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Mr. Christopher Fraser (Mid-Dorset and North Poole): Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could explain the fact that his hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) approved, assisted, co-operated with and supported the Newbury bypass.
Mr. Baker: I shall take that one head on. I did not approve of the Newbury bypass being built, and I have made that clear.
Mr. Fraser: The hon. Gentleman's hon. Friend does, though.
Mr. Baker: He does indeed. I do not approve of that bypass. It was not Liberal Democrat policy to build such a road.
Mr. Fraser: The hon. Member for Newbury is standing as leader of the hon. Gentleman's party. He may be its future leader.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin): Order. I have to instruct the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mr. Fraser) to be quiet.
Mr. Baker: The hon. Gentleman has asked me a direct question, and I shall give him a direct and honest answer. I thought that it was a mistake to build that road, and I did not support it. It was not Liberal Democrat policy at the time, but it was supported by the local Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament.
When the shadow Transport Minister sums up, will he tell us exactly what his party's roads policy is? Is it, as the Conservative motion implies--they criticise the Government for not doing so--to increase road capacity in line with traffic growth forecasts? Are we back to meeting projected demand? Are we back to road-building programmes that meet the projected increase of 142 per cent., which is the 1989 figure? Are we back to covering the countryside in more and more concrete? If that is not Conservative policy, what is? What is the Conservatives' road-building programme? They criticise the Government
for knocking their programme down to 37 schemes,but how many roads are in the Conservative party's programme? Let us hear those facts from the Conservatives. If they are not prepared to say what their policy is, they should not criticise the Government in such a cavalier way.
The public transport strand of Conservative policy in the past 18 years was a total disaster. Rail fares increased by 74.8 per cent. above inflation between 1974 and 1996, whereas road prices and the costs of driving decreased over that period by 3.5 per cent. We should remember that when we hear about the motorist being clobbered. It is the rail passenger who has been clobbered under the Tories. We must keep that in perspective when we hear the Conservatives argue for changes to fuel duty.
While road users were given every encouragement and were told that they were wonderful and were given a road-building programme, rail users were given a second-class service, with clapped-out rolling stock, signals that did not work and no encouragement for rail investment. The rail network represented everything that the Conservative Government hated, especially the then Prime Minister, Baroness Thatcher. It was fixed, regulated and in the public sector. She did not like it, and people who had to travel by rail did so only because there was no alternative. That is not a successful transport policy.
After 1986, with the calamity of bus deregulation, there was a catastrophic drop in the number of people using buses.
Mr. Redwood:
Will the hon. Gentleman move on from his biased history lesson and talk about the future? Does the Liberal party support the M4 bus lane? Would it like to see more bus lanes on other motorways?
Mr. Baker:
I remind the Front-Bench spokesman that my party is the Liberal Democrat party and not the Liberal party. Yes, of course we support bus lanes. If they are proved to work, we will support them. As the Deputy Prime Minister said, the figures from the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions suggest that, during that experiment, travelling times were reduced not just for buses and taxis, but for private motor vehicles. Each bus lane must be judged on its merits, but according to the figures that I assume are accurate--they have not been spun--that particular bus lane is working. If so, I do not understand why the Conservatives oppose it, other than for purely dogmatic reasons--but that would not surprise me in the least.
During the Conservative years, the poor and the disadvantaged suffered: the third of the population with no access to a car were expected to pay more than car users. While people were getting company car benefits to glide into central London and other city centres in their cars, other people had to pay the so-called market rate for second-rate buses and trains--and they had to stand all the way. Where was the comfort for them?
I could not believe that I heard the right hon. Member for Wokingham describe safety measures and road traffic calming devices as "impediments". They are not there to save lives, or to help pedestrians and cyclists. They get in the way--they get in the way of people, such as the right hon. Gentleman, who want to drive very fast down roads
so that people on foot must get out of the way. [Interruption.] The record tomorrow morning will show that the word "impediment" was used.
Mr. Redwood:
The hon. Gentleman should listen more carefully. There are impediments such as the M4 bus lane, which is thoroughly unsafe as it is in the fast lane of the motorway and adjacent to the new fast lane. Of course we support safety improvements on other roads, where they are needed.
Mr. Baker:
The record will show that the word "impediment" was used in response to a query on chicanes and traffic calming.
Conservative policy is this: car drivers should be entitled and encouraged to drive where they like--as uninhibited and as cheaply as possible--and the environment must pay. The public transport users must pay. The pedestrians and cyclists must pay. The poor and disadvantaged must pay. Those with health problems must pay. Nothing must stop the car driver, or the great car economy. What kind of a balanced transport policy is that?
Mr. Paterson:
In a rural area such as mine, the majority of people drive to work in a car. According to Shropshire county council, the figure is 67 per cent. What does the Liberal party say to those car users who, thanks to Government policies supported by the hon. Gentleman's party, will now be paying, on average, £900 per year in extra tax?
Mr. Baker:
First, I have no idea what the Liberal party would say, as it is a different party from mine. The Liberal Democrats recognise--I represent a rural area myself--that there are journeys in rural areas which must be made by private car where there is no realistic alternative. That is why we have a policy on vehicle excise duty under which someone driving a car of under 1600 cc for up to 24,000 miles a year will be better off, while someone with a gas guzzler will be worse off. The answer is that one chooses one's car carefully and one makes one's journeys carefully, and one will not suffer if one lives in a rural area.
We want to support the Government in what they are doing, as we believe that their heart is in the right place. The ideas coming from the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions are the right ideas, and I do not doubt the commitment of Ministers to improving transport policies and practice in this country. However, they sometimes make it difficult for themselves.
The White Paper is full of good ideas, but they are not being implemented as quickly or as thoroughly as we would like. As the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich said, we need, above all, time for legislation and time to introduce changes. There is only so much that can be done by cajoling, shouting and encouraging. We need legislation to bring about changes, and so far that has not been proposed.
There are certain measures in the Greater London Authority Bill--affecting London only, of course--but other measures have not been proposed to improve transport nationally. We are two years through this
Parliament--probably halfway through--and we are still awaiting legislation on this priority subject. I am sure that the Deputy Prime Minister has been pushing for legislation, but the fact is that he has not got it.
Mr. Prescott:
What does the hon. Gentleman want?
Mr. Baker:
I will come to that. Either the Prime Minister and the Cabinet are getting cold feet about the radical nature of the White Paper, or the Deputy Prime Minister has been outmanoeuvred by his colleagues who have other Bills that they want to propose, and he has not won the battle in Cabinet.
We want a clear statement of how the Government are to achieve the road traffic reductions implied in previous legislation, and those agreed to in the Road Traffic Reduction (National Targets) Act 1998. Early-day motion 323, signed by 319 Members of Parliament, calls for real reductions in road traffic--not reductions in road traffic growth, a phrase that is now making its appearance. Of those 319, 236 are Labour Members. So the majority of the parliamentary Labour party have signed up to real reductions in road traffic, along with all Liberal Democrat Members, with the exception of the party leader, who by convention is not supposed to sign early-day motions. Only 19 Tory Members have signed, which shows that they are committed not to road traffic reduction but to road traffic increase.
The Deputy Prime Minister said:
The Government need to act more quickly and with more radical policies to bring about the reductions. There is no doubt that they inherited a terrible situation, with problems of infrastructure, especially in the rail network; of pollution, which causes 24,000 premature deaths a year and has led to one in six children having asthma; and of congestion. Nobody expects them to turn the oil tanker round overnight, but my constituents are chafing at the bit. We know that we must have the stick of restrictions or extra charges but we want the carrot of improvements in public transport, which are not happening as quickly as they should.
The Government should be brave and legislate as soon as possible, in the next Session if not before, for a Strategic Rail Authority. They will by and large have our support for that. We want more real investment in rail, not the Railtrack version, dressing up maintenance as investment. We want rail lines to be reopened. I can give
the Deputy Prime Minister a list of those that could be reopened. We want freight-only lines to be used for passengers. We want new stations to be slotted in where they make commercial sense.
"I agree to that commitment"--
to reduce overall road traffic and not only road traffic growth--
"judge me on my performance in five years."--[Official Report, 20 October 1998; Vol. 317, c. 1071.]
That was a brave statement and I am pleased that he made it. His ministerial colleague, the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Ms Jackson), said:
"our commitment to achieving not only a reduction in road traffic, but an absolute reduction, stands firm."--[Official Report, 18 March 1999; Vol. 327, c. 1365.]
However, in a parliamentary answer to me in January she said that it is estimated that, with the transport White Paper policies in place--which they are not yet--traffic will grow by 37 per cent. by 2010 relative to 1990 vehicle kilometres. That is traffic growth of 25 per cent. over the next 10 years.
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