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Mr. Prescott: I remember it well, too. Anyone who travels on the underground has witnessed that deterioration over the many years of Tory Administration. The Select Committees of the House of Commons have investigated and confirmed the level of disinvestment in the underground, and we are witnessing the consequences of that long period of disinvestment.
I should like to remind the House of the Labour Government's inheritance, because I did not recognise it from the description offered by the right hon. Member for Wokingham. Let me give one or two facts which can be found in the books, some of which the right hon. Gentleman has before him. Eighteen years of clear Tory misrule were dominated by deregulation and privatisation--the concept that competition could solve any problem. The consequences were that our national rail networks were broken up and privatised, worsening the service and weakening regulation. I do not suppose that anyone denies that--it is in the newspapers almost every day.
The bus industry was deregulated and the evidence of the consequences is absolutely clear: bus networks were broken up, raising fares and reducing the number of passengers by one third. Curiously, the only place where the number of bus passengers increased was the London area, where buses were not deregulated. Where regulation prevailed in the bus industry, the results were a better service and an increased number of passengers. The factors that undermined bus services were deregulation and privatisation. I have already mentioned the £1.2 billion backlog of investment in London Underground and the £400 million cut made in the last Tory Budget--again, the figures are there for all to see.
The Tories' massive £200 million cut in road maintenance expenditure resulted in roads being in their worst state since surveys began. The document containing that fact was published only recently, but it covered a period of Tory Administration. Inevitably, congestion increased, despite roughly £16 billion being spent on the roads programme. In 1979, there were 42 motor cars per kilometre of road, whereas by 1997, that figure had increased to 60 motor cars per kilometre of road--a increase of almost 50 per cent.
According to the Confederation of British Industry, the cost of congestion to the United Kingdom economy was £20 billion. Furthermore, up to 24,000 premature deaths were caused by exposure to air pollution. The Tory policies forced more people to rely on their car, and tilted the balance from public transport to the private car. Consequently, the Tories were responsible for introducing the term "gridlock" to Britain. Such congestion led to massive costs and frustration.
The House probably thinks that I am being somewhat biased, so I shall pray in aid someone else's description of the transport system:
Mr. Redwood:
I do not see it like that. My article shows that the country became a lot more prosperous under the Conservatives and that people wanted to use their cars, so we needed to make some improvements to the transport system to accommodate their wishes. That does not give the right hon. Gentleman an excuse to come along and make the problem 10 times worse, with his bus lane on the M4 and his closure of half the tube system. Instead, it means that he should follow our policy by privatising the tube system and clearing the roads.
Mr. Prescott:
Let us not pretend that traffic jams started with new Labour. They were with us before, and they became considerably worse because of the policies pursued by the previous Administration.
Let me give another quote from the same article, in which the right hon. Gentleman offered ideas about how to improve the transport system. Under the headline, "How I would free drivers from gridlock", he wrote:
No wonder he does not like to acknowledge the positive results of the M4 bus lane pilot. Whatever the rhetoric in the papers or from Opposition Members, it is clear that, in the first two weeks of the M4 bus lane pilot, 3,500 buses and taxis improved their journey times by 16 minutes, and car journeys were shortened by two minutes in the rush hour. Furthermore, there is a projected 20 per cent. cut in accidents. I believe that result to be win, win, win, but all that we hear from the right hon. Gentleman is whinge, whinge, whinge.
Let me make it clear: I am certainly not anti-car. I am for ever being called Two-Jag Prescott, so I assume that that means that I love motor vehicles--and I do. The right hon. Member for Wokingham said that he has two Jaguars; they are beautiful cars and I like them. However, that does not mean to say that I do not think there should be a better public transport policy and that we should seek to encourage people to use public transport more and their vehicles less--as each of us must do. I certainly observe that rule. I am not anti-car, but I am anti-congestion.
I assume we all share that view. The car has done much to improve the lives of people in this country and I am determined that we will do all that we can to ensure that the benefits of car ownership are not lost to future generations. However, those benefits will be lost if we allow congestion to grow at its current rate. There will be 6 million more cars on the roads in 20 years if we do not effect some kind of change. Try to consider how much road space will be necessary to accommodate 6 million more cars. We cannot build our way out of the problem--just ask Lord Parkinson who, as Secretary of State, proposed 14 new roads for London. Londoners soon made it absolutely clear what they thought about that road programme.
We cannot build our way out of the problem--and that is not only my conclusion but that of the previous Administration in its last transport Green Paper. The Conservatives advocated moves to better public transport systems and the shadow transport spokesman said that he agreed with that policy. The previous Government came to that conclusion late in the day--after 17 years in government, they decided that they had got it wrong. The Opposition transport spokesman admitted that today, when he said:
The worst thing for motorists would be to follow the same route as the Tories--the right hon. Member for Wokingham seemed to advocate that course of action in his speech--and surrender to congestion. That would be bad for the economy, bad for the environment and bad for the motorists--just ask them. Doing nothing is not an option; we must make changes if we are to have any influence over congestion.
Mr. Efford:
Does my right hon. Friend agree that those who claim that the bus lane on the M4 is the cause of congestion are implying that there have never been any problems on that motorway? I have worked in London's transport system and I can vouch for the fact that there were enormous problems. Does my right hon. Friend agree also that traffic jams on the M4 are a sign of things to come if we do not do something to make public transport flow freely and shift people out of their cars and on to public transport?
Mr. Prescott:
It is about offering people a better choice. Our policy aims precisely to allow people freely to make the decision to use public transport more and their cars less. It is a voluntary choice, but other European countries--which have more cars per head of population than we do--have managed to persuade their motorists to use their cars less and public transport more. People do not use public transport in this country because that system has been run down.
"We have gridlock. The rush hour begins just after 6 am and is still in full flow three hours later. In many parts of the South East the traffic queue for one junction runs into the queue for the next,
29 Jun 1999 : Column 207and for the one beyond that. The station car park is full. The queue for Heathrow is long. The M25 regularly seizes up. Everyone tells me something should be done about it."
Absolutely right, but who made those comments? The right hon. Member for Wokingham. It is interesting that he wrote that, not last week, or last month, but in 1996, after 16 years of Tory Administration and failed transport policy. Despite all the rhetoric that we have just heard, that is what he wrote when he was in the throes of another election within his party. The right hon. Gentleman was writing of the collapse of the transport system and the collapse of Tory party policy. How else can he explain that article? It was an attack on the failure of the transport policies of the Conservative Government of which he was a member.
"The main A roads, especially the main routes into London, should be freed of any traffic management impediments"--
such as speed cameras, speed humps and so on. In other words, "deregulation of the roads". The right hon. Gentleman regards driving on the left as an affront to personal liberty, and traffic lights as an attack on human rights, but can the House imagine him on the M4 if the changes that he suggests were made? The frustration of trying to travel on such a congested deregulated road would cause him to try to return to his home planet, Vulcan, with a cry of "Beam me up, Scotty!"
"Mistakes have been made; we came quite late to this whole issue."
He is probably right about that, but we suffered a great deal as a result of the Conservatives' policy mistakes.
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