| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Foster: I am most grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. Given his particular concern and interest in the issue, demonstrated by his persistent questioning, could he explain whether he and his party wish there to be fewer car journeys and whether the policies that he has expounded are likely to lead to that?
Mr. Redwood: We would like a wider range of options so that people can travel more easily. We fully accept that there needs to be a big improvement in rail, tube and bus travel, particularly at peak times, in congested areas. I reckon that as the country gets richer and people acquire more cars, there will be more car journeys. It is not an object of our policy physically to stop people using their cars, or to tax them off the road. We wish to provide them with better choices because we believe, particularly at busy times of day and in busy areas, that the car is not always the best answer. However, the public transport option needs a lot of investment to make it that much better.
Mr. Davies: Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that lowering or increasing speed limits, lowering the price of petrol, getting rid of speed humps and building more roads will lead to more traffic and congestion? How can he criticise the Secretary of State on those grounds?
Mr. Redwood: We want people to be able to travel more easily. There will be times when it is better to travel by bus, train or tube, but that will require massive investment. Nor should we deliberately go out of our way to make the congestion worse, as the Government have
been doing up to now by trying to force people off the roads, restricting the capacity of the existing road network to no good effect.
Mr. Owen Paterson (North Shropshire): I wonder whether my right hon. Friend read The Daily Telegraph on Saturday, in which the new Transport Minister--in complete contrast to the views of his predecessor, as he explained--said that it was inevitable that the number of cars in Britain keeps rising. As an amusing aside, Lord Macdonald also said:
- "There were elements of the market philosophy and privatisation that seemed to me to make economic sense".
Mr. Redwood: My hon. Friend has put his finger on the controversy raging at the heart of Government. We all know that Lord Macdonald is more likely to win because he has the backing of No. 10, while the Deputy Prime Minister does not.
We also know that the Bill will continue the same old bash-the-motorist policies--which brings me to clauses 139 to 153, which deal with congestion taxes, and clauses 154 to 173, which deal with parking taxes. We needto know--at the winding-up of the debate or in Committee--how much tax will be required to make an impact. My right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir B. Mawhinney) made an excellent intervention on that point, but was unable to get an answer from the Deputy Prime Minister.
Experts have suggested that it would take a charge of at least £10 a day to make any visible impact on the number of cars entering a main city such as London or Manchester. How much do the Government suggest local authorities might impose and when do they suggest the charges should be introduced? Has the Deputy Prime Minister read the reports stating that the technology is not yet ready for the introduction of sensible road charging? Presumably, we cannot have toll booths at every road that goes into a main city. When does he think that the technology will be sufficiently workable to introduce those charges? How much does he think a council will want to charge?
It has been suggested that the parking tax could be as much as £3,000 a space in central London and several hundred pounds in other major towns and cities. [Interruption.] Is that a realistic assessment? How much does the Deputy Prime Minister think should be imposed? Would he accept any cap or limit on what could be enormous charges? When does he think that the charges should and could be introduced?
The right hon. Gentleman proposes to tax people who drive into towns to catch a train or to pick up heavy loads from shops or from their place of business. He proposes to tax people who drive to the office and park during the day because they intend to work late, when public transport will have ceased to provide a decent service.
Mr. Prescott:
I am not proposing anything.
Mr. Redwood:
The Deputy Prime Minister now says that the legislation is a work of fiction and that he is not proposing anything. If he cares to look at the measures that he is proposing, he will see clause after clause giving
Ms Margaret Moran (Luton, South):
Will the right hon. Gentleman clarify whether he is now repudiating the policies in the 1994 Tory manifesto, which advocated congestion charging, and the policies of his erstwhile colleague, Mr. Norris, who supported such charges in 1999? Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that he said that if private enterprise were given its head, it would build more toll roads and would get Britain on the move? Is not that also taxing the motorist? Does he repudiate his own views?
Mr. Redwood:
That was an extremely feeble intervention. I am making it crystal clear that the Conservative party is against these new taxes on the motorist. We are against congestion charges for the use of the existing road system. We are against parking taxes for the use of existing parking places. The hon. Lady will find that we shall vote against those and the rest of the Bill this evening, and that we shall oppose the measures vigorously in Committee.
The Deputy Prime Minister, as a defence for all these extra taxes that he has invented, says that he has succeeded in securing hypothecation. He seems to have bought a pig in a poke from the Treasury. If the taxes go through, how do we know that there will be any extra money when he has not secured base budgets for the money that the Treasury already collects from the motorist? Does he not realise that the Treasury collects more than £32,000 million from the motorist and that only about one fifth of that is spent on transport improvements and on the transport system? Most of the motorists' money is taken for other uses. If he does not secure big and sensible base budgets, his hypothecation is absolutely worthless. The Treasury will take away what the Deputy Prime Minister is taking from the motorist. He is not Mr. Hypothecation--he is Mr. Gullible. He has bought this pig in a poke from the Treasury. He really believes that there will be extra money, whereas the Treasury will use the excuse of the extra money from the higher taxes to take away some of the other money that would have gone to the transport sector.
On the issue of the fuel escalator, Ministers are trying to look both ways at the same time. We are told that they will scrap the fuel escalator, which they raised well after the time that it should have been scrapped--[Interruption.] The Government increased the fuel escalator when fuel taxes were already high. They made those taxes ruinously high.
We now hear from the Government that they may possibly scrap the fuel escalator, and that the main source of new money to sort out transport problems will be increases in fuel duties above the rate of inflation. [Interruption.] The Government cannot have it both ways--we all know on which side they will come down. They will tax the motorist more. They may hypothecate
that revenue, but then they will mug the motorist by taking away money that the Government would otherwise have put into the transport system.
Mr. Paterson:
From a sedentary position, the Deputy Prime Minister, chuntering away, said "Perhaps" with reference to the fuel escalator. Table B9 in the pre-Budget report clearly shows fuel duties increasing from £21.6 billion to an amazing £23.5 billion.
Mr. Redwood:
My hon. Friend has a bull's eye again. That is why I predicted that the Government will come down on the side of taxing the motorist. They always do. What does Labour do best? Taxing the motorist--that is what they are there for and that is what they like doing.
Finally, I shall discuss the part of the Bill dealing with the railway industry.
Mr. Don Foster:
Only a few minutes ago, the right hon. Gentleman told the House that he was not in favour of proposals for road traffic reduction. Will he acknowledge that that is a personal U-turn on his part, and that on 29 May 1997 he wrote to a Mr. Keabie in Reading offering to support road traffic reduction proposals?
Mr. Redwood:
I have set out very clearly Her Majesty's Opposition's policy. We believe that we need to promote more public transport, which is what I was saying then and what I am still saying today. Rumours of my inconsistency have been greatly exaggerated.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |