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Mr. John Butterfill (Bournemouth, West) rose--

Mr. Bradley: The confusion and farce continued. Following discussions, Mr. and Mrs. Ward decided to travel from Liverpool Street and to allow an extra two hours for possible problems. Tottenham Hale was considered risky, as there was no guarantee of a service. The outcome was that trains left Liverpool Street on time, and they arrived at Stansted with an extra two hours to spare. Afterwards, Mr. Ward telephoned the national inquiry line and was assured that there had been engineering works when he was travelling to Stansted on the Sunday, but because of the service he would not have noticed that. The service to the public is in absolute confusion. Is that the service that the Government support?

Mr. Butterfill rose--

Mr. Bradley: I shall give way for the last time, because time is getting on.

Mr. Butterfill: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman--he has not previously given way to me, and I have been listening to him intently.

The hon. Gentleman's anecdote was amusing, but is he really suggesting that such incidents never happened when the service was run by British Rail? Does he recollect trying to get through to British Rail inquiries, and how long he had to wait for the telephone to be answered? Is he aware that South West Trains is spending £200,000 this year on improving its answering service? We would have given our eye teeth for that when British Rail ran the service.

Mr. Bradley: The Government claim that the privatised industry provides a better service. I have given an example of the chaos and confusion that is reigning throughout the country in the different operating companies. There is no consistency of treatment from one train operator to another. That is the truth of thematter, and the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West(Mr. Butterfill) should ask his constituents what is happening in the real world.

The Government may claim that it is only the Labour party that is expressing such concerns--the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West seemed to imply that by what he said. Complaints received by the rail users consultative committee in the west country show that the evidence is stark. In that area, the number of complaints has increased by 40 per cent. to a record 2,371. When those figures are broken down, they show that complaints about train conditions have risen by 124 per cent., about fares and marketing by 92 per cent., overcrowding and bad information by 79 per cent. and punctuality by 66 per cent. Is that good value for money for taxpayers as a result of rail privatisation?

With barely five months to go before the general election, it is important that we look forward, not merely backward, and consider the future of our railways. It is our aim not to go back to the old structures, but to create

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a new system capable of mobilising high investment and achieving a more intensive use of rail. Our policy is to move by stages away from the fragmented industrial structure that the Government have created towards an integrated system for the benefit of passengers, with stronger protection for the public interest, to ensure the best value for money from public subsidies.

A systematic framework that encourages strategic decisions consistent with wider Government policy on transport must be instituted. To achieve that, we intend to reconstruct British Rail as a fully publicly owned and publicly accountable company holding the public interest in the rail network. That strategic planning body for the railways is essential, because the current fragmentation and multiplicity of players--the network has been split into more than 100 companies--make it difficult, if not impossible, to take a systematic view of future strategy.

Labour will return to the Secretary of State the power to direct the Rail Regulator to use the existing regulatory regime to secure higher investment and a more intensive use of the system. Under a new regulatory framework, the powers of the Rail Regulator over Railtrack will be used to the full to protect the interests of passengers and the taxpayer. For example, the regulator will be asked to ensure that land and property that are needed for the railways are not sold and that a proportion of the proceeds of any sales that do go ahead are invested in the railways.

Mr. Churchill: Is the hon. Gentleman seriously telling the House and the nation that if by mischance Labour was elected to govern, it would put the clock back to the state of affairs that prevailed before, when politicians were in the driving seat? It was absolutely disastrous for British Rail and all the other nationalised industries to be run politically and bureaucratically.

Mr. Bradley: I have made it quite clear that we shall not move back to the old structures. We shall set up a strategic body to deal with the fragmentation of the rail network to ensure that it works in the public interest, that subsidy is transparent and that the taxpayer gets value for money.

Labour's clear objectives are a modern, integrated rail network with easy access for all to effective ticketing and travel information. We shall facilitate rail interchanges for passengers and freight and between rail and other forms of transport. We shall direct more of Railtrack's proceeds to investment in the network; reform track access charges to encourage more passenger and freight traffic; mobilise more investment in the network; and look at completing regional high-speed links to the channel tunnel and beyond. Essentially, we shall ensure high standards of safety through an independent body. That is what the public want from our railways and they will support it. We shall give that and it will provide real value for money for our people.

10.41 am

Mr. Steve Norris (Epping Forest): I shall start by recording my enormously happy experience over four and a half years as a Transport Minister. Specifically, I should

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like to put on record my enormous admiration for the three Secretaries of State for Transport with whom I had the pleasure of serving during that time. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. MacGregor) was the architect of the Railways Act 1993 and he, with my right hon. Friend who is now the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and me, sat down with practically a blank sheet of paper. I recall the permanent secretary saying to us immediately after the 1992 general election, "I am afraid that we did not do a lot of work on this because quite honestly we did not think that you would win." My advice to my good friend Sir Patrick Brown is that perhaps this time it might be as well to keep all the files current.

I also pay a warm tribute to my right hon. Friend the Minister without Portfolio, who brought a tremendously incisive political mind to bear on the problems of transportation. He deserves great credit for initiating the debate on transport. It was long overdue and it has moved us on by a generation in terms of thinking about how to develop our transport infrastructure. I am sorry that my right hon. Friend the present Secretary of State for Transport cannot be with us as I should have liked him to hear my enormous admiration for his work.

Mr. Bradley: What a crawler.

Mr. Norris: Ex-Ministers have the great advantage of not needing to crawl. And when they intend to leave these hallowed portals when the Prime Minister calls the general election they have even less cause to make such remarks--unless they are sincerely meant, as I assure the House that they are. I have admired the present Secretary of State for Transport for many years, since his wonderful principled opposition to the ill-fated community charge. That opposition was conducted with great decorum and amazing effectiveness, and he is now doing sterling work in his present Department. The only issue on which my right hon. Friend and I ever disagreed was on the compulsory fitting of bicycle bells. I leave the House to determine which of us wanted them to be fitted compulsorily.

I welcome the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Bradley) to his new post. I have always thought of him as a rather decent chap and for the life of me I cannot think what he must have done to deserve to be given the ultimate Labour poisoned chalice--responsibility for a policy that is in tatters and is without a shred of intellectual or moral integrity. I can only suggest that it must be due to something in the Stalinist, Beria-like regime that floats around the Leader ofthe Opposition, the hon. Member for Hartlepool(Mr. Mandelson) and Mr. Alastair Campbell, so that in some secret way the hon. Gentleman and probably members of his family are destined for some distant gulag. I had thought that he deserved rather better.

We all know why the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Ms Jackson) is in the transport team. The problem with a double Oscar winner who sounds like Stalin's granny is what on earth to do with her. She speaks charmingly and is charming, but she is decades out in terms of new Labour and that must present the Leader of the Opposition with an enormous challenge. No doubt she will rise to it with her usual good grace and spirit. I look

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forward to the time after the next election when she becomes Opposition spokesman on national heritage or is given some other opportunity that will enable her to display her talents to the full.

Ms Glenda Jackson: I am surprised to discover that the hon. Gentleman is old enough to have heard any of the utterances of Stalin's granny, and even more surprised to discover that he is so fluent in Russian that he understood what she said.

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