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Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody (Crewe and Nantwich): I have been listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman. I hope that he will forgive me, but I am not sure whether he is in favour of an independent safety authority. Would he make that clear?

Mr. Woodward: The hon. Lady's point is extremely well made. I am in favour of the Government getting on with the task--[Interruption.] The Deputy Prime Minister does not like it. He delegates responsibility to others to produce a decision, yet when he has to make a decision, he flies in the face of those who advise him otherwise. He may not like to be reminded of his decision, but he made it--[Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I cannot have hon. Members and, for that matter, right hon. Members shouting across the Chamber.

Mr. Woodward: It is odd, is it not, that for 19 months--

Mr. Heald: Does my hon. Friend agree that the Health and Safety Commission is an independent safety commission? Is it not extraordinary that the Deputy Prime Minister should ignore its viewpoint?

Mr. Woodward: It is not only extraordinary but astounding.

It is odd, is it not, that for 19 months it seemed impossible for the Government to reach any firm view other than to continue calls for further reviews. Suddenly, following the

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disaster, it seems that a decision can be reached in a few days--even hours--even though that view flies in the face of those independent people who told the Deputy Prime Minister:

"any decision . . . should be taken in the light of a wider and more formal sounding of views in the industry."

Mr. Prescott: We will answer and respond to many detailed questions in the debate or by letter if they need to be answered. The hon. Gentleman asks when I was concerned about signals passed on red. Yes, I was--not just now, but last year. I ordered the Health and Safety Executive to bring in an automatic train protection system, which the previous Government had put off because they said that they could not afford it.

Mr. Woodward: That is not exactly what the right hon. Gentleman has been saying, but perhaps he is now telling us that he took action in August when he had those figures. We would be delighted to hear this evening what action he took this August when he realised that serious incidents had increased by 25 per cent. It seems tragic that it took a rail disaster to force sufficient attention to be paid to the issue, which had been flagged up 19 months before in the Select Committee report.

During those 19 months, great priority was given to the decisions that were required to deal with the Railways Bill, as well as discussions about punctuality, performance and investment levels. That certainly occupied Ministers and officials. During that time, was equal attention given, and by whom, to the serious questions about safety that had been so blatantly flagged up by the Select Committee--the August figures, the HSE report of September and now the Tansley interim report? What was going on in the Department during August and September?

As the Deputy Prime Minister seems so keen to rise to his feet, perhaps he will tell the House at which point he had a meeting to discuss the rise in SPAD figures, about which he would have received notice in August.

Railtrack's role has borne and will continue to bear considerable scrutiny, but others must bear responsibility as well. We now know that both the Health and Safety Commission and Ministers have long been aware of the dangers courted. We need to know, and the public have a right to know, what action the Department and Ministers were taking during the summer when those figures dramatically changed.

The calls for freedom of information have been much heralded by this Government and yet they have been remarkably secretive about information on some aspects of Railtrack. The Government have been conducting negotiations with Railtrack to award it a contract to run a number of London's tube lines. Yet when pressed on the conditions and terms of that contract, the Deputy Prime Minister refuses to make the information public or to put the contract out to tender. Whatever the merits of the case, what is surely clear now is that the Government have a duty to make all that information publicly available--information on Railtrack, including the secret deals that the Deputy Prime Minister has been conducting regarding the future of London Underground.

Mr. Ivan Henderson (Harwich): Was the hon. Gentleman aware, when the Conservative Government

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were in control of our railways, that employees in the industry were afraid to speak up about safety concerns because they were afraid of losing their jobs and of being disciplined in an era of job insecurity? During that time, that Government did nothing to allow those people to speak out about their safety concerns in the industry.

Mr. Woodward: That is an important point because part of the culture of British Rail was that it was difficult to speak up and there is still a culture in which it is difficult to do so. We welcome the fact that people are speaking up and revealing malpractice--of course, that is right. Whatever the merits of the case, one person we want to speak up is the Deputy Prime Minister. We want him to tell the House and to publish the terms and conditions under which Railtrack will be given the underground lines. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will agree that the interests of the House and the country would be better served if the Deputy Prime Minister did not conduct those negotiations in secret, but published the details.

Confidence in transport safety needs to be restored, but it will not be in a climate of secrecy. A culture of safety rather than one of blame, requires--

Mr. Peter Snape (West Bromwich, East): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Woodward: No, I am about to finish. Such a culture requires the Government to be wholly transparent in their dealings with Railtrack and other transport companies. If, as is true of their dealings with the overground, the Government are transparent about the underground, the public will be reassured. Perhaps tonight the Deputy Prime Minister, who seems so keen to intervene from a sedentary position, will agree to publish that information and allow all the public to see his plans for the underground and his secret deals with Railtrack.

8.19 pm

Mr. Peter Snape (West Bromwich, East): I must declare an interest as a member of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, and someone who spent his working life in the railway industry. I am also a director of a National Express subsidiary, which is exclusively a bus company.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) on the way in which he introduced the debate. He did it non-controversially and briefly, for which we are grateful in such a short debate. I welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr. Hill) to the Dispatch Box. I always thought that I was his mentor, but he has given that job to my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody)--[Interruption.] Whichever one of us is responsible, we have done a pretty good job, given his performance tonight. He was both lucid and informative, and I am sure that the House looks forward to hearing from him again.

I am afraid that my congratulations end there. This is the second time that I have heard the hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Woodward) speak in recent weeks. He and I addressed a meeting of the Railway Development Society a few Saturdays ago here in London. He demonstrated on that occasion the same weakness that he has demonstrated tonight. If one turns up with a pre-prepared speech, it is a bit hard to ad lib. At that meeting, he accused me of

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saying various things that I had not said because they were on his brief. Tonight he accused the Government of various things that they had not done because they were on his brief.

How would it be possible to conduct negotiations with Railtrack about the future of the London underground--not that this has very much to do with transport safety--in the full glare of publicity? I do not think that the hon. Gentleman knows very much, given his track record, but I presume that he knows enough about business to be aware that a certain confidentiality must be observed. To accuse my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister in the way that he did was deplorable--it suggests that the person who prepared his brief does not know any more about business than he does.

As for the other accusation that the hon. Gentleman made, I find myself, like my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich, confused. I am not sure whether he was complaining that my right hon. Friend had spent all the time since the preliminary report first appeared in spring last year not doing anything or that he acted precipitately in making his decision post-Paddington. He did not make clear which of the two things he was complaining about, but perhaps that is not surprising given the confusion of his speech.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned signals passed at danger. He was right to point out that such incidents had increased in the past 12 months. It is fair to point out that the number of trains on Britain's railways increased by about 1,000 a day in the past 12 months. Given those circumstances, perhaps it is not surprising that the number of SPADs has increased.

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