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Mr. Foster: Let us consider transport, on which there may be an opportunity for discussion, despite the Deputy Prime Minister's comment. If he wants support for some of the transport measures, he must look to these Benches; he will not get it from Conservative Members.
Mr. Prescott: We are introducing the measure because it is right.
Mr. Foster: Indeed. We shall support the measure when it is right. We shall not support the official Opposition's position. It is interesting to note that Conservative Members use their policies as dirty words. When the Leader of the official Opposition attacks the Government's proposal for congestion charges, he refers to it as a poll tax on wheels.
It would be easier to support the Deputy Prime Minister's transport measures if people were confident that the Government were doing everything possible and not simply requiring action from the private sector and local government. As I have said to the right hon. Gentleman in our brief exchanges since I took on responsibility for
transport, it is worrying that the Government's share of spending on public transport has decreased. There are other sources of funding, but the Government's share has gone down. It will decrease by 7.5 per cent. over five years according to Red Book figures.
Mr. Prescott:
Watch this space.
Mr. Foster:
The Deputy Prime Minister says, "Watch this space"--perhaps I have got three out of four concessions. I shall keep going and make further suggestions.
As the Deputy Prime Minister is in a generous mood, he might consider another idea that would help him. The public are worried about some of the proposed further charges, and it might be worth considering whether to get rid of vehicle excise licence duty or at least to reduce it significantly for those with small cars. That might encourage people to use cars that are less polluting; it could prove to be a popular measure.
On the Strategic Rail Authority, I cannot improve on the comments of the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich. We support the authority. However, as we said in Committee, a strategic transport authority would be preferable as it could cover all forms of public transport. We hope that the Strategic Rail Authority will consider, for example, simplifying ticketing practice and a proper national timetable. Those are important matters, which the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich mentioned. She rightly appreciated the importance of the Deputy Prime Minister moving from being minded to take safety from Railtrack to implementing it. We acknowledge that it is difficult to decide who should have responsibility for safety, but we hope that the Deputy Prime Minister will reassign it.
Let us consider bus deregulation. We support the Government's proposals to remedy the problems that the previous Government created through deregulation. The Deputy Prime should consider open-top, tourist buses, which have not yet been taken into account. There is genuine anxiety in tourist areas such as my constituency of Bath, York and many other places, where tourist buses cause problems. If open-top buses stick to a timetable, their operators can get the reduction in fuel tax. On a wet day, the bus can drive around empty, or with one or two passengers, stick to its timetable and be eligible for the fuel tax reduction. The bus thus adds to congestion. I hope that such problems can be solved.
The sad truth is, that when the Conservatives were in power, I wrote to the Transport Minister of the day and received a reply that said, "We'll look at it some time later." A new Government gained power, I wrote to them and received a letter that was exactly the same, word for word.
Mr. Foster:
I have a copy of the letter, which I shall pass to the Deputy Prime Minister. We play a game in my office in which we blank out the names at the top of the letters and ask people to guess which was written under a Conservative Administration and which was written under a Labour Government.
I shall comment on the rural bus challenge. I hope that the House realises that public transport will not, by itself, solve all the transport problems of rural areas. We must acknowledge that the majority of people in rural areas need to use their cars and will continue to do so. We must ensure that policies support those people and do not make matters more difficult for them.
It is right to provide for improving rural bus systems. We welcome the small additional sums that the Government provide, but it is ludicrous to hand out a small amount of money and expect people to prepare expensive bids to get it when only 22 per cent. of bids have been successful. Preparing those bids wastes much energy in local government. There must be a better way of allocating money.
Dr. Gavin Strang (Edinburgh, East and Musselburgh):
I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Bath(Mr. Foster), the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, and, like him, I welcome much of the Queen's Speech. A lot of the measures will implement manifesto pledges given by the Labour party at the last election. On transport, like the Liberal Democrats, I broadly welcome the fact that we shall go ahead with a proper statutory Strategic Rail Authority. We inherited a privatised, fragmented railway system and I believe that the SRA will make a significant contribution to improving the quality of service in our railway industry. The hon. Gentleman said that he would like a strategic transport authority to be established.
My right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister has set up a committee to advise him on integrated transport. His Department, along with all the local authorities, is the driving force for the integrated transport policy. There is a fairly broad consensus between the Labour and Liberal parties that local authorities should be given the option to introduce congestion charging.
I shall take a leaf out of the book of the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine), the former Deputy Prime Minister, and concentrate most of my remarks on the area in which I and many of my hon. Friends inthe parliamentary Labour party disagree with the Government--the proposal, which is how we should consider it at present, that legislation should deal with aviation. We should be under no illusions about the
importance to this country of aviation, which is a huge business. It is growing faster than the national economy, the number of jobs linked directly and indirectly to it is increasing and it is vital to the overall efficiency of the United Kingdom economy. Britain is a European leader in the aviation industry.
The Labour party leadership likes to say, "We will lead in Europe". Our aviation industry already leads in Europe. An integral part of that aviation industry is our air traffic control system, in which this country is a world leader. We must fully grasp and understand that before we significantly change the present air traffic control arrangements.
It is proposed that safety regulation be separated from service provision. There will be little opposition to that. I think that the issue is open--the proposition is supported by Eurocontrol and the Transport Sub-Committee of the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Committee--and I understand that economic and safety regulation will stay with the Civil Aviation Authority, although various proposals concerning a transport safety super-body have been floated. My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), the Chairman of the Transport Sub-Committee, may have been hinting at that in relation to transport safety across the modes. However, I shall leave that on one side: the issue is whether it is necessary to split the CAA and have a more direct split between service provision and regulation.
One has to bear it in mind that air traffic controllers are regulators, and what they do is what counts. They keep the planes apart. I have had the privilege to represent my constituency in the House of Commons for more than a quarter of a century. Most weeks of the year, I fly in and out of Heathrow airport and no doubt many other hon. Members, as members of the public, have accepted the chance to go into the cockpit with the pilot. This country has an excellent air traffic control system. If the legislation is to propose separating regulation from service provision more formally, there will be no opposition to that, but the real issue concerns privatisation or part-privatisation. I have no doubt that many Labour Members are still trying to persuade Ministers not to privatise Britain's air traffic control.
Why are the Government proposing privatisation? First, they would receive a capital receipt. To be fair to my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister, he set that out fully at the Labour party conference. Some people have said that National Air Traffic Services is worth £1 billion, so half would be worth £500 million, and I suspect that it will be worth rather more when Swanwick is operational. Nevertheless, a sum of money would be available, but one does not want to exaggerate it. The tax on air passengers introduced by the previous Government brings in about £700 million and the figure will soon be up to £1 billion a year--not a one-off £500 million, which would be raised from the half-privatisation of NATS, but a significant annual sum coming in from the aviation industry. Taking money out of aviation and air traffic control in order to put it into something else--a one-off capital receipt--is not an idea that should be taken on board.
The second argument, which is also financial, is that we need to privatise NATS in order to get investment. This country has a good record of investment in air traffic control--certainly a better record than the other members of Eurocontrol. I say quite openly that it is a tribute to past
Conservative Governments that this country has invested heavily in NATS--we have just taken over and have inherited the investment programme--and the problems at Swanwick, which is the big new centre near Southampton, relate not to lack of investment but to technical challenges. That is why it would be a mistake, at this time of all times, to divert the attention of top management to privatisation. Private business is involved in developing the new equipment and the new system there.
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