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Mr. Gray: I thank the Minister for giving way a second time. He makes great play of the fact that we invented the escalator in 1994. Does he accept that in 1994 one third, or 28.4 per cent., of the tax raised from motorists was spent on roads, whereas today less than half of that--14.1 per cent. of the tax raised from motorists--is spent on roads? Surely that says it all.
Mr. Raynsford: The hon. Gentleman, like the hon. Member for North Essex, has chosen some rather selective statistics. I put it to him that if one is increasing investment in public transport, the proportion spent on roads will inevitably fall. That is a simple matter of economics. Percentages cannot remain constant if one increases the proportion spent in a different area.
We fully recognise that we cannot put right overnight, or even in a couple of years, the problems that have built up over two decades--but we will put those problems right.
Before I move on, I must take the hon. Member for North Essex to task over the wildly misleading figures that he quoted on total expenditure. He made some incredible claims. I have to put it to him that Conservative spending on transport in England was not an average of £12 billion, as he said. It averaged £8 billion a year during the period of the Major Government--1992-93 to 1996-97. Labour's spending on transport in England from 1997-98 to 2001-02, bearing in mind the fact that in the first two years we took over the expenditure plans of the previous Government, will average £7.6 billion. The difference is mainly due to the falling rail subsidies to train operating companies--a system put in place by the Conservative Government. So we will have no more nonsense from Conservative Members with false statistics about spending patterns. If we want a fair comparison of spending on transport, let us compare like with like.
In the 1997 annual report, the last produced by the Conservative Government, the figure given for total spend on transport in 1994-95 was £5.9 billion. That was the year that the hon. Member for North Essex selected, because it was the highest year for Conservative spending, so I will do him credit and use his figure. As the hon. Gentleman has said, total spend last year was just under £6 billion. Before anyone points out that that is a real decrease in spending, do not forget that rail subsidy has fallen over that period from £1.8 billion to £1.1 billion. Those are the facts.
Unlike the previous Administration, this Government are willing to take the tough decisions and invest for the long term.
Mr. Bob Russell (Colchester): The Minister has quoted many figures. He has yet to mention road safety. Does he agree that the cost of every fatal accident is in excess of £1 million to the public purse? More than 3,000 people are killed on our roads every year, yet we spend only 10p per person per year on traffic calming.
Mr. Raynsford: I fully accept the importance of road safety. I say that with some personal feeling because I was orphaned at the age of 11 when my mother was killed with my stepfather in a car crash. I believe that road safety is fundamental, and I will refer to it in a moment. It comes into my speech, but I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will recognise that the speech has to cover a number of other issues. I certainly did not intend to downgrade the issue of road safety. I intend to give it considerable prominence.
In 1998 we published our integrated transport White Paper. At the time, we were criticised for the delay--and yes, it did take us just over a year from coming into office to publish the White Paper. The Conservative Government did not manage to produce one in 18 years. They did, however, publish a Green Paper; in 1996, they published "Transport, the way forward--the Government's response to the transport debate". I suspect that the Opposition are not too happy to be reminded of this document. It was, of course, the product of Mr. Steven Norris. The then Minister for Transport in London confessed that he much preferred to travel in the comfort of his own car rather than having to
- "put up with all those dreadful human beings"
Mr. Norris had some intelligent things to say about transport, despite that remark, which would probably make even the Bourbons feel embarrassed. When he
talked about congestion charging, he sent a clear message that the view of the Government of the time was that price signals were a highly efficient way of influencing transport demand. The Green Paper referred to
- The Government's presumption in favour of introducing legislation in due course, to enable congestion charging and area licensing to be implemented.
The biggest difference between this Government and the previous one is that we are delivering on commitments. The fact is that under this Government there has been a 15 per cent. increase in rail passenger journeys, with 1,300 more trains running daily to meet demand. The Conservative party can talk up its gimmicks about tackling the problems that it created, but in the real world investment in rail is doubling. Twenty per cent. of railway carriages are new and 80 per cent. of stations have been modernised. Bus capacity is increasing. We now have more than 1,800 new and enhanced rural bus services in England, not as a result of deregulation but as a result of the Government's initiative to increase rural bus services. More are to come.
We have halted the decline in the number of bus passengers and we have seen investment in buses rising year on year. In London, for example, 40 per cent. of buses are new. We are also guaranteeing a free bus pass for all pensioners--something that the Conservative party will want to abolish, along with the winter fuel allowance and free television licences for pensioners.
We are also setting up a national public transport information system with a single telephone number, which will be in place by the end of this year. Nothing like this has been done before. It will integrate timetabling and ticketing information for buses, trams and trains across the country. We have a targeted programme of 41 trunk road improvements, 20 of which will provide bypasses for local communities.
Mrs. Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest): I have been listening carefully to the Minister's argument and to his statistics. Will he admit in all honesty that the statistic that he has just given about improvement in the railways and buses would not have been possible without privatisation?
Mr. Raynsford: I refer the hon. Lady to the views of the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells, who said that serious problems were created by the privatisation process.
Mr. Jenkin: Really it does politics no good if we cannot have a mature discussion about matters of policy. He is pretending to the House that my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mr. Norman) disagrees with my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing). Of course, precisely the opposite is the case. The point that my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest is making is that a great many benefits have come about as a result of rail privatisation. The point that my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells made was that whatever problems still existed, the Minister had not sought to deal with them.
Mr. Raynsford: I was merely quoting from The Guardian--probably not a newspaper that the hon.
Gentleman reads. The hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells is quoted, referring to rail privatisation, as saying that there were "serious shortcomings". I rest my case.We have introduced local transport plans so that local partnerships can improve public transport services, air quality and road safety, and tackle congestion and pollution. Provisional plans were produced last year, and the first full five-year plans will be produced later this year. Those plans are the cornerstone of our transport policy, providing, as they do, the key mechanism for delivering integrated transport at a local level. The plans provide for a longer-term, more strategic view, with greater certainty of funding for local authorities than under the previous annual system.
We have also, of course, introduced the first Transport Bill for a generation. The Bill will provide a statutory basis for bus quality partnerships and contracts, establish the Strategic Rail Authority, and provide powers for local authorities to introduce road user charging and workplace parking charges--as proposed, of course, by the Conservative Government in their own Green Paper.
Our Bill provides powers for local authorities to introduce charging, but it does not require them to do so. It will also be up to motorists to decide whether to use the roads where charges are imposed. It is an entirely voluntary charge. We have also--unlike Conservative Members--guaranteed that all income from those charges will be ring-fenced to improve local transport.
Although I want to focus on outcomes, I must emphasise that the Government recognise the need for extra investment. We have already increased spending on transport. In the 1998 comprehensive spending review, we provided an extra £1.8 billion for public transport, traffic management and road maintenance over and above what the Conservatives were planning to spend. In November 1999, we gave a £50 million boost for London bus services.
In this year's budget, the Chancellor gave an extra £280 million for transport, including £30 million for extension of the docklands light railway to City airport, £65 million for London Underground, £30 million for local authorities to spend on schemes for child safety and safe routes to school, and £20 million for 80 new schemes for safety and congestion stress points and other improvements on the trunk road network.
In response to the question from the hon. Member for Colchester (Mr. Russell), I stress that road safety is a critically important issue, and that we have set ourselves an incredibly demanding target of a 40 per cent. reduction in deaths and serious injuries. We are determined to drive forward measures that will achieve far greater safety on our roads.
We are also working on our 10-year plan for transport, which was announced last December by my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister. That plan will entail a step-change in investment in both the public and private sectors, and enable us to deliver a real transport system for the 21st century.
The Opposition claim that we are spending less on transport than they did when they were in office and that we are taxing more. They are wrong on both counts. They also claim that we have a vendetta against the motorist.
They are wrong about that, too. The truth is that we inherited a transport system that was suffering from a generation of underinvestment in terms of both money and long-term planning. We are putting that right.
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