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9.21 pm
Mr. John Heppell (Nottingham, East): I shall not speak for long, but I thought that, as an ex-railway person and ex-chairman of an airport, some titbits of my personal knowledge might help the debate.
I shall start by trying to put things in context. It is important to recognise that in almost every mode of transport--bus, rail, aviation or the car--safety has improved significantly, not only in the two years since the Government came to office, but since 1987. That improvement cannot be attributed to any one Government.
I believe that it results from the fact that people have become more safety-conscious in many respects, and from new technology.
We should always aim to make things safer. When I worked for British Railways, there was what was called the failsafe culture. It was drummed into everyone that safety was the most important thing, which must be kept at the back of one's mind--not timetables or profits, only safety.
Everything had a back-up. Then we had the automatic warning system and the dead man's handle. Now that automatic train protection and the train protection and warning system are being introduced, we should not think of any of those things as exclusive. We should not suppose that any single thing will make trains safe, because it will not. The automatic warning system never made trains completely safe. What was called the dead man's handle--it was actually a foot pedal--never made trains safe although it was supposed to. None of the systems that are to be introduced will ever make trains completely safe.
It is a tragic fact that almost all the changes that have made railways safer have resulted from a major disaster.
Mrs. Laing:
I do not disagree with anything that the hon. Gentleman has said, but does he agree with his hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Snape), for whose expertise on transport matters I have great respect, who rightly said that it would be pointless for any organisation--public, private or a mixture--to spend a large amount of money on any system unless and until it was proved that that system would certainly work?
Mr. Heppell:
No system will work 100 per cent., and it is a false economy to decide not to introduce a system because it would prevent only two thirds of accidents. My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, East is correct; there will always be driver injuries and unforeseen circumstances. Even when we have ATP, there will be a way to isolate that system on every train. It is impossible to have ATP without a way of isolating it. Otherwise, if the system goes wrong, the engine is effectively stranded. If that happens on a main line, an accident will be waiting to happen. It is necessary to get trains off the line if a safety system has failed.
Individual drivers or signalmen will always make mistakes, but that should not rule out the introduction of safety measures. Indeed, we should bring them in as quickly as possible. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister in that respect. We do not need a crystal ball, because the record book sets out what has happened. In 1997, my right hon. Friend was calling for the Health and Safety Commission to produce proposals on rail safety. In March 1998, the Government were asking the HSC to accelerate its review of Railtrack's role in the setting of safety standards. I think that it was in July 1998 that my right hon. Friend signed the orders that will allow mark I stock with slamming doors to be dealt with, and the train protection and warning system to be introduced as soon as possible; I think decisions on those matters were brought forward by two years. We shall have none of the mark I stock in use after 2003. Similarly, TPWS will be in place by 2003.
It should be understood that TPWS is not perfect. It will not always be the answer to eliminating disasters. However, if we are to believe the technical advice that my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister has been given, TPWS could prevent about two thirds of signals passed at danger incidents, which will mean a significant decrease in the number of rail accidents.
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on taking a decision on TPWS. However, it should not stop us examining even more advanced train protection systems. New systems will come on to the market but they will take longer to develop than TPWS. We cannot wait for those systems to be developed. Instead, we must act now and introduce available protection systems. We must then try to ensure that more advanced systems are introduced as they are developed, and as it becomes apparent that they will work. Clearly we do not want to spend public money on things that do not work.
The Government's record on the railways has been exemplary. I am merely stating a fact and not trying to curry favour with my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister. However, it would be nice to see a smile from him every now and again.
There are other important issues apart from rail safety. We must recognise that the number of people killed on our roads is still significantly higher than we would like it to be. As has been said already this evening, there are still more people killed on the roads than in railway or aviation accidents. Our roads are still the most dangerous places in transport terms.
I hope that the Opposition will not try to play political games in terms of the pro-car and anti-car debate. I drive a car and so does my right hon. Friend, although my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary does not. Most of us drive cars and we want to be able to continue using them. However, we must recognise that we cannot continue using our cars as we do at present.
A significant point has been made by the hon. Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) about people who use their cars to take their children to school. I pass a school every morning on my way to the office in my constituency. If there is going to be an accident, it will be there, outside the school, where cars jockey for position to park right by the school gates. That cannot continue. There are other options, such a dial-a-bus. Some of the alternatives seem daft, but they are feasible. One suggestion is for people to pick up children on the way to school and take a trainload of them to school. All such ideas could help and should not be ruled out.
The real anti-car policy would be to do nothing. It would be bad for the car driver, bad for the pedestrian, bad for my children's lungs and my grandchildren's health--I do not want any of them to suffer because of the pollution being emitted into the air--and bad for the world. Everybody has heard of global warming.
Mrs. Laing:
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way again; it is very kind of him. Will he encourage the Deputy Prime Minister to build roads that make towns and villages safer by building more bypasses to take dangerous trucks, lorries and fast cars out of villages and towns through which they should not pass in the first place? That is what the Deputy Prime Minister should be doing with the transport budget.
Mr. Heppell:
I shall not take the simplistic view. Building more roads does not mean that people will be safer. In general, building more roads means that more
We cannot continue the Conservative policies of removing obstacles from roads. In 20 mph zones and where there have been sleeping policemen and other real obstacles that have made drivers physically slow down--not just a sign showing a speed limit of 30 mph--there has been a reduction in the number of children killed.
I am quite happy if Opposition Members have to spend another 10 or 20 minutes, half an hour or even two hours on their journeys if that means that children's lives are safe. I do not want to be party political, but I am pleased that the Opposition are returning to the views of the earlier Conservative Government on transport, rather than the views expressed by their shadow Secretary of State in his paper on transport, which were crazy and a recipe for killing children on our roads.
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