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Mr. Ronnie Fearn (Southport): Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Hill: I shall give way but I wish to lay down a benchmark: I know that many Members are eager to participate in the debate and I will take only a limited number of interventions.
Mr. Fearn: My intervention will be brief. The Minister has mentioned signals. Following the Paddington tragedy, 10 black spots were highlighted. One of them is in Southport at Birkdale station. The situation is urgent because every 20 minutes a train passes the black spot. Is the Minister saying that we must wait for inquiries and for action, or will action be taken this week on the blackspots?
Mr. Hill: I am saying that we have asked the inspectorate to look at precisely that issue, and we expect a report in the near future. We shall certainly be considering all the blackspots, including those in the hon. Gentleman's constituency about which he rightly expresses serious concern. We share that concern and we hope to have a positive result in the nearest possible future.
My right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister was able to confirm both that following receipt of the independent Health and Safety Commission's report, which he initiated last year into concerns expressed about the wide range of responsibilities residing in Railtrack's safety and standards directorate, he has requested the HSC to report on necessary follow-up action, and that the Government are minded to transfer those functions out of Railtrack, provided that that does not result in an increase in risk. Finally, my right hon. Friend announced the convening of a rail safety summit for next Monday.
That comprehensive list of actions reflects my right hon. Friend's total commitment to securing the best possible safety regime on our railway network. Concern for transport safety has been a guiding light of his long and distinguished record in public life. He will be expanding on these matters when he appears before the Select Committee on Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs tomorrow. It is entirely typical, as well as right and proper, that he should be in his place for this debate.
Sadly, we cannot bring back those whose lives were lost in the Ladbroke Grove disaster, but it is my duty as a Minister to make every effort to ensure that avoidable accidents are not repeated, and that we have the safest possible transport system in this country.
Mr. John Smith (Vale of Glamorgan):
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. Does he agree that one of the most harrowing aspects of the Paddington disaster was not knowing for such a long time how many people were in carriage H? Is he aware that there is no numerical limitation on the number of people who can ride across the country in a passenger rail carriage--unlike an aeroplane, bus or any other form of transport? Does he agree that we should examine that as a matter of urgency?
Mr. Hill:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his remarks. It was, indeed, a source of great concern that we did not know how many people were in that carriage. There is no evidence whatever that the number of people travelling in a carriage contributes to accidents, but it is clear that, when an accident occurs and there are a large number of people in the carriages, it can only exacerbate the situation. That is an important point, which I can assure my hon. Friend we will consider seriously.
There can be no more important matter for a Government--any Government--to address than public safety. That is why issues such as crime reduction, public health, environmental responsibility and effective safety regulation are all central to the work of the Government.
Transport safety is at the very heart of policy making in my Department. Transport is essential for the sustenance of everyday life. We all need transport to get to work, to visit friends and family, and to make our shopping trips. We need transport that provides comfort, convenience, reliability and affordability, but above all else, we want assurances that we can get to our destination safely.
Mr. Norman Baker (Lewes):
I am grateful to the Minister for his commitment to safety. That matter is extremely important to my constituents, who were shocked by the train crash in my constituency--which fortunately did not result in any loss of life--only two weeks after Paddington. My constituents want to know when the Government will be able to say that a system is in place to prevent trains from passing a red light. That is the question that they have asked me to ask Ministers tonight.
Mr. Hill:
The hon. Gentleman is right to raise the disturbing accident that occurred in his constituency on Monday evening. We await the findings, at the earliest possible moment, of the internal railway industry inquiry into the accident, and also the inquiry being carried out by the Health and Safety Executive. We are anxious to move quickly to the institution of a train protection system that is as safe as possible. That is what we have asked Sir David Davies to look at, and we expect his report before the new year. We also expect to start work on implementing his recommendations at the earliest opportunity. I hope that that will reassure the hon. Gentleman's constituents.
There are a number of key considerations that I believe it is important to keep clearly in focus as we address transport safety. First, all public transport operators,
whether privately or publicly owned, need to make safety their first priority. It would be totally unacceptable for financial interests to take precedence over safety.
Another key consideration is that safety standards should be declared and enforced. That means open information, and effective monitoring and enforcement. The safety culture needs to be intrinsic in every organisation, from top to bottom. It is not good enough to try to shift blame or castigate individual workers. It is the clear responsibility of management at all levels to make sure that a working environment does not develop in which accidents can happen.
Finally, the Government will not let cost considerations alone drive decision making on transport safety. Of course, there must be an assessment of cost-effectiveness when major capital expenditure is required, but we are committed to improving transport safety and we will weigh all the factors necessary to reach sane and sensible decisions.
Mr. Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington):
Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Hill:
On that point, but this is one of the last interventions that I shall take.
Mr. Brake:
Can the hon. Gentleman undertake that the subsidy for rail, which is to fall from £1.9 billion in 1997 to £900 million in 2002, will be increased? Is that what he is saying?
Mr. Hill:
I am not saying that, but on the issue that is germane to the debate--rail safety--let me reiterate the clear assurance given by my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister in his remarks yesterday that when it comes to train safety, the money will be found.
Mr. Nigel Jones (Cheltenham)
rose--
Mr. Hill:
Let me continue for a moment. May I say, too, that common-sense safety considerations apply to every single person in the country, not just to workers and managers in the transport industries. Putting safety first is a responsibility that we all share.
I shall deal now with some facts. I do so not with callous intent, and certainly not in a spirit of complacency. I cannot stress strongly enough that the Government are not complacent about safety--very far from it. However, we need to have a rational debate if we are to work together in avoiding future tragedies across transport modes.
Since the Ladbroke Grove disaster, a suggestion has crept in that somehow that accident is symptomatic of a decline in transport safety generally. I have even read newspaper commentators suggesting that it proved that we have a third-world transport system. That is simply not so. There are parts of the world where fatalities among bus passengers caused by badly maintained vehicles, speeding or overloading are almost everyday news. In Britain we do not, and will not, tolerate such levels of transport fatalities. Indeed, it is the relative rarity of major disasters that makes accidents such as Ladbroke Grove so shocking for us.
In any case, we should not focus exclusively on spectacular disasters; that is a media temptation. The truth is that every transport accident that involves death or serious injury is a disaster for those involved.
Let me illustrate with a few facts and figures the gradual improvement in transport safety. For a start, we live in an ever more mobile society. Between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s, the average distance travelled per person per year in Great Britain increased by 27 per cent. That level of mobility inevitably brings with it increased exposure to risk, yet over the same period, the total number of transport fatalities in Great Britain fell--from 5,296 in 1987 to 3,516 in 1996. That is a fall of one third in absolute terms, and an even greater fall in terms of the increasing amount of travel that we all undertake.
Of course the great majority of transport deaths do not occur in rail, air or maritime catastrophes, but in the daily toll on our roads--yet even on the roads the picture has improved significantly in recent years, as personal behaviour, technology and design standards have all improved. Between 1988 and 1998 the number of people killed on Britain's roads fell from 5,052 to 3,421. The number of child pedestrians killed has more than halved, from 282 to 103 per year. That is still far too many, but the trend is in the right direction, and we are determined to keep it that way.
Let me say it again: every one of those deaths is someone's tragedy, but let us not fall into the trap of supposing that travel in this country is becoming more unsafe. It is not. The figures demonstrate as much.
I believe that the House and the wider public understand that however much we regard safety as the first requirement, in practice absolute safety is unattainable. Comments are made about safer systems overseas, but those are not foolproof either. Planes crash in the United States, high-speed trains crash in Germany, and even nuclear installations in Japan can go wrong.
The House will also be aware that, in road safety terms--roads account for the vast majority of fatalities around the world--Britain is just about the safest country in Europe, and probably in the world. Again, I would totally refute any suggestion that the Government are in any way complacent about transport safety. As I have already acknowledged, my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister is recognised for his very deep and personal commitment to safety, and we arrived in government determined to take substantive steps to make transport safer for the public and the work force.
That commitment was made absolutely clear in our White Paper on the future of transport in July 1998, which had much to say on the subject of travelling safely, and set out some of the many actions that the Government are taking to improve transport safety.
The list of our initiatives is long, and I will not delay the House by reciting them all, but let me cite a few examples. On the subject of railways, we announced in August the introduction of the train protection and warning system, which is a huge improvement on the existing automatic warning system and would have prevented the Ladbroke Grove junction disaster had it been installed on the Thames Trains commuter service. It was intended that that system would be in place across the entire network by the end of 2003.
We have brought forward by two years the removal from the network of all remaining mark I slam-door carriages and launched the secure stations initiative. Last year we commissioned, and have now received, the Health and Safety Commission report on Railtrack's role in safety and standard setting. We are following up with an urgent review, minded, as we are, to transfer the main functions of the safety and standards directorate out of Railtrack.
We have also launched a review and restructuring of London Underground's safety case. There are few, if any, transport systems more suffused with a safety culture than London Underground. Under the proposed public-private partnership, public sector London Underground Ltd. will continue to have responsibility for the railway safety case for the whole underground, and the PPP will simply not go ahead unless it can be shown to contribute to improved safety.
In the air, we have subjected our aviation safety oversight system to a rigorous audit by the International Civil Aviation Organisation. We were the first major aviation country to do so, and were pleased to receive an excellent report. We have intensified our programme of ramp checks of foreign aircraft coming into UK airports and a number of actions have been taken against unsatisfactory operators.
Against that background of proactive concern to improve safety, it was absurd for the hon. Member for Bath to suggest, in what I thought was the weakest part of an otherwise good speech, that the Government would be willing to compromise on air safety in pursuit of their proposal for a National Air Traffic Services PPP. I find it bizarre to describe as privatisation a share proposal that will leave the Government and the work force with a majority of shares, with the Government's 49 per cent. shareholding underpinned by golden share powers. That is emphatically not a privatisation. It is a public-private partnership that is designed to lever in from the private sector the vital new capital--£1 billion over 10 years--that is necessary to ensure that NATS maintains the highest standards of safety in a constantly expanding aviation market.
The hon. Member for Bath should also be aware that responsibility for aviation safety does not lie with NATS, which is the service provider, but with the Civil Aviation Authority. To be precise, that responsibility lies with the CAA safety regulation group, which has wide-ranging powers and ample experience in the UK of regulating the safety of private air traffic control services with no suggestion of a problem.
Indeed, as part of the PPP, we propose to reinforce the separation of safety regulation from service provision. That will ensure that those two functions are undertaken in two separate organisations, which is an objective that airspace users, the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Committee and the former Monopolies and Mergers Commission have long recommended.
Safety in the air will always be the Government's overriding priority. We have placed the same high priority on safety on the seas. We have reopened the investigations into the Derbyshire and Gaul sinkings, merged the former Marine Safety and Coastguard agencies to form a new integrated Maritime and Coastguard Agency, and established the Thames river safety inquiry.
On the roads, we have given local authorities the power to impose 20 mph speed limits without recourse to the approval of the Secretary of State, undertaken a major review of speed policy and championed the development of crash testing of cars for consumer information to standards higher than those set by regulation. In addition, we have reviewed our road safety strategy and targets with a view to introducing demanding fatality reduction targets by 2010. We will make a major announcement about our road safety plans shortly.
That is no more than a brief summary of some of our transport safety initiatives. I could offer the House many other examples and I should emphasise that none of the actions I have mentioned is an any way directly related to the Ladbroke Grove rail disaster. These are actions we have been taking ever since we entered office, which demonstrates beyond any question that transport safety is an absolute priority. However, the Ladbroke Grove crash forces us to re-examine everything we have been doing and to redouble our efforts to achieve the safest possible transport systems.
I remind the House that we are investigating wider structural questions in relation to transport safety. We have under way a transport safety review, which was launched at the end of last year in response to recommendations from the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Committee. The review, which has undertaken consultations and an analysis of transport safety structures overseas, is nearing completion. It will advise us on whether the structure of transport safety regulation and accident investigation in Britain is balanced correctly.
I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody)--my mentor, whose knowledge of and concern for transport safety is unrivalled in the House--is waiting keenly for the review's conclusions. I want to assure her that we are working hard to complete the task by the end of the year and that we will benchmark our conclusions against the lessons from Ladbroke Grove.
I want to pay tribute to people involved in transport safety in this country. The detailed inquiries that we have set up may find fault with the actions or inactions of individuals, but I know that many people in the transport world who have devoted their careers and lives to safety issues will be feeling very bruised by association with the Ladbroke Grove disaster. I emphasise that it is not the intention of the Government to find scapegoats. It is all too easy for politicians and journalists to point the finger when they do not have to take the critical life and death decisions that they are debating. I hope that the House will therefore join me in commending the important safety work done by many people in all sectors of transport, on which we all rely for our safe journey home.
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