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Dr. Whitehead: Has the hon. Gentleman read the Government's consultative document on climate change strategy? It suggests a range of measures, one of which concerns transport. Is he not misleading the House if he pretends that transport is the only issue about which the Government are concerned in respect of climate change?
Mr. Paterson: I certainly did not say that. I said that the justification given in my Adjournment debate last year for putting swingeing extra duties on carbon fuels was the achievement of the Kyoto demand for a reduction in the national quantities of carbon produced. This measure will not achieve any environmental gain at all because the loads have to be carried. As I said earlier, 97 per cent. of the freight in my constituency has to be carried by diesel-powered trucks. If it is not carried by UK-owned trucks, it will be carried by foreign trucks.
It is now worth while to go on a fuel cruise. Special trips are being run from Dover on which tractor units travel on the ferry to France because fuel is nearly half the price there. There is a huge discrepancy, and we can take a French company to illustrate the point. Mr. Petar Cvetkovic, the managing director of Norbert Dentressangle, said:
The Government are losing out by, I suggest, between £400 million and £500 million per annum in duty. Last week, we heard a woolly statement from the Chancellor to the effect that he will cut the fuel escalator. He needs to slash it, because road haulage is a strategic industry. I warned a year ago that it would be in dire straits if the Government did not take action, and my warning has sadly come true. The president of the Road Haulage Association in Shropshire went bust. Since then, I have received letters throughout the year from desperate hauliers. I repeat that there is no environmental gain from this measure.
We made one gain last week, however, when the Chancellor admitted that the measure has nothing whatever to do with the environment but is purely a means of raising revenue. The revenue is not being spent on our roads: £32 billion is being raised from road users, but only £6 billion is being put back. There is a huge backlog of road repairs--in my county, it represents £94 million--yet every car owner pays, on average, £900 more in tax, or fuel duty and vehicle excise duty, every year.
People in my area do not have a choice. The last thing that they can afford to lose is their car, and the measures to impose congestion charging will have no impact on traffic. My constituency contains 98 dispersed villages and hamlets, so it will never have a comprehensive public transport system. That is not an option--there will never be the funding for it. My constituents will drivefrom north Shropshire to, for example, Telford or Newcastle-under-Lyme or Wrexham. They will be paying a tax to another local authority, which may spend that money on improving public transport in its area. There will be absolutely no gain for my constituents who drive back into north Shropshire, because the tax will not be levied there.
I should be grateful if the Minister would tell me the solution to that problem for those who will drive every day from an area with no congestion charging to their place of work in an area with congestion charging. They will have to travel or risk losing their jobs. They will have to make that journey and park the car, because there is no alternative, but the tax that they are handing over, when they are already being crushed by a £900 a year burden in other duties, will be of no benefit to them. That is a fundamental flaw in the Government's proposals.
Mr. Nick Brown:
Let me answer that point now. Presumably, if the fruits of congestion charging are applied to the easing of congestion, the hon. Gentleman's constituents will be the beneficiaries.
Mr. Paterson:
That is exactly my point. The congestion will not be diminished because people have to drive into that town to get to their place of work. There is a ring of factories all around Telford.
Mr. Brown:
Presumably, other people will not have to drive there.
Mr. Paterson:
I suggest that the majority will still go to those factories by car because there will not be a comprehensive bus or minirail system. That will not happen in a widely dispersed rural area.
The Government's policy is all stick; there is no carrot. There is a case for road pricing--the way we distribute the use of the asset of our roads is entirely Stalinist. It is the last great element of the British economy run like Gosplan. Once we have paid our vehicle excise duty and insurance and filled up the car with petrol, any of us can go on the roads at any time. There is no marginal cost. We just get hit behind the neck with the wet sandbag of a queue. That is how the market takes effect.
The Government's proposals contain no hint of a recognition that there is a case for a carrot. In rural areas, people could be released from the burden of vehicle excise duty, so long as they did not move out of their drive-to-work area. If they wanted to drive into Birmingham, I could see a sharp case for increasing the cost of access to the road. [Interruption.] The Minister seems to agree.
There are cases in the United States where such a scheme has worked. The experiment in Leicester led to charges of £10 before people moved on to public transport. In the area around Puget Sound in north-west America, where about 3 million people live, the drive-to-work rush hour has been stretched by about four
hours by staggered road charging. The same is true of the 805 freeway in San Diego, where at certain times of the day the charge is 25 cents a mile and, as traffic builds up, it increases to $4. That is a much more intelligent way of using a pricing mechanism--giving a bonus to those who drive at unfashionable times of day and penalising those who drive at busier times of day. What the Government are proposing is crass. It is a crude tax on those who use cars, and it will not reduce congestion.
Mr. Paterson:
The Minister may nod, but there is no evidence that such a car charge will reduce congestion in an area like mine.
As for the countryside in general and the kind of area in which I live, I find it incredible that the Government intend to fiddle around with the means of delivering local government, when easily the biggest problem facing rural areas is the massive shift of central Government funds from rural areas to urban areas--£500 million during this Parliament. In my constituency, there is not a single public service that depends on public funds that is adequately funded for the current population.
There was a march in Whitchurch on Saturday, which I led, in support of the fire service, which is the most underfunded in the UK. It must overspend its standard spending assessment by 46.7 per cent. That is ridiculous. The fire authority in Shropshire gets £8 million from central Government, compared with £22 million in Staffordshire and £22 million in Cheshire. The reason is that the formula for the distribution of central Government funds takes no account of the sparse population of Shropshire.
Mr. Raynsford:
Will the hon. Gentleman reflect on who devised the formula that he criticises?
Mr. Paterson:
That is my next point. The Home Office launched an inquiry with independent consultants to examine the cost of delivering police services in a sparsely populated rural area. It is obvious that there are more police stations and more radio masts, and that communications are difficult. The result showed clearly that, in sparsely populated areas, there was an increase in the cost of delivering that service. I have a letter from the chairman of the West Mercia police authority, who states:
The Minister for Local Government and the Regions promised Shropshire county council that it would have a three-year run and that it could plan ahead with an increase in its SSA of 6.1 per cent. We have heard that that will be cut to 5.4 per cent. Will the Minister confirm whether that is true? If it is, it will knock £1 million straight out of Shropshire's budget.
In addition, there is an amazing proposal to build 36,000 new houses in a county where every publicly funded service is stretched. The Queen's Speech states:
I raised that point in an intervention on the Deputy Prime Minister, but will the Minister tell me what mechanisms the people of Shropshire can use to stand up against that proposal? What is his reaction to the notion of holding a local referendum on this issue, which crosses all party boundaries? The proposal has nothing to do with accountability; it will be imposed by central planning in Birmingham.
I am aware that other Members wish to speak, but I want to mention the largest hole in the Queen's Speech--the astonishing lack of a reference to agriculture. Given that agricultural incomes are down 75 per cent., it is incredible that there is no mention of what the Government will do about it. There are things that they can do.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire(Mr. Gray) mentioned the pig industry. Why on earth does this country have higher welfare standards than any other in Europe? The Farmers Guardian reported that 80 per cent. of Dutch pig farmers do not respect the welfare standards in Holland that are much slacker than here. Why do the Government not propose something in respect of labelling so that the British consumer has a choice of which pork products to buy?
The Government have made complete nonsense of their negotiations on the dairy industry, giving Ireland a huge increase in its milk quota at a time when milk prices in this country are already depressed. The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry made the extraordinary decision to ban Milk Marque from going into processing unless it was broken up.
I am delighted that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has just arrived in the Chamber, because I want to ask a question. Milk Marque's share of raw milk production has fallen to 38 per cent. The threshold in Europe for a monopoly is 40 per cent., and in the United Kingdom it is 25 per cent. Therefore, why has Express Glanbia, with 30 per cent. of the liquid milk market, and Wiseman's, with 85 per cent. of the Scottish liquid milk market, not been sent for inquiry?
The biggest problem with the milk industry at present is the suspension of the calf scheme. We thought that we had a token opening of the beef market and, in theory, with that lost the necessity for a calf scheme. The real
horror is that we do not have an opening of the beef market, but we have the ending of the calf scheme. Calf production is currently at its peak, with 600,000 calves being produced between now and the spring. However, I have received absolutely no sensible response from the Government to my letters.
Baroness Hayman suggested in another place that dairy farmers in north Shropshire should produce cross-bred calves. That is a ludicrous suggestion when they are trying to produce quality dairy cows, half of which inevitably will be bull calves. There has to be a solution to the problem, for economic and straightforward humanitarian reasons.
"Our UK based operations and those of all British hauliers are becoming less and less economic. If the Government continues with its fuel Escalator policy, UK industry will become more and more vulnerable to European competition, placing many UK companies and jobs at risk."
Foreign vehicle trips to the UK have increased by 57 per cent. since 1996, and nearly one in 10 of the heavy trucks on the road is foreign registered and running on cheaper fuel.
"In essence therefore the independent study confirms that rural forces have been underfunded for five years, and the study further exemplifies that West Mercia would benefit by £2.3m (or 2.1 per cent.) if the revised sparsity factor was implemented."
But what do the Government do? They shelve the report. However, underfunding is causing a crisis.
"A Bill will be brought forward to reform local government to make it more innovative and accountable."
18 Nov 1999 : Column 207
Who is responsible for the plan to impose 36,000 houses on Shropshire? My hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow and I do not want it; the democratically elected county council does not want it; and the district councils are horrified because they will have to find sites for houses and roads. The very best estimate is that in Shropshire probably 45 per cent. of the sites will be brown field, so there is not a prayer of our getting near the Government's 60 per cent. target of building on brownfield sites.
The obvious disaster is environmental. The Queen's Speech contains a commitment on sites of special scientific interest. What will be the impact on congestion and traffic of building 36,000 houses for 100,000 people? We all want indigenous growth, and Shropshire has twice the fastest rate of growth in the west midlands, but the best estimate based on that growth is that we require 18,000 houses.
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