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Planning and Transport Congestion
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Madam Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.
7.15 pm
Mr. John Redwood (Wokingham): I beg to move,
- That this House condemns the Government's contradictory signals on transport and planning policies; requests the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions to cancel the M4 bus lane, and find a way of reopening the Circle Line and keeping other tube lines open; notes that the Government has no policies to increase road or rail capacity in line with traffic growth forecasts; is appalled that motorists are paying more and more tax under Labour to sit in ever worse traffic jams; and urges the Government to revitalise town centres and to follow transport and planning policies that can get Britain moving again.
I am upset that the Deputy Prime Minister is presiding over the collapse of our transport system. It is becoming more difficult, if not impossible, to get around the country. New Labour does not travel well. The Deputy Prime Minister is none too keen on new Labour, but he proves how new and old Labour, acting together, are bringing Britain to a standstill--[Hon. Members: "Rubbish."] Labour Members should treat transport with more seriousness because their constituents cannot get around. It is their constituents who find tube trains cancelled or delayed.
Do Labour Members know that the Circle line is not working under the Government, or that the Northern line is threatened with closure, or that District line trains were heavily delayed today? Do they know that the latest report on the tube shows that it has not hit its targets on punctuality, cleanliness or general service? Have they seen the almost permanent traffic jams on many sections of the road network? Do they know that too many trains arrive late, and that they often have no proper facilities on board? With this Government, it is jams today, and jams tomorrow.
Mr. Phil Hope (Corby):
My constituents know that the Labour Government have given an extra £700,000 to rural buses in this financial year, and they know that the Government are providing support for rural transport.
Mr. Redwood:
Many councils have suffered dreadful rate support grants and have been unable to increase expenditure. The hon. Gentleman provokes me into mentioning investment in London Regional Transport, one of the areas suffering most from the Deputy Prime Minister's deep cuts. In the final year of the Conservative Administration, investment was £1,060 million. That fell to £843 million in the first year of the Labour Government, and to £654 million in the second. In the third Labour year, it is planned to be £564 million.
Mr. Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston):
Will the right hon. Gentleman address the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Mr. Hope)? After bus deregulation, the number of bus passengers fell by a third outside London. Is my hon. Friend not right to say that the Government are absolutely right to correct the ridiculous imbalance created by the Conservative Administration?
Mr. Redwood:
If the hon. Gentleman looks at the facts, he will see that privatisation has increased competition, choice and passenger numbers and that the frustration now is due to the fact that there are more passengers for buses and trains, but there is not enough money or decent management under this Government to provide the train and bus services that those passengers require.
In the past fortnight, I have been delayed when travelling from Paddington to Westminster thanks to the inadequate tube service. I faced a long delay on the Virgin train when I tried to travel by train from Manchester to Birmingham, and I waited 25 minutes for a bus in Oxford, where a park-and-ride scheme is advertised as having seven-minute services. Now, even the buses are held up by the absurd road closures in that Labour council area. In Oxford, it is not park and ride, but park, pay and wait, thanks to the Labour council and the policies that the Deputy Prime Minister is encouraging. I have spent many unhappy minutes in traffic jams on the M4, watching the entirely empty bus lane and wondering whether the Prime Minister would sweep by on that day as its only user.
This Government are out of touch--and in such a short space of time. The Deputy Prime Minister already seems to think that buses and tubes are there for others to use, or there for a photo opportunity with a Jaguar waiting to whisk him off to where he wants to go once the photo has been taken--[Interruption.] It is not a cheap jibe; it is true and that is why it hurts. The right hon. Gentleman will not even answer my question about how many times he has come to the office using public transport. I am sure that he uses a car because he has decided, like many others, that public transport is not good enough. I do not blame him; I just do not like the humbug. Why does he not admit that people have to use the car because there is no practical choice for many of their journeys, as Ministers illustrate? As for his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, he thinks that bus lanes are there for him to use when he is not travelling by the Queen's flight. For the rest of us, it is not life in the fast lane, but life kept out of the bus lane.
Mr. Nigel Waterson (Eastbourne):
Hear, hear!
Mr. Redwood:
I thank my hon. Friend for that appreciation.
The Chancellor thinks that motorists are there to pay everyone else's bills, as he merrily goes on his way forcing the price of motoring through the roof. Now, we know that planning policy is to be relaxed to make the trafficjams worse. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor appear
to favour more out-of-town superstores. That means more cars and lorries on the roads and a further blow to town centres, where there are still bus and train stations.
The Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Mr. John Prescott):
What did the Conservatives do?
Mr. Redwood:
The right hon. Gentleman asks what my right hon. Friends did when they were in government--they changed the planning guidance to try to restrict out-of-town developments for that very reason. Now we read clear indications that, against the wishes of the Deputy Prime Minister--I will give him that--No. 10, No. 11 and the Department of Trade and Industry have decided that they want to relax planning controls because they want to cover the south in concrete.
Mr. Bill Rammell (Harlow):
There are three out-of-town shopping centres in my constituency, all of which were rejected by the local council at the time. Those rejections were all over turned and the plans approved on appeal by the Government that the right hon. Gentleman supported. Is not this tirade the grossest hypocrisy, given the chaos and mess that that Government created?
Mr. Redwood:
The hon. Gentleman has obviously not read planning policy guidance 6--the guidance that made it clear that we favoured in-town development. I hope that he will get a reassurance from the Deputy Prime Minister that the right hon. Gentleman will stand by that policy, whatever his right hon. Friends say, and that, on this solitary occasion, he will win the argument. Clearly, he did not win the argument to get his travel Bill--I am glad that he did not, as it was such a bad Bill--and we now hear that he will probably not get his railway Bill next year either, because he is so bad at negotiating with the Prime Minister and with No. 11.
Dr. Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test):
Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that revised planning policy guidance 6 came in right at the end of the Conservative Government? For 15 out of the 18 years of the Conservative Government--the vast majority--there was a free-for-all in out-of-town shopping.
Mr. Redwood:
I do not think that the hon. Gentleman remembers that out-of-town superstores were a phenomenon that was more concentrated in the late 1980s and early 1990s. We changed the guidance when we saw how things were going. The issue now, which the Government cannot conceal, is are they going to protect out-of-town areas--are they going to stand up for the city centres--or not? Or will we see more of what we saw today with the report about inner-city revival--it contains some quite good ideas--which has been produced after two years of this Government? What did the Deputy Prime Minister say? He said that he had not got much voice left and he did not intend to do anything about any of the recommendations for at least 12 months.
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