Last week Kent County Council organised a transport summit at the House of Lords. It was attended by councillors, business people, trade organisations and MPs, and its purpose was to identify the key transport problems affecting our county.

Most of the ideas put forward by the council I support fully. Opposition to the ridiculous 'Boris Island' proposal for a huge new airport in the Thames Estuary for one, and the need for a new Thames Crossing to relieve congestion on the Dartford Crossings for another.

On the other hand, some of their proposals are more worrying. Getting further improvements to the rail line between Ramsgate, Canterbury and Ashford, so that we knock even more time off the new high speed train journey time to London, makes great sense, and it's something I've been working on since even before we got agreement to the new service. The problem is that they remain wedded to the train serving a new 'Manston Parkway' station at the airport rather than our existing stations.

I can see that the airport operator would like that, but why should the rest of us agree to something that means we all have to get in our cars to catch the train when at present the majority of us are within walking distance of the current stations? It seems to me that there are better solutions, such as redeveloping Ramsgate Station, that we should look at first, and maybe we could consider a Manston Parkway station when the airport's passenger business has built up to a level that justifies it.

But my main dispute with Kent County Council's leadership arose over Operation Stack. We are all agreed that when Calais is blockaded the impact on Kent is huge, but the KCC's proposed solution to the problem is to build a massive lorry park. A site for 3,000 lorries with access roads and services will be: almost impossible to find; expensive and unpopular with local people wherever they propose to put it; and because that is the solution that Kent favours, a cheaper and more easily delivered solution is not being explored.

We already have a Quick Change Moveable Barrier on the M20 for phase 1 of Operation Stack and when it is deployed the lorries can be parked on the motorway while local traffic continues to flow. Extending the barrier between junctions 8 and 9 to cope with phase 2 would bring the county relief from this problem far sooner than the proposed lorry park.

Happily, my view on Operation Stack seems to be shared by MPs Michael Howard and Damien Green, so perhaps the Tory leadership at County Hall will think again. A lorry park may be the ideal solution but sometimes it's best to just fix a problem than to pursue a more perfect, but less easily attainable, answer.