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Mr. Geraint Davies: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Redwood: No. I shall now move on to discuss the railways. The hon. Gentleman has had one little shot, which went wrong; he will have to make do with that.
The Bill gives the impression that a new regulator will sort out the railways, when what we need is someone to sort out the money for the railways. The Deputy Prime Minister savages Railtrack at every opportunity and he has now taken away its opportunity to bid for the tube, having originally encouraged it to do so, wasting £20 million of its money in the process. We have a smooth-talking Minister in the other place who does not seem to think that Railtrack is guilty of all the sins of the railways. I trust that he wins this argument because he is closer to the truth, and his may be a better approach to adopt to improve the railway industry.
What we especially dislike about the part of the Bill dealing with the railways is the fact that the Strategic Rail Authority will be a pawn in the hands of the Transport Minister, the Secretary of State or his successor. It is given all sorts of grant powers, but we do not know--and still have not been told by the Deputy Prime Minister--whether it will have any money to spend on those grant powers to enable it to do any good. We do not know how the very wide-ranging powers will be used. We shall need to probe in Committee the type of guidance and guidelines that will be offered.
We know that the train operating companies are rightly complaining about the uncertainty that the clauses are causing, and we know that Railtrack has a rotten deal--one which does not encourage increases in capacity--which needs sorting out. The Government are performing
a U-turn in their words but not in their deeds. If there was a U-turn in reality, there would be an end to higher fuel taxes; more roads would be built; there would be more investment in the tube and railways; and, above all, the Government would scrap the Bill.
The Bill bashes the motorist. It threatens the motorist with more congestion and parking taxes; it gives powers to sell NATS on the cheap; and it shows that Ministers have not a clue about how much they might get for NATS, so great is the muddle and confusion. In addition, theBill threatens to overwhelm the railway industry with Government interference.
This is a Secretary of State with two jags, half a job and no money. This is a Department making the traveller pay dearly for its failure with the Treasury. This is a Secretary of State on the wrong track, introducing the wrong Bill, at the wrong time, while he is undermined from above and below. We will oppose it tooth and nail, with vigour.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord):
Order. Before I call the next speaker, I remind the House that Madam Speaker has placed a 15-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches, which applies from now.
Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody (Crewe and Nantwich):
In the small islands that constitute the United Kingdom, for nearly 20 years we have operated without any clear, coherent or organised plan for transport. It seems incredible that we are entering the new century with the first really useful Transport Bill that the House has been offered for many years. The Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions is the first person to plan coherently to initiate a modern and responsive system, and a system of transport that will respond to the needs of our economy, of our people and certainly of our future. That has not been done for so long that I think that he can almost take credit for being a truly unique, sensitive and intelligent Secretary of State.
Mr. Prescott:
I know what is coming next.
Mrs. Dunwoody:
May I just tell my right hon. Friend that in 1840 George Stephenson--not my talentedhon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South(Mr. Stevenson) who sits on the Transport Sub-Committee but an equally talented Mr. George Stephenson--wrote to the Board of Trade complaining that, unless legislation was introduced to control safety in the railway industry, its reputation would suffer with the general public? They regarded the fatalities to passengers that resulted from broken rails, fallen bridges and from other disastrous pieces of masonry flying around the system as a real deterrent to travelling by rail.
This is the first Bill for some time to understand that, unless we are able to plan our transport system, passengers will decide where it will go. The problem will not just simply be that they will take their money and their goods elsewhere, but the economy will not be able to function efficiently. That is why the Bill is fundamental. It deals with many of the difficulties that were politically and pointlessly created by the Conservative Government.
The railway system is in the most frightful muddle; that is the truth of the matter. Recent terrifying accidents were only a demonstration of that lack of clarity and lack of coherence. The Strategic Rail Authority is not only necessary; it is essential. Without an attempt to put together this kaleidoscope of broken pieces, the railway industry in the next century will be totally unable to serve the needs of the United Kingdom.
Inside the railway industry at present there is not only a split of responsibilities across the system, but there is evidence that people are not clear about their own role. The Health and Safety Executive has said that, in some instances, working practices are dangerous and that some problems have arisen from the fact that the companies themselves were not clear what they expected people to do. In some cases, it is only too obvious that, because of the practice of contracting and sub-contracting jobs right the way down the system, people believed that, once a safety notice had been issued, that was the extent of their involvement. They did not monitor the work of those employed to do the job and they did not produce the high standard of safety that passengers have a right to expect. The Strategic Rail Authority is desperately needed.
It is a pity that we have had to wait two and a half years for this opportunity to legislate on transport, although I understand the political reasons for that. However, when we consider the size and shape of the Bill, one realises how much must be achieved in such a short time and why so many things have been thrust into the large basket of transport problems.
The Health and Safety Executive will need not only extra powers, but will need to be considered in a slightly different way. For example, at present, it is not even able to compare like with like. It does not have the safety standards that applied beforehand, when the old British Railways Board had responsibility for considering the licensing of particular equipment but not for ensuring that it worked efficiently or was solving the problems that arose.
There have been problems with the role of the rail regulator. I hope that during the proceedings on the Bill, the Secretary of State will spell out the relationship between the rail regulator and the Strategic Rail Authority. It would be unfortunate if clashes were to occur. They might give the impression that the rail regulator were prepared, on occasion, to talk up the situation, but when it came to making difficult decisions or, if I may use a colloquial phrase, putting the boot in, he ran away because he was influenced by political considerations, imposed not by the Government but by others in the railway industry.
When we talk about integrating transport we shall have to consider the role of the passenger transport authorities and their ability to plan in conjunction with the main rail system not only to provide good systems within their local areas, but to work out how they can integrate planning for roads and the provision of high-quality park and ride schemes. They will also be involved in other basic forms of planning that will enable increasing numbers of the public to move on to the rail system and encourage them not to use their motor car.
Some of the arguments that we have heard this afternoon are so artificial that they require no refutation. However, while there is not an efficient public transport system, people will hang on to their car, sometimes
because they have to and sometimes because it is more comfortable to do so. The provision by local authorities of alternative means of transport will be fundamental in changing that situation. That is why the ability in the Bill to introduce hypothecation is a tremendous advance.
In some countries there has been a clear acceptance of the fact that motorists will give up their four little wheels only when they are equally comfortable using other transport. For example, Scandinavian countries not only accept such planning, but positively encourage it. The city authorities in San Francisco were able, without any feeling that they were making a political decision, to raise the cost of bringing motor cars into the city and lower the cost of travelling on public transport. The response was clear and produced a shift of people from their car to the public railway system. Such planning and imagination will change the situation in the coming century, and it is to be warmly welcomed and encouraged.
I want to say a little about National Air Traffic Services. I can tell the Secretary of State that the Committee did a lot of detailed work on the railway aspects of the Bill, but we also considered aviation safety and are continuing to look at the public-private partnership for NATS. I know that my right hon. Friend will take seriously those findings and I know that he finds it helpful to have us doing the detailed work. However, I should like, for a moment, to speak in a personal capacity, not as the Chairman of the Committee.
I am totally opposed to the sale of NATS, and that will not come as any great surprise to my colleagues, who have heard me hold forth on the subject before. There is a kind of logic--it is not acceptable to me--in suggesting that we should sell the whole of NATS, which I understand is the present Conservative party position. That sale would be advised not because of concerns about safety but presumably because of a belief that if a body like Railtrack were created for air services, that would in some obscure way benefit the passenger. We know very well that such a measure would only bring in money from a sale; that body would not be concerned with safety or aviation planning.
However, there are difficulties with the suggestion that, somehow, the deal that is being proposed will be suitably protective of the interests of the customer, because there will be, first, a golden share and, secondly, an agreement that safety is to be regulated. I do not believe that that is so.
Unlike the other organisations that we have discussed and the BAA, which owns bricks and mortar and shops and can presumably charge more rent or increase its business elsewhere, NATS is very limited and controlled. Its business--to put it in its simplest form--is to keep planes apart in the air. In order to do that, its operators are extremely well trained, work under tremendous stress and believe that safety is their very first priority.
4.44 pm
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