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Madam Speaker: Order. If the hon. Gentleman will allow me to say so, this sounds very much like a matter of privilege. I hope that he will go no further now, but will immediately write to me about the matter if what he says is correct. If he had said that in the first place, I might have been able to be more helpful. I hope that he will write to me straight away.

Mr. Sheerman: On a fresh point of order, Madam Speaker.

Madam Speaker: The hon. Gentleman cannot raise it. It is now a matter of privilege.

Mr. Sheerman: The point relates to privilege.

Madam Speaker: The hon. Gentleman cannot relate it to privilege. I am sorry; I am trying to be helpful to the House. Points of order cannot be related to privilege. I am waiting for a letter from the hon. Member for Luton, North (Mr. Carlisle), and the hon. Gentleman must not now disturb that procedure.

Mr. Nigel Spearing (Newham, South): On a point of order, Madam Speaker.

Madam Speaker: I know that the hon. Gentleman understands our procedures.

Mr. Spearing: The whole House is grateful to you, Madam Speaker, for the information relating to a possible Division on motions 6 and 7. If the timed debates that precede those motions are completed at or after 10 pm, will the motions be automatically exempted? If no order applies--either automatically, under Standing Orders, or by resolution--am I not right in thinking that neither motion, if objected to, will be passed tonight?

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Madam Speaker: I am advised that that is not correct. The Questions on the motions must be put.

Mr. Jeff Rooker (Birmingham, Perry Barr): On a point of order, Madam Speaker. I am reluctant to intervene, but, on the basis of what you have told the hon. Member for Luton, North (Mr. Carlisle) in regard to motion 6, if the hon. Gentleman wrote to you before the motion was reached and you therefore decided that a prima facie breach of privilege might be involved, would you then not put the Questions on the motions?

Madam Speaker: Not necessarily; I would have to consider what the hon. Member for Luton, North had told me. He ought to write to me speedily, however, and I ought to try to deal with the matter speedily, if I am to be allowed to do so. Basically, this is a matter for the Government, but I want to consider what the hon. Gentleman has told me when I examine it in the context of privilege--if I am allowed to do so.

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House of Commons (Abolition)

5.35 pm

Mr. Andrew Rowe (Mid-Kent): I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to abolish the House of Commons in its present form.

The House of Commons (Abolition) Bill has only one clause, which proposes the abolition of the House of Commons in its present form--and, of course, we have the power to do that. There is no doubt of the extent of the House's power; the debate must be about the use that we make of it. Are we effectively organised to lead the United Kingdom into the 2lst century? I do not believe that we are, and I am not alone in that belief. In the past four years, the percentage of the population who believe that Parliament is doing a bad job has risen from 16 per cent. to 30 per cent.

The worst feature of our present state is not just that we have no effective mechanism for examining and reforming ourselves; it is that we do not care a jot about it. My right hon. and hon. Friends on the Procedure Committee work extraordinarily hard to improve the workings of the House: they have already altered the hours that we sit and amended the budgetary procedures following the change to a unified Budget, and may well provide us with a creche, in time. I do not belittle those improvements, but I doubt that they are the sort of changes that our critics have in mind.

What do those people have in mind? First, there are our procedures for examining the legislative proposals of the European Union. Every hon. Member knows that our present procedures are a sham. We have decreed that European legislation is decided by Ministers, reported to the House as a fait accompli and, very occasionally, debated, sometimes as long as two years after its introduction. The subordinate legislation goes to two Standing Committees, where my colleagues seek manfully to cope with a flood of regulations in which the House takes little or no interest, except in a handful of cases. No one here believes that that is adequate to protect the national interest; no one outside believes it either. Yet we do nothing to correct it, or even to consider how we might correct it.

This sovereign House of Commons is so careless of our own and the nation's future that we will not even look at the mechanisms that we have to scrutinise and debate European Union legislation whose impact on this place and on the nation grows daily. Any idea that we might copy Denmark, where the Folketing can ascertain whether Ministers have kept to their brief--or Belgium, where Members of the European Parliament have a role to play alongside Belgian national Members of Parliament--evokes contempt. Before we lambast the law makers of Brussels, we might look at ourselves.

Again, we seem wholly insouciant about who becomes a Member of Parliament. The Nolan committee makes recommendations that may radically affect recruitment to this place, and we still do not look at how Members of Parliament arrive here. In my lifetime, there has been a huge change in the attitudes of business to the political aspirations of its employees. Once businesses were often supportive of the ambitions of staff who wanted to enter Parliament: they would give them time off to fight elections, or sometimes offer to hold open a place for them if they were beaten in a subsequent election.

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That has all changed. Firms now tell an aspiring politician at an early stage of his career that he must choose between politics and the company. The result is that the House has fewer Members with business experience at even middle management level than for a century. The public, who know that our future depends on our ability to make and sell things, recognise that that is nonsense. It might not matter quite so much if Ministers were not drawn almost exclusively from Government Back Benchers, but they are, and we do not care enough to do anything about it.

Take our relations with parliamentary pressure groups. Fuelled by often colossal subscription income, becoming increasingly sophisticated every year, and able to command wide media coverage, single-issue pressure groups' influence over the House and the Government has risen to the point where one recently wrote to hon. Members to tell us what Bill it would be introducing next Session. I admire the colleague who wrote back robustly to say that she had always understood that it was for Members of Parliament or the Government to initiate legislation, but the pressure group was only stating the truth. Few large ones will have any problem about persuading a Back Bencher to pick up one of their Bills when Members have neither the resources nor the expertise to create a Bill on their own. That is a significant development and we all know it. It may be healthy or it may not, but we do not care enough either way to take the trouble to examine it.

Almost every week, a Member will rise and complain to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that some Government statement has been made outside the House, when propriety suggests that it should have been made to us first. It has become a meaningless ritual. We all know that if anyone in this place, a Minister or Back Bencher, wants to create an impact with an announcement, it is better to tell the media first. We know it, we pretend that we resent it, but we will not even consider examining our procedures to fashion a more effective partnership between this place and the media. The meaningless adherence to the shibboleths of a previous era simply brings the House into public contempt. We know it. We do nothing about it.

Take the roof off an ants' nest and one will see a myriad of ants scurrying about, all desperately busy. I have no doubt that, if one could ask them, each ant would say that it had never been so busy. Take the roof off the House of Commons and a similar scene would be revealed: hon. Members scurrying about, carrying heaps of paper, dashing to be on time for a Standing Committee, where they will be discouraged from saying anything at all, talking endlessly down the telephone to resolve a welfare case that in a citizens advice bureau would be pursued by a part-time volunteer.

I have no doubt that almost all my colleagues work desperately hard. I wonder how much of value we contribute to the governance of the United Kingdom. In 1991, the House approved more than 2,200 pages of legislation and 2,945 statutory instruments. That is 13 pages of law and 18 statutory instruments every working day. What a burden for all our citizens, which is largely unexamined in this place and which recently has got worse.

The public are better educated, better informed and more sophisticated than ever before. They sent us here to call the Executive to account, but we allow the Executive more power and less accountability with every passing

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year. We have required every institution in the land--universities, the professions, business, big and small, schools, hospitals, and local authorities--to subject themselves to rigorous testing and radical change. They have mechanisms for passing on from one generation to the next the wisdom learned through experience; we do not. They learn from organisations all over the world; we do not. Only here, where their revolutions have been demanded or approved, is no planned change discernible. Only here do we make no provision even to consider whether we should change. No one in here cares. A swollen Executive relies on its existing members, the ambition of its aspirants or the exhaustion of its former members to keep this sovereign House in its posture of supine subservience.

Today, I have not sought to list solutions; those come later. Unless we first demonstrate an interest in self-improvement, there is no point in bothering about detailed proposals.

This sovereign House of Commons, whose power is, to all intents and purposes, absolute, once before got out of touch with public sentiment. On that occasion, an hon. Member came to the Chamber with soldiers and told the Members debating on these Benches:

"You have stayed in this place too long and there is no health in you. In the name of God, go."

If we are not one day to suffer the same fate, we need to ask ourselves how best to fit ourselves for the next millennium. 5.44 pm

Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West): I wish to oppose the motion moved by the hon. Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe). It is not fair for him to say that none of us cares and that we might as well leave this place. Perhaps he has been listening to the advice of his hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Mr. Evans), who said, "If you're fed up with being a Tory Member of Parliament, vote for John Major." I do not know how the hon. Gentleman voted in that leadership election, but it is wrong to say that people do not care about the procedures of this place and about the need to make it more responsive to people's wishes and needs.

I agree with many of the sentiments that the hon. Member for Mid-Kent has expressed and some of the analysis, but I do not agree with his solution, which is to abolish the House of Commons in a one-clause Bill. That is a ludicrous proposal. It is like saying that I have a bad headache and to deal with it I will knock my head off. That seems a rather extreme cure to offer.

Much needs to be changed in this place and in the way in which we organise both government and politics. The hon. Gentleman should have dealt with some of the solutions. He was good and long on analysis, but incredibly short on solution. He said, for example, that we do not hold the Executive to account, but we have spent three hours attempting to do so through questions to Ministers and the Prime Minister. We have had three statements and an opportunity to cross-examine Ministers. Ministers do not like that experience and it is ludicrous that, on Thursday, we will start a summer recess that lasts right through to 16 October. Despite what some hon. Members say, that is not a holiday for Members of Parliament, but it is a rest cure for Ministers because they

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will not have to come to the House and account for their actions. It makes a manifest nonsense of the claim that the legislature controls the Executive.

During that long summer recess, government will continue, but without the inconvenience of Ministers coming here to expose themselves to examination. [Interruption.] I am sorry. That is not a felicitous phrase to use in the context of Conservative Ministers these days, but hon. Members on both sides of the House know what I am getting at. We know that there will be press conferences, and initiatives. On Friday, the summit on Bosnia which the Prime Minister was talking about will take place, but we will be safely away in our constituencies and we will not be able to ask the Prime Minister, Ministers, or the Foreign Secretary when he returns from Washington, what is being done and said in Parliament's name. Parliament has no say in those decisions.

We need to reorganise the year, with sittings interspersed with regular and shorter recesses. Even when we are here during a Session, we are often denied the opportunity to debate and decide on issues of national and international importance. That is why Members are forced to raise what are in effect spurious points of order. Before the debate on this Bill, we had one of the most genuine exchanges on points of order that I have heard for many a year in this place, but normally it is not like that. We are forced to use Standing Order No. 20 applications and spurious points of order-- [Interruption.] Hello! The mafia has turned up--to raise issues that we feel strongly about. In this place, I want us to debate what people are debating in the Builders Arms, my local pub. It is ridiculous that people can debate and discuss significant issues outside this place, but that we are denied the opportunity to do so.

One of the main reasons why we are often treated with contempt by the Government is that the Government do not need us; nor do they even need the payroll vote in some important respects. Far too many decisions are taken in the House using royal prerogative powers. The Prime Minister is an elected dictator. Hailsham said that about a Labour Prime Minister, but it could more accurately have been said about Baroness Thatcher, who was an elected dictator. Her majority meant that she had no need to apologise to the country or the House. Had she wanted to

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add an eighth day to the week, she had the political majority to enable her to do so. We do not want dictatorial powers being exercised by the Prime Minister through the royal prerogative. Tomorrow we are going to have a debate on Bosnia. It is only a debate--no one will ask us anything and we shall not vote on what we should do. Ministers can ignore us or heed us, as they please. The decision as to whether our troops should become involved in military activity or withdraw will be taken using the royal prerogative powers rather than following a decision taken by the House. In effect, a raft of decisions affecting every single man, woman and child does not even have to be discussed in the House. The House of Commons is not asked for its permission. [Interruption.] I am disagreeing with the solution suggested by the hon. Member for Mid-Kent. He should have specified ways to change the House to make its operation more efficient. There are so many changes that could be made.

Personally, I believe that we need to change the way in which we vote. Let us have proportional representation; we might then achieve a balance in the House that is far more in keeping with the wishes of the people. Let us have fixed-term Parliaments; let us abolish the House of Lords and the monarchy. Those are ways to make the House more efficient. We should not follow the path outlined by the hon. Gentleman and abolish the House of Commons in a single-clause Bill. Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 19 (Motions for leave to bring in Bills and nomination of Select Committees at commencement of public business) :--

The House proceeded to a Division; but no Member being willing to act as Teller, Mr. Deputy Speaker-- declared that the Ayes had it.

Question agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Andrew Rowe, Mr. Gyles Brandreth, Mr. Michael Fabricant, Mr. Christopher Gill, Mr. Andrew Mackinlay and Dr. Tony Wright.

House of Commons (Abolition)

Mr. Andrew Rowe accordingly presented a Bill to abolish the House of Commons in its present form: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 20 October and to be printed. [Bill 169.]

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Metropolitan Railway Grant

5.54 pm

The Minister for Railways and Roads (Mr. John Watts): I beg to move,

That the Special Grant Report (No. 15) (Metropolitan Railway Grant 1995-96) (House of Commons Paper No. 470), which was laid before this House on 14th June be approved.

Had my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) managed to get his Bill through all its stages immediately, I might not have had the opportunity to detain the House briefly with this motion. The special grant report sets out the measures that we are proposing to take to ensure that passenger transport executives in England obtain financial cover for the additional costs that fall to PTEs and passenger transport authorities this financial year--1995-96--as a result of railway restructuring. The House has already considered and approved the Scottish version of this report in Standing Committee on 5 July. That report covered the Strathclyde passenger transport authority.

The restructuring of the railways has changed the basis and level of charges for PTE rail services. Before April 1994, the PTEs were treated as marginal users of the network, under British Rail's charging hierarchy. The new charging systems endeavour to reflect the full cost of service provision in order to maximise transparency. Railtrack's access charges and the rolling stock companies' leasing charges need to be at a level which will cover the cost of renewals investment and earn a return on their investment. Train operators also need to earn a rate of return on their operations. These adjustments reflect the real economic costs of providing the services in question.

Before April 1994, the Government provided support in respect of the PTE- funded railway passenger services solely by the provision of additional sums within the revenue support grant paid to metropolitan district councils. That support is known as the bolt-on. The total for the English PTAs is apportioned among the metropolitan district councils by formula. Although the sums are not hypothecated, the allocations for individual PTEs are published in the annual revenue support grant distribution report. The PTAs levy their constituent district councils to cover the expenditure requirements of their respective PTEs.

The revised charging regime that followed rail restructuring in April 1994 was unable to provide, at an early enough stage in the calculations of RSG for the year 1994-95, sufficient detail of access charges and rolling stock leasing charges to identify fully the extra charges to the PTEs. Consequently, the Government introduced the metropolitan railway grant as a transitional measure in 1994-95 to meet the funding gap between the bolt-on and the extra costs of the revised charging regime.

Calculation of MRG takes as the starting point the services for which the PTEs contracted in 1993-94, and the amount of grant represents the difference between the costs of providing those services under the old pre- April 1994 and new post-April 1994 charging systems. MRG was paid in 1994- 95 by the Department of Transport direct to the PTAs, and the position remains the same under this report. The earlier report instituting MRG in England was debated in Standing Committee in May last year.

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Because of the regulator's review of access charges, and the further development of the ROSCOs' and Railtrack's charging mechanisms, sufficiently detailed data on those charges were not available early enough to feed into the calculations of RSG for this financial year. In the circumstances, Ministers decided that, subject to parliamentary approval, MRG should be extended to cover the current financial year. The text of the report has been the subject of consultation with the PTEs and other interested bodies, including BR and the Association of Metropolitan Authorities. The report outlines the background to the PTEs' past and current funding arrangements, and sets out how the MRG will be calculated and the conditions attached to the payment of it.

Annex A to the report sets out some of the background to the PTAs, PTEs and rail support, and particularly how revenue support was provided by central Government in the past, and why it was necessary to introduce MRG in 1994- 95. Annex B simply lists the English PTAs which will be paid MRG. Annex C sets out how MRG is to be calculated in 1995-96. The starting point is an individual PTA's relevant expenditure: BR's gross charges for providing railway passenger services to the PTE in 1995-96.

As the purpose of MRG is to compensate for the financial effects of restructuring, it is necessary first to deduct from the total charges the charges levied in 1993-94 on the old basis, and secondly, to deduct inflation on the 1993-94 cost base. Thirdly, a deduction is made in respect of payments made or to be made in 1995-96 under certain deeds of assumption governing the payment of money to PTEs to cover past capital grants to British Rail by the PTEs. Fourthly, there will be an adjustment--an addition to the grant total--to take account of any underpayment of MRG to the PTAs in the last financial year. The end result of that calculation will be the amount of MRG payable.

In the case of West Yorkshire and West Midlands, there will be a deduction in respect of the cost on the 1993-94 charging basis of service enhancements which followed from improvements in infrastructure. The final annex, annex D, sets out the conditions with which the Secretary of State has decided that the PTAs must comply in respect of payment of this grant.

The report covers this financial year, it ensures that PTAs and PTEs receive the additional costs that fall to them from rail restructuring for this financial year, and I commend it to the House.

6.1 pm

Mr. Henry McLeish (Fife, Central): This is a very important motion, and I am grateful that we have an opportunity to discuss it on the Floor of the House.

Being a decent, honourable man, the Minister will never talk about privatisation. It is called restructuring. The Government never talk about artificial markets, but we have charging hierarchies.

Mr. Watts: The hon. Gentleman will know that last week I was very happy to talk about privatisation. It is a matter of accuracy that this report deals with the consequences of restructuring. As he will know, we have not yet let the first of the franchises for the private operation of passenger services. That will come later this year: he has only to wait a while.

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Mr. McLeish: I am grateful for that intervention, which enables us again to realise that the Government are making no progress with the franchising of railways--and thank goodness.

It is important to consider the point about restructuring versus privatisation. We bring this report to the Floor of the House because it is all about privatisation of the railways. It is not about restructuring: it is about the dismemberment of BR into 95 bits. Part of the problem is that there are seven PTAs--one in Scotland, and six in England which are the subject of the motion. We will suffer greatly at the hands of this Government.

We will not divide the House on this issue, because, in a sense, if one creates a crazy situation, one has to pay up. That is what the Government are doing. They are bailing themselves out of a financial situation of horrific proportions, with which I shall deal. We are concerned about what this money is to be used for. If the allocation was about providing more trains in Yorkshire, Merseyside and Greater Manchester, or more services, stations, railway stock or signalling, it would be something to debate. This report shows the price of privatisation--nothing more, nothing less. That is why, in tabling the motion, apart from using words to provide a camouflage for what the Government are doing, they will not tell the British people or this House what that money will be spent on. Our case tonight will tackle that issue, because it is germane not only to the motion but to the use of the money voted through tonight. Of course nobody doubts that the PTAs have done an excellent job. They provide an opportunity to attempt public-private integration, to tackle congestion, and to address an integrated public transport network. So there is no dispute about their track record. The motion is about the cash they will get in the financial year 1995-96, yet huge questions are unresolved about what happens in 1996 and 1997 if this crazy privatisation should proceed to the extent desired by Conservatives Members.

This evening, we do not want to disguise our central proposition. If, as I said, the motion was about services, that would be one debate. Our proposition is that, for the foreseeable future, this Government are willing to squander £250 million every year to pay for privatisation involving the passenger transport authorities. That is worth repeating, because, until now, the PTAs have received regular support through the revenue support grant. That has averaged perhaps £100 million, £120 million or £130 million a year. This year, the PTAs will receive a staggering £380 million--an increase of £250 million.

Mr. Hugh Bayley (York): Does my hon. Friend agree that a good way of illustrating the sum involved is by saying that £380 million was three times the amount of money needed to save the York carriage works by building another tranche of some 100 new carriages for use on suburban railways? The Government could have financed the building of 300 carriages for that amount of money and improved service to the public, instead of using it as a financing mechanism for privatisation.

Mr. McLeish: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The opportunity cost of this folly will become evident this evening, because we will talk about the amount of money involved: £380 million. If it was a once-for -all increase of £250 million, it would still be a staggering sum of money. Ministers who always lecture the Opposition on probity

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in public expenditure are about to spend £250 million on simply nothing over the next five or 10 years--if they stay in power and privatisation proceeds on the basis that they want.

Obviously, I and my hon. Friends want to explore this crucial issue. To pay the price of privatisation, the PTAs will receive a 172 per cent. increase in the amount of money that they have to spend. We have tried time and again to capture the right language properly to project what a monumental piece of stupidity privatisation is. Not only is it destroying the railways and threatening the PTAs, but it is squandering taxpayers' money on a grand scale. I hope that the Minister will address that central point. Will he confirm that we are right, and that money is being squandered, or is there some other reason behind the massive sum being poured into the black hole of the PTAs?

We have talked about the benefits that have accrued to the country of having PTAs, as I hope that all hon. Members would agree, but let us consider what is happening up and down the country. My hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Bayley) put his finger on what is wrong. Excellent schemes are being developed in every PTA in the country, they are desperately keen to provide integrated public transport, and they are yearning for stability.

The report highlights a policy in contrast to all those aspirations. If we had £300 million or £250 million to spend every year, what would we spend it on? The Government must tell us why, when there are so many priorities on the railways, they want to waste that money in such a way.

It goes without saying that this week, the Secretary of State for the Environment will meet representatives of local authorities. What would local authorities do with a quarter of a billion pounds across their departments? It is vital to stress that point, although it is outwith the report in the sense that other parts of local government are not covered by it. However, I know some chairmen of education, some chairmen of housing and some chairmen of other council departments in the Association of Metropolitan Authorities who would like to get their hands on a quarter of a billion pounds. The money is up for grabs. It is basically the price of madness--the price of privatisation.

The Minister might tell us about the discussions he has had with his colleagues about his being allowed to spend such an amount to support an artificial internal market, while other Ministers are desperate to get money to spend in the run-up to the next general election.

Mr. John Gunnell (Morley and Leeds, South): Does my hon. Friend agree that local authority spending may not be as irrelevant to the matter as he suggests? When the bolt-on comes in for the next financial year, the money will go straight to the district councils. They will have the choice whether to spend the money on railway services or hold on to it for other purposes.

Mr. McLeish: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This is a point that I shall address in a few minutes, because it is one of the uncertainties that has an impact on discussions about the railways and the PTAs.

My hon. Friend makes the valid point that, if the Government move from a specific metropolitan railway grant to a system in which the money is absorbed into the

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revenue support grant, there can be no guarantee that the money, which has been fed in for the railways, will get through a system that is under strain at present. The sum is massive, and the PTAs will depend on the good will of the local authorities to deliver the cash so that they can deliver the services. That is an important point.

Before leaving the question of cost and moving on to the uncertainties, it is worth repeating some of the ridiculous figures. Based on the PTAs' submission to the Select Committee on Transport, we know that South Yorkshire has a 150 per cent. increase to provide the same level of services. Strathclyde region, which is not covered by the report but which is relevant to the debate, will experience a 238 per cent. increase to run the same railway services this year as it ran last year.

The Minister must be alarmed that he is seeking the House's approval to spend a quarter of a billion pounds. Can the Minister be embarrassed?

Mr. Watts indicated dissent .

Mr. McLeish: The Minister indicates that he cannot be; I know that he does not mean it: I am sure that he can be embarrassed. We are 20 months away from a general election, and the country is informed that we have no money to spend. Why is it that we have so much money to spend on PTAs that we are talking about not £100 million or £200 million, but a quarter of a billion pounds every year? The Minister listens, and I am sure that he agrees that that is a large sum, which could be put to far better use.

Mr. Watts: Did I hear the hon. Gentleman correctly? Was he suggesting that it would be better not to spend this money on the provision of railway services in the metropolitan areas, but to spend it on something else? That is not an argument that I have heard from any of the PTEs.

Mr. McLeish: We should not have to spend such a sum if we did not have privatisation of the railway system. The privatisation of the railway system is logically and directly linked to the financial madness before the House this evening, and the Minister knows it. Of course we would like to spend money in productive ways on our railways. Until we stop privatisation --until we halt the madness--that will not be possible.

The Association of Metropolitan Authorities is obviously concerned about the future. It has on its hands a situation about which it can do nothing. It wants to provide the best services possible, but it cannot improve its services. Yet it still has to process the financial merry-go-round whereby the Treasury will give it extra money.

The Government will pay hand over fist to fatten up Railtrack and the leasing companies for privatisation, and they will, of course, pay money to the train operating companies. The AMA is not happy about the financial merry-go-round, as the Minister well knows. The Government are, however, paying the piper, and the AMA has to dance to the tune.

What about the future? Is the Minister willing this evening to give us a cast-iron guarantee that, beyond 1995-96, there will be no going back on a commitment to fund every extra penny of cost that the PTAs in England and in Scotland will have to pay for this privatisation? That point is vital, because the report leaves matters hanging in the balance.

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At present, if the AMA and its constituent authorities accept the 1995-96 settlement, they will have to spend the money against a background of no guarantees about the kind of railway system they will have. They do not know whether the train operators will be franchised. They do not know what charges the leasing companies will impose, and what charges Railtrack will impose. It is important that we, as a responsible Parliament, ensure this evening that the Minister gives the guarantees that will be required if privatisation proceeds.

The next point concerns the transparency of the cash. Everyone knows that, at present, a grant is a fixed sum, it is given to the PTAs, and it can be spent. If it is then subsumed into the revenue support grant settlement, there is no guarantee that it will be delivered to the railways. There is no guarantee that the grant will be transparent in the sense that it can be discussed in the House. If the grant is subsumed in the RSG, there is no possibility that we shall have an order to debate. How can the nation, Parliament and the PTAs be reassured that public finance is being used for the purposes that the House intends?

I have already alluded to the next consideration. We live in uncertain times. The railways are a complete shambles, entirely due to the Government's policies on privatisation. This evening, we are saying to the PTAs, "Yes, you can have this quarter of a billion extra, and just get on with providing services." But the PTAs have no idea what the railways will look like in one month's, two months', six months' or a year's time. That is crass irresponsibility on the part of Government.

The Minister must tell us this evening whether Railtrack charges will be stabilised. Will not leasing companies fleece the train operators and the PTAs? Will we have stability in this so-called "artificial market"? What is the future for the railways, which impinges so heavily on what is happening with the PTAs?

The other important issue in terms of the RSG is capping. We must be reassured that the machinery of delivering special help to the railways through the RSG will not be the subject of capping procedures. We need a hard assurance on that, because it is no good for the Minister to say to the House, "Yes, it is a matter that we are looking at. Yes, it is a matter that we want to have further discussions on." Obviously, this deal will not be worth the paper it is written on if we do not have specific guarantees about what is going on. The long-term commitment of the PTAs is meaningless without long-term assurances about future funding and about the future of the railways.

I hope that the Minister will come clean about what the money is specifically to be used for. Is it really for the railways, or is it merely intended to prop up an artificial internal market to allow the Government to get on with privatisation, which no one wants outwith a small ideological clique in the Conservative party?

How can we ask the PTAs to continue to do such an excellent job, if their whole future is surrounded by uncertainty, by the notion that money may not be available, and by the possibility of the Government being hellbent on putting much of the railways into the private sector? It is worth while for the report to be brought to the Floor of the House, because it is the kind of matter that the Government like to smuggle through in Committee, so that they do not have to explain to anyone what they are doing and why the money is being used in

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a particular way. At the end of the day, they are doing no service to this House and they are certainly doing no service to the passenger transport authorities.

6.18 pm

Mr. Keith Hill (Streatham): As you will be aware, Mr. Deputy Speaker, my interest in the matters before us has already been declared in earlier exchanges--by the Prime Minister, in fact. I am sponsored by the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers. However, at least I and other Members of Parliament sponsored by the rail unions have an interest in and a concern for the future of the railways--a concern that is obviously not shared by Conservative Members, judging by the scandalously empty Benches behind the Minister.

I should begin by welcoming the fact that at least the metropolitan railway grant is being paid. As the Minister said, last year it was expected to be a one-off transitional grant, designed to meet the extra costs of the restructured railway. The passenger transport authorities and the passenger transport executives were left in considerable uncertainty about the funding of future operations this year, until the late decision formally announced on 14 June that the Government would make further MRGs for the current year.

The force of many of the representations to the Transport Select Committee in the course of its inquiry into railway finances was that, as a result of that delay, the PTAs felt themselves to be up against the wire in making decisions about future services, given the long lead times involved in making contracts with operators and then composing timetables.

That is extremely unsatisfactory for authorities responsible for such a major part of the railway network. It is worth remembering that the rail services in PTA areas carry twice as many passengers as the former InterCity part of British Rail, and account for three quarters of those carried by the regional railways. In total, PTAs act as a channel of provision for just under one fifth of the overall net subsidy required by the rail network.

It is therefore vital that the Government get the future funding of those authorities right. As my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central (Mr. McLeish) said, we know that the Government have decided from 1996-97 to return to payments towards the section 20 rail services by means of revenue support grant under the terms of the so-called standard spending assessment bolt-on that flowed from the Local Government Act 1988.

The Minister must be aware that the PTEs have expressed some dissatisfaction with the formula used to calculate the bolt-on. No precise detail about it has ever been made public, and we have no precise information about the way in which the bolt-on is made up, but, according to the PTEs, the money involved appears to be allocated on the basis of a combination of route miles and infrastructure costs. Again, the data involved have not been made public, and there is a strong suspicion within the PTEs that the information base may be flawed.

I am sure that the Minister will recall that, in 1994, the Environment Select Committee's report on standard spending assessments called for maximum transparency in their preparation. It is sincerely to be hoped that the Government will live up to the commitment of the most

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