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BAA
31. Dr. Cable: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions when he proposes to review the regulatory regime for BAA with particular reference to the formula for landing charges. [9379]
Ms Glenda Jackson: The Civil Aviation Authority, as the airports regulator, determines the regulatory regime for the three London airports of BAA plc and last autumn fixed the price cap to apply to charges on airlines using these airports for the five years through to 2002.
Dr. Cable: I thank the Minister for her factual reply and suggest to her that the system of regulating the privatised utilities that she inherited is deeply flawed. Is it not outrageous that world airlines should land at one of the busiest and most congested airports, pay nothing to the taxpayer for the right to land and pay landing charges that are way below the economic and environmental cost that they cause?
Ms Jackson: The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the issue of airport charges is linked not only to international agreement but to the arm's-length regulation of the CAA. It is not correct to say that the charges at Heathrow are artificially low; in effect, they are higher than the charges at Gatwick and Stansted.
Mr. MacShane: Is my hon. Friend aware that planes are now landing as early as 4.30 am, adding hundreds, if not thousands, of early-morning landings to the number contributing to noise pollution levels? Will she consider
increasing landing charges before 7 am, so that the people of London, from Pimlico to the west, can get a night's sleep?
Ms Jackson: The setting of airport charges is the responsibility of the regulator--the Civil Aviation Authority. Neither it nor my Department has any powers to review the existing levels until 2002.
Bridges
32. Mr. Quinn: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions if he will make a statement on progress towards ensuring that all bridges within the United Kingdom meet maximum axle loading requirements for freight transported by road. [9380]
Ms Glenda Jackson: We are confident that all bridges in England carrying trunk roads will be capable of bearing the heaviest lorries that will be permitted from 1 January 1999. The Government do not believe that it is necessary for all bridges on local roads to be able to carry such traffic. Local authorities are concentrating on ensuring that bridges on roads of greatest importance to such lorries are able to bear them.
Mr. Quinn: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. I have spent most of my professional life building bridges. Does my hon. Friend agree that bridges are an important part of transportation and that the forthcoming review of transportation and the move towards an integrated transport system should take account of the needs of both freight and passenger traffic? Does she agree that all bridge authorities throughout the country should be allowed to participate fully in that debate?
Ms Jackson: My hon. Friend will be aware that it is the Government's overriding priority to see more freight moved by rail. That is why we hope to improve the freight grant scheme in order to ensure that the annual budget is fully spent. As part of the integration of the Departments of the Environment and of Transport, we hope that the planning regime will prevent the sale of land that could be used for freight terminal facilities.
Mr. Sayeed: Will the hon. Lady confirm whether the Government will pay all local authority costs for assessing both these road bridges and those owned by Railtrack?
Ms Jackson: As to bridges owned by Railtrack, that is an issue for local authorities and Railtrack to negotiate between them. Local authorities will have to make bids regarding the costs to them, as they did under the previous Administration.
Mr. Stevenson: Does my hon. Friend agree that the introduction of the 44-tonne juggernaut in a few years will not only possibly have a detrimental effect on bridges but certainly have a detrimental effect on principal roads and other roads that are used for transporting goods to customers? Will she take account of that point when assessing that very complicated and important issue?
Ms Jackson: My hon. Friend may be aware that it is the opinion of several that 44-tonne lorries will not cause greater damage to roads and bridges by virtue of the
additional axles and the reduced weight of those individual axles. I repeat what I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr. Quinn) earlier: it is of primary importance to the Government that we see a real shift to alternative modes of freight transport, not least to our railways.Road Passenger Transport Services
33. Sir Sydney Chapman: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what measures he proposes to encourage more people to use road passenger transport services. [9381]
Dr. Strang: Encouraging greater use of public transport is a key objective in developing an integrated transport policy. Our White Paper, which will be published next year, will help to identify how best we can achieve that.
Sir Sydney Chapman: I agree with the Minister's comments, but does he not think that his aspirations sit somewhat oddly with those of the Chancellor of the Exchequer who, earlier this month, imposed a swingeing 9.3 per cent. increase in diesel tax? As the Minister has been singularly unsuccessful in persuading the Treasury to the Department's point of view and policy objective, will he ask his right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime
Minister to use his influence to ensure that the Chancellor does not achieve his declared aim of increasing the tax on diesel fuel by 6 per cent. in real terms in every subsequent Budget?
Dr. Strang: As the hon. Gentleman knows, increasing fuel duty is not unique to this Government--on the contrary, the previous Administration raised that duty each year. I assure the hon. Gentleman that bus travel is very important--he hints at that in his question--and we are examining how best to encourage greater use of buses. That means making bus services as economical as possible. We want people to choose to travel by bus and to leave their cars at home because buses provide such a good service.
Mr. Barnes: Is there not a large, mainly untapped, market for bus passenger transport for disabled people, who have difficulty in getting on buses and in being able to travel? If passenger authorities in various areas were encouraged to face up to that problem, they could make money out of that market. That would benefit everyone.
Dr. Strang: My hon. Friend raises a very important point. That is one reason why we want the fastest possible introduction of low-level buses: it will be much easier for disabled people to get on to a bus. Undoubtedly, throughout this country, there is great scope for increasing the use of buses by disabled people and by people who are not disabled.
Companies (Millennium Computer Compliance)
3.30 pm
Mr. David Atkinson (Bournemouth, East): I beg to move,
- That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require companies to conduct an assessment of the capability of their computer systems to deal with calender dates after 31st December 1999; and to report both on those assessments and on the actions their directors propose to take in consequence.
The Bill's aim is to avoid much of the widespread chaos and confusion that are being increasingly predicted to occur throughout the world at the turn of the century--in just over 29 months' time. I am grateful to those hon. Members from all parties who have again been so willing to sponsor the Bill.
The cause of the doomsday predictions is the inability of the majority of computer systems to recognise the year 2000. They use, as we all do, two digits for the year of the date instead of four. Thus, today's date is written 29/07/97 rather than 29/07/1997. Unless they are properly reprogrammed, computer systems will recognise the year 2000 as 1900, or simply reset to some other date. That will mean that they will no longer deliver what they are programmed to deliver. Because so much of Government business and daily life has come to rely on information systems, the result will be, to use a tabloid word, "catastrophe", which must be a matter of urgent concern to the House.
When the matter was first raised on the Floor of the House in my oral question to the then Prime Minister in December 1995, it was greeted with expressions of ridicule and disbelief from all sides. I suggest--or at least I hope--that most, if not all, hon. Members are now aware of the issue and realise that there is a serious problem which must be addressed. That is referred to in the updated Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology note No. 98, "The Millennium Threat--an Update", which was issued last month. It is in the Library, and I recommend it as essential background reading.
The briefing note forecasts the dangers of failure to ensure that computer systems are millennium-compliant. They include payroll systems collapsing so that workers cannot be paid; financial records losing track of investments; invoicing systems failing to generate bills or charging 100 years of interest; telecommunication networks failing; the halting of the supply of utilities such as gas and electricity; the unpredictable behaviour of embedded microchip systems in items such as elevators, bank vaults or medical equipment; and the disruption of Government systems such as those responsible for benefit payments, criminal records, medical records and revenue collection. All that has been confirmed in the report to the Cabinet by the National Audit Office, entitled "Managing the Millennium Threat", which was published in May.
In response to my Adjournment debate on the issue in June last year, the then Minister for Science and Technology, my hon. Friend the Member for Esher
and Walton (Mr. Taylor), referred to the action that his Government were taking on the computer systems for which they were responsible in the public sector. He announced the establishment of TaskForce 2000, involving the private sector in raising awareness of the problem in industry and commerce, and he warned that failure to deal with it could lead to commercial collapse--a warning which I believe his successor has repeated, as has the President of the Board of Trade.
My Bill is designed to avoid such commercial collapse in the private sector of British business. It will give the owners of British companies--the shareholders--the information to which they are entitled about the security of their investment at the turn of the century. It requires companies to conduct an assessment of the capability of their computer systems to deal with calendar dates after 31 December 1999 and, in the annual report to shareholders, to report on that assessment and on the actions that their directors propose to take as a consequence.
It has been suggested that my Bill would impose new and unnecessary regulation and red tape on business, which, to their credit, the Government, like the previous one, have said they are determined to avoid. Not only is that response misleading, but it seeks to avoid the unique nature of the issue. Far from imposing new burdens on business, the Bill merely clarifies for company directors and their auditors an existing duty to give shareholders a true and fair assessment of the company as a going concern in the foreseeable future.
The Bill will help to protect the businesses of those who have acted responsibly from those who would not otherwise have acted without pressure from their shareholders, because computer systems that are millennium compliant will also fail if they are linked to those that are not.
Critics of my Bill have complained that the action that it requires businesses to take will be too costly for them to bear. My Bill imposes no such costly action; it merely obliges directors to report on their action--or inaction, as the case may be. Of course, in many cases, the cost of inaction will be the biggest burden of all--bankruptcy.
If I needed any further justification for the Bill, it came from the press conference held by TaskForce 2000 at the Department of Trade and Industry in February 1997. It was to report the outcome of a second survey, eight months after the first, to find out how British business is responding to this millennium time bomb. The very same companies that were approached the first time were approached again and asked the same question. The answers are revealing and worrying.
Whereas only 15 per cent. of senior mangers were aware of the problem last year, today 28 per cent. are. But whereas 8 per cent. of companies had completed an assessment last year, that figure has gone up to only 9 per cent. That is not a rate of progress which can or should satisfy anyone. It confirms my view that there is now no alternative but to legislate.
The Bill has received encouraging and widespread support from the top 100 companies that I consulted and whose amendments are now incorporated in it. I hope that the Government will recognise the Bill for what it seeks to achieve and that it will be given a swift enactment. If so, it might be sufficient, together with a fully supported TaskForce 2000 and other initiatives by the
computer industry itself, to avoid for Britain much of the incalculable chaos and catastrophe that are being predicted if not enough is done.
Nevertheless, it remains a race against time. Only 630 days remain in which to take action. This is one of the greatest challenges facing British business today. Like the change in the millennium itself, it cannot be postponed. That is why I hope that the House will give me leave to introduce the Bill today.
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