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Mr. Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley): I support the Bill, but will the hon. Gentleman admit that increased car numbers and usage will cause tremendous pressure in the future, irrespective of what we do--although, of course, we must carry on with the battle? The duty on local authorities to consider ways to reduce car usage should not distract them from considering how useful bypasses can be in certain areas where traffic has already built up and is intolerable, such as in Read, Simonstone and Gisburn in my local area, where the local residents are in favour of a bypass. Yes, we need to reduce traffic, but we should not forget the usefulness of bypasses.

Mr. Foster: I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's intervention, because some hon. Members and people outside the House have suggested that the Bill is in some way an anti-car Bill. It is not: it is an anti-excess-traffic Bill. The hon. Gentleman gave one example of the measures that need to be taken, but the Bill focuses on reducing the amount of traffic on the roads, because that is one of the best ways to reduce congestion and the need for additional roads.

The other clauses will give opportunities to the Secretary of State to give reasonable priority to the measures contained in the plans drawn up by local councils, including an opportunity for the allocation of central Government funds to local councils to give high priority to the traffic reduction measures proposed in their plans. Under the Bill, the Secretary of State will report to the House every two years on the success of such measures in the reduction of traffic.

As the hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) mentioned, clause 4 refers to an opportunity for the Secretary of State, should he so decide, to consider ways to composite some of the individual local plans into regional plans and also, if he so chooses, to develop regional targets. As I said earlier, I have had constructive discussions with the Minister and I thank him for those. Since those discussions, the Minister has rightly pointed to small technical amendments that would make the Bill even more effective. I am grateful that he has agreed to have discussions, if the Bill is given a Second Reading, and to make those changes before the Committee stage.

The broad principles of the Bill are designed to ensure that we get effective value for the money spent by Government on transport policies and, especially, that we increasingly direct valuable and scarce resources towards tackling the problems created by excess traffic rather than simply trying to accommodate them. This is a Bill whose time has come.

12.49 pm

Mr. Nigel Forman (Carshalton and Wallington): I congratulate the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) on his good fortune in winning such a high place in the ballot, which has given him the chance to introduce the

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Bill. I can well understand--not only from his record, but from what I know of the beautiful city of Bath--why it makes good sense from his point of view to propose such a measure. I have known Bath well for many years and, in my humble opinion, the city is sometimes brought near to ruin by traffic congestion, which does considerable damage to the soft limestone of many of the buildings and creates other difficulties. Almost the worst problem of this nature in Bath is the surfeit of tourist coaches--a subject to which I wish to return.

I should like to place it on record that--unusually for my speeches in the House--I feel reasonably well qualified to speak on this matter, because I have not owned a motor car since 1976. That is not to say that I do not drive or that I am incapable of driving, but I make the minimum necessary use of the motor car. I am a fairly keen cyclist when I find the time and opportunity and when the weather is kind, and I make extensive use of public transport. My habitual mode of transport when going to and from my constituency is the train.

Two of my constituents took part in the lobby in support of the Bill on Wednesday. Alas, I was not able to meet them--although I would have liked to meet them--as I was busy with other parliamentary duties. However, I should place it on record that the Bill has the enthusiastic support of Edwin C. Carr of 6 Reynolds close, Carshalton, and of Robert Steel of 14 Palmerston road, Carshalton. That shows the good sense of my constituents on this matter.

Mr. Peter Luff (Worcester): And other matters.

Mr. Forman: I am grateful to my hon. Friend.

The Bill has various merits--one is that it is brief, and another is that it is couched in general terms. The hon. Member for Bath touched on the latter advantage, and said that one does not want to be too prescriptive when circumstances can change as a result of technological or scientific breakthroughs, changes in the planning laws and other factors.

The most important part of the Bill--although not its only important part--is clause 2(6), where the hon. Member for Bath sets out guidance for local authorities on how they might go about implementing the measure if the Bill becomes law. I commend him on that, and on the fact that he makes it a permissive, rather than mandatory, list.

I wish to divide my remaining remarks into two sections. The first will be a brief analysis from my point of view of some of the problems touched on by the hon. Member for Bath, and the second will be one or two suggestions of ways forward.

First, real problems are caused to many of our constituents by congestion, and there are also considerable economic costs. The hon. Member for Bath mentioned the best estimate from the CBI, and many other estimates have been made to support the argument. It is clearly a difficult calculation, as one never knows what might have happened in the absence of vehicles in certain circumstances. Nevertheless, the general drift of the argument is right. Congestion is costly and involves not only straight economic costs but opportunity costs--an important concept in these calculations.

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It is also worth putting on record the lamentable fact that, although this country has fewer cars per head or per family than many countries of comparable wealth and income, we make greater use of the cars we have. There are more journeys per head or per family and many of those journeys are lamentably short, as the hon. Member for Bath said when he quoted figures for London. Clearly, we do not want to go further in that direction, because it is not good for human health or the environment and it contributes to congestion.

Secondly, the hon. Member for Bath was right to mention air pollution and to link with that both noise and vibration. Those are serious and linked problems, as I know from my constituency and elsewhere. Air pollution is obviously a contributory cause, although not the only cause, of asthma in children, bronchitis in elderly people, and so forth. Vibration is serious, particularly when lorries and buses go down streets--especially urban streets--that are not sufficiently reinforced or over bridges that are too weak, both of which are typical examples.

In my youth, I lived in Shrewsbury--a lovely old Roman and mediaeval town--which was at the time virtually ruined and shaken to pieces by the traffic going through the centre rather than around the outside. Things may well have changed since then, but that gives an example of what I am talking about.

The noise is a public nuisance. We are legislating against noise from stereos, videos, ghetto blasters and neighbours. Why should we not legislate more rigorously against traffic noise? Carshalton village is a lovely place, but if one stands on the pavement there one can scarcely have a conversation without shouting because of the traffic noise. It is not good news.

Thirdly--I might be slightly argumentative with this point--the media report extensively these days the increasing number of examples of aggression on the roads by drivers when they get behind the wheel, which sometimes lead to the ultimate expression of that weakness, the so-called road rage. Having observed these conditions for many years, I am convinced that, if people are deeply and increasingly frustrated in urban areas by intensive traffic congestion, the moment that they get even 250 yd of clear road, let alone a mile or so, they put their foot firmly down on the accelerator and go like a bat out of hell, venting their anger and frustration in that way. If they are blocked or something goes wrong with their ambition to get from this point to that point a quarter of a mile further on, on a nought to 60 in seven seconds basis, all their anger and frustration come out and there is a danger to pedestrians, cyclists and road safety in general. The Bill might contribute positively towards a solution to that problem, too.

Fourthly, the existence of all this traffic transforms our environment, often adversely. One of the most important issues in my constituency at the moment is the prospect of a huge Sainsbury megastore being built in the heart of Wallington on the corner of Stafford road and Woodcote road. My constituents who live in the nice, quiet, leafy streets around about do not want that store, for the simple reason that they feel that the planning process does not take sufficiently into account the development's traffic congestion implications. The roads are already in gridlock at certain times of the day--particularly when mothers are taking children to and from school by car, which is a new development compared with 20 or 30 years ago. Also, everyone makes greater use of the car, and there is no

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doubt that, if traffic levels are already near saturation point, it will not contribute to the quality of life, to people's health, the good of the nation or anything else to precipitate further congestion by building a store that is too large for the location.

The store is intended to serve a regional catchment area and, on planning and other grounds, if one is wise one does not put that sort of store in a residential area where there is not the necessary capacity on the roads. That is another reason to support the Bill.

It would be a good thing if planning policy could be a central element in the legislation and could be focused on. For too long, planning policy has been driven, if I may use the pun, by the needs of the motor vehicle industry. One has to get the matter into perspective. I do not have time to go into all the issues, but we must, for example, return to encouraging the use of private rail sidings, which would make it feasible for more freight to be carried on the railways rather than in large lorries, which often have to travel on unsuitable roads.

The heart of the problem is not so much the lorry, bus, taxi, car or motor cycle, although those are all contributory factors; it is the internal--sometimes known as the infernal--combustion engine. Although it is not yet in the marketplace, technology is already available for dual-powered--part-electric and part-petrol or diesel--gas-powered or solely electric vehicles. The only thing holding back the motor manufacturers is their worry about the risks involved in being first into the market; they would much rather be second.

Such developments must come, however, and were the Bill to be introduced in five or 10 years' time, when there were many more electric vehicles, I would not support it so urgently, because the nub of the problem--the means of propulsion--would have been dealt with in a benign way. Even then, people would suffer the disadvantages, frustration and cost of being stuck in a traffic jam: imagine a traffic jam of milk floats, for example, which would not be much better, except at the margin, than a traffic jam of today's cars.

With the information technology revolution, more home working, remote working, or what might be called teleworking, will move from the pages of the New Scientist or Nature to become a reality for more and more people. That will be helpful, because it will reduce the need for many journeys.

What is definitely not part of the solution--I am glad that the hon. Member for Bath did not mention it--is the idea of red routes through suburban areas on circumferential routes. I have in mind in particular the ill-fated and unwanted red route from Bromley to Kingston which now threatens the heart of my constituency. If that goes ahead, it will produce nothing better than a poor man's south circular, somewhere between the real south circular and the M25.

The red route will have a magnetic effect on traffic, not necessarily creating more traffic in the aggregate but drawing more traffic on to that intended corridor and creating mayhem, to the considerable disadvantage of my constituents. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will note that we in Carshalton--especially the nice, traditional parts--are fiercely opposed to the extension of the red route along the A232. I hope that his Department will heed public opinion on this matter.

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Most of the solutions that I have to offer are completely compatible with those in the wise speech of the hon. Member for Bath. Many of the main solutions are in clause 2(6), which I commend to the House. The Bill makes a useful contribution in highlighting for the Department of Transport and for local authorities the areas to which they should look for the best way forward.

There are roughly three approaches to the problem, and they have to be taken in combination. The first and mildest approach is that of exhortation, whereby people make speeches in debates such as this, saying, "Isn't it awful? Why don't people get out of their cars and use public transport, walk or cycle? Why don't they copy my virtuous example?" That is all very well, but it will not persuade many people, because they can legitimately argue that they genuinely need their cars, and that public transport does not meet all their requirements.

Many women, for example, are worried about the safety of their children on the school run and prefer to take them in the car, even though they know that they are contributing to the problem, rather than putting their children on public transport or telling them to walk to school. Equally, public transport late at night is not as good as it should be, and women habitually feel unsafe on it. For those reasons, exhortation is not enough.

The second approach is that of encouragement or inducement via the tax system, grants and the other levers available to Government. We all know of the success of the tax relief on lead-free petrol, which is a good precedent, showing how powerful the mechanism can be. We also know that it is the Government's policy to increase, on a sustained basis, the price of petrol by using the tax mechanism in an attempt to discourage, at the margin, the use of all sorts of petrol-engined vehicles. I know that this could have an impact on the cost of living, so it is a double-edged sword. Speaking as someone who represents a suburban constituency, I believe that it would be better to abolish the vehicle licence system and put the tax burden on petrol. That would give the right economic signals to motor manufacturers, as well as others, to develop the leanburn engine.

If we wanted to be really eccentric and brave in our encouragement and inducement, we would look seriously at road pricing. I will not develop the arguments about that today, as that would probably be out of order. However, the issue must be dealt with in some way. I am sure that hon. Members know that the difficulty is that all econometric evidence about transport economics suggests that the cost of petrol and diesel is, in economists' jargon, very price-inelastic. That means that we can go on jacking up the price for a long time, but people will not alter their behaviour very much, at least not in the short term. If the cost were more price-elastic, the economic signals would be more valuable and would play a larger part in the cluster of solutions.

The third approach--this is where it gets toughest of all--is that the House could consider imposing, through the law, explicit prohibitions and requirements on those connected with vehicles. That would move us forward in the right direction. I think, for example, of requiring people to display certain discs on their windscreens if they intend to go into a certain part of an urban area. That already happens in some places. I think also of the Californian example in the United States where, at certain times of the day--especially commuter periods--cars are not allowed to cross bridges on their way in or out of

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San Francisco unless they contain at least two or three people. There is another example in Athens, which has some serious environmental problems. On the basis of registration numbers, the authorities try to limit the number of vehicles that can go in and out of Athens on any given day.

My conclusion--you will be delighted to hear those words, Mr. Deputy Speaker--is that all those factors can contribute positively to the solutions that are required. The list that I have just given--like the list given by the hon. Member for Bath in his excellent Bill--is incomplete without large additional investment in appropriate forms of public transport. We need sustained investment in pubic transport and I am glad that the Government have made that possible in recent times. However, it is a lamentable fact that, over the 10-year period from 1976 to 1986--which, as the House will note, straddled two Governments of different persuasions--there was no net new investment in public transport. During that time, both Governments made mistakes, and we are still suffering some of the consequences.

We must have better buses with priority lanes; we have to go for initiatives like the Croydon tram link; we must have better and more frequent trains which are more reliable, such as the south London metro service which is planned for my constituency; and we must have better planning policy, to encourage people to live and work in the same place. That is an important point. Those hon. Members who know anything about inner-London districts, such as Clerkenwell and Bermondsey, will know that, in recent times, there has developed a mixed activity of living and working, retail and commercial. That is very healthy. It means that people can walk to and from work.

I want to follow up something to which I referred earlier. For goodness' sake, let us remember our late colleague, Robert Adley, who used to sit in this very seat. He was always, rightly, banging on about wretched tourist coaches. They are a real pain. They clog up central London and our other great cities. They are not properly policed and they get away with murder. They double-park and pollute the atmosphere, and are full of tourists who get out on the wrong side. They are a safety hazard and bad news. If nothing else results from the debate, let us at least deal with the problem of tourist coaches.

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