 1970s and rumours about it's true role have bubbled under the surface since the cabinet decision in 1973 to cancel construction of the M16 motorway, leaving the London traffic system overwhelmed and allowed funding for just one London orbital route, the M25.
