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Mr. Redwood: I do not have enough time to give way.
The Deputy Prime Minister should stop London Underground from closing the Northern line. He should restore the massive cuts that he has made in the investment programme for the underground. The Labour Government have slashed investment in London Transport from £1,060 million in the last year of the Conservative Government to £564 million now. Tonight, if he announces anything less than £500 million extra for the tube this year, it will still be a massive cut in the investment plans that we introduced and were successfully implementing.
The Deputy Prime Minister and his colleagues have slashed the roads budget and slashed investment on the tube. Now, to add to the misery, they want to charge us to drive into the city centre and again for parking at work. Only the Deputy Prime Minister could believe that the answer to Britain's transport problems is a poll tax on wheels. The only beneficiary of that will be the Conservative party. I am glad that he is so well inclined towards us; his policies suit our party interests well but they serve the nation so badly.
The Deputy Prime Minister now says that he wants to regenerate our city centres. Why, then, does he want to stop people driving in city centres and owning cars in cities? Does he not realise that people value the freedom brought by the car? His measures will put people off his city centres, rather than encouraging people to go to them. His Department's annual report states that new roads relieve congestion and help the regeneration of rundown areas. I agree with that. Does the Deputy Prime Minister stand by that statement? Has he read it? Does he agree with it? If he agrees with it, why does he not do something about it? Why has he cancelled so many of the roads and other transport links that could bring some relief to those rundown inner-city areas?
The right hon. Gentleman is fast becoming the biggest polluter of them all. The best way to increase pollution is to increase traffic jams; he has perfected dozens of ways of doing just that. He causes more congestion than an epidemic of summer colds. Labour is not new and it is not green. It is old and brown. It is just a rip-off. The motorist now rues the day that a Labour Government came to town.
Occasionally, a member of the Government does something that captures the public mood and sums up a feeling. No one is better at that than the Prime Minister. Only the other day, he did it again, by travelling down that bus lane on the M4. That was arrogant. It demonstrated a dangerous absurdity in Labour's transport policy. It showed how out of touch the Government now are.
Mr. Clive Efford (Eltham):
Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that traffic in and around London is projected to increase by between 30 and 50 per cent. by 2030? What would be his policies to address that issue?
Mr. Redwood:
First, we would privatise the tube and get massive new investment for the tube system, so that it provided a better alternative. Secondly, we would remove a great deal of clutter from the main routes so that traffic could flow better. Thirdly, by sorting out the enormity of fuel and diesel duty that has been heaped on taxi drivers, we would give them a much better deal than the hon. Gentleman's miserable Government have given them.
The Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Mr. John Prescott):
I beg to move, To leave out from "House" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
The speech of the right hon. Gentleman had more to do with humour than with any substantial ideas as to how we solve the problems. I suggest that he changes his scriptwriter--the jokes were not particularly humorous. It is a bit much for him to talk about the problems of the underground. We inherited a £1.2 billion under- investment in the system, because the previous Conservative Government refused to make a proper investment in the underground. The figures cited by the right hon. Gentleman are not accurate. The previous Government planned to invest £729 million in 1997-98; that was to be cut to £350 million in 1998-99 and to £161 million in 1999-2000. That was the judgment of the last Conservative Budget--the right hon. Gentleman can check the figures easily enough. It is not surprising that the Circle line and the Northern line are facing problems as a result of that disinvestment.
The right hon. Gentleman suggested that the local authority settlement was not a good one. In fact, it was a generous settlement and it was accepted by the local authorities. By any comparison with any settlement of the past five to seven years, it was indeed generous, and it was acknowledged as such by hon. Members on both sides of the House when it was announced. The right hon. Gentleman should not believe everything that he reads in the newspaper: the endlessly repeated story about my getting on to a bus and a Jaguar following behind is totally untrue. I constantly use public transport, and I can say that I spent 10 years of my working life working in public transport in this country; the right hon. Gentleman cannot make the same claim.
Mr. Redwood:
Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that the figures for the last three years of Conservative investment in London Transport are £955 million,£1,114 million and £1,060 million? This year--a year of planning and budgeting by the Labour Government--the figure is £564 million. Of course the Conservative Government's planned investment was lower: we were going to privatise and bring in private finance, so much of the investment would not count as public spending. Surely the fair contrast is between three years of £1 billion a year investment under the Conservatives and three years of miserable investment under Labour, with the figure falling to £564 million this year?
Mr. Prescott:
I made it clear that the figures to which I refer are those for projected expenditure for investment in the underground over three years. The right hon. Gentleman refers to the three years prior to that, but he should acknowledge that much of the money was loston the Jubilee line, because of the Conservative Government's incompetence in negotiating a contract that has led to an overspend of about £1 billion. That is a constant problem of the underground with which I have to deal: when I find money for investment, it is sucked away into the Jubilee line. I shall have more to say about that shortly.
It is interesting to note that the Opposition motion mentions both transport and planning.
Mr. Dale Campbell-Savours (Workington):
I am sorry to interrupt my right hon. Friend, but may I leave with him a hallmark of the Tory years drawn from the London
"deplores the previous Government's record of under-investment and disintegration in the transport network, its failure to tackle congestion as traffic rose by 75 per cent., the £1.2 billion investment backlog it left on the London Underground and its cut in road maintenance; commends the Government for producing the first Transport White Paper for 20 years, taking a far-sighted and more integrated approach than the previous administration, and linking together planning and transport policy more closely; and notes that the present Government has begun to tackle the inherited problems of under-investment, pollution and increasing traffic congestion, by a new radical integrated strategy, including an extra £1.8 billion for public transport and local transport management, winning back passengers to public transport, improving road maintenance, encouraging greater fuel efficiency, reducing pollution, and introducing the long-term policies needed to increase transport choice and improve Britain's transport system.".
I do not intend to treat the House with the contempt displayed by the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood). Transport is one of the Government's most important policy areas. It is important for the environment and for the effectiveness of our industry. We must address the problems that have occurred during the past 18 years--although they were occurring before then. Congestion and transport problems have been evident for a considerable period. There has been a move from public transport to the private vehicle; we have to change that. I shall try to address that point.
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