House of Commons Hansard Debates for 20 Dec 1999 (pt 24)

7.13 pm

Mr. Gordon Prentice (Pendle): After that speech, who could be blamed for believing that the Conservatives left us with a transport system that was firing on all four cylinders, and that the problems on the M6 began in May 1997? How ludicrous! The right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) spoke of a light rail system in his constituency, which he knows would be the responsibility of the local highway authority under the local transport plan.

Mr. Jenkin: The schemes mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) and others were funded by us. Where is the money to fund light rail schemes under the present Government? Can the hon. Gentleman name one light rail scheme that the Government have approved?

Mr. Prentice: The right hon. Member for Fylde mentioned integration. The Commission for Integrated Transport has studied a sample of local transport plans and made a pronouncement: the information is freely available. I suggest that before the hon. Gentleman gets hot under the collar, he looks at information that is in the public domain.

The former Secretary of State for Transport, the right hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. MacGregor), had the brass neck to say what he said without accepting any interventions. Despite the fact that, throughout his time as a transport Minister, spending on road maintenance went down, we never get a word of apology from him: he just brushes everything aside. The right hon. Gentleman had the temerity to suggest that local transport plans are no different from the system over which he presided, the TPP--transport policies and programmes--system. Again, that is ludicrous. These days, before any new road is built, a new system of appraisal examines not only transport matters but the scheme's implications for the local economy, jobs, the local environment, wildlife and so on. Those considerations were never built into the system about which the right hon. Gentleman waxed lyrical. His version was not history; it was manufactured.

I support the Bill--or at least most of it. Local transport plans are long overdue. I support the establishment of the Strategic Rail Authority. I support the proposals in the Bill to deal with workplace congestion. The right hon. Member for South Norfolk proposed that in a Green Paper, yet he criticises what the Government are doing as though he had never thought of it himself. The proposal was contained in a document published by the Conservatives when they were in government but, like so many other things, has been airbrushed out of their history.

I have reservations about the public-private partnership for National Air Traffic Services, but I am certainly not going into the Lobby with the Conservatives, who want to privatise air traffic control. I am fearful of what would happen if it were privatised. The Conservatives looked into that when they were in government, but they saw the difficulties and backed off. A Government who privatised anything and everything that was not nailed down backed away from privatising NATS as being too hot to handle.

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Amazingly, we are picking up the privatisation issue--hot to handle though it may be. If the air traffic controllers are against it, apparently it is their problem. If the pilots flying the planes are against it, apparently it is their problem. If 50 of my hon. Friends point out that the proposal was not in the Labour manifesto in May 1997, word goes out that it is their problem. I can only say that if the Government do not address the concerns of many people, both in this place and outside it, it will be their problem.

I pay tribute to the way in which my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister has moved the transport agenda forward. My right hon. Friend said that we needed the PPP to allow NATS to invest, citing the famous Treasury rules, which he said were too restrictive. But we are the Government, and no one has ever explained to me why we cannot change the Treasury rules. Is it impossible, with our majority? I see the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) nodding. I have much in common with Liberal Democrats on this issue, as on some others. Why can we not change the rules? We have again heard the mantra, "Private sector good, public sector bad", which my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. McDonnell) mentioned. If project management in the public sector is useless, as we are hearing from my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and from those on the Front Bench, the solution is not to privatise but to change the management. It is as simple as that.

There are penalty clauses in commercial contracts. If one side does not do what it is supposed to do, the penalty clauses are supposed to kick in. Why not use them? We are offered a comparison between the Jubilee line, which was a disaster, and the docklands light railway, run and managed by the private sector, which was brilliant. Everyone recognises--and the right hon. Member for Fylde will know this, as he was at the Institution of Civil Engineers when we touched on this--that tunnelling under London for the new Jubilee line was an immensely difficult engineering task. It is silly to compare the two. I hesitate to mention the TUC but I shall do so sotto voce, to say that it opposes the proposal and believes that the Government should fund the investment directly. They could do that, because they are awash with cash. We do not need to part-privatise NATS; the TUC suggests that it could be turned into an independent, publicly owned company based on the Post Office model. The briefing notes suggest that that is okay for the Post Office, but not for air traffic control.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ayr (Ms Osborne), who is not in her place, made a suggestion about how to proceed, and my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington also referred to it. Let all the options and all the pros and cons be set out, rather than just the preferred option, on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, of the Government and the Prime Minister.

Why are the Government proposing partial privatisation? As I said earlier, it is not because we need the cash. When I met the Minister for Transport with some of my colleagues in the north-west last week, I pointed out that the explanatory memorandum suggested that the Government might get £350 million from the sale of NATS, and that a few weeks ago, the Government decided to spend £350 million to allow all over-75s a free television licence. That is exactly equivalent. My right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East and Musselburgh (Dr. Strang) mentioned

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the air passenger tax that the previous Government introduced, which generates more than £700 million every year in revenue. Yet we are told that there is no money to invest in air traffic control. The £1 billion figure does not frighten me: over 10 years, £1 billion is £100 million a year.

When the Conservatives sold British Rail for a song, they extinguished the entire debt of £19,000 million. I shall repeat that: £19,000 million was extinguished to make British Rail attractive to the private sector. No Labour Member genuinely embraces the privatisation policy enthusiastically; the Labour party outside the House repudiates it. We have been invited to embrace it because my good friend the Deputy Prime Minister, who constantly reminds us that he espouses traditional values in a modern setting, proposed it. That may work for 99.9 per cent. of the policies that he proposes, but not for this one.

We will not get anything like £350 million when such constraints are built into the sale. We are told that partnership directors will look after the public interest and will be able to cap dividends and cut the profits that the private sector company would like to distribute. Is that an attractive proposition for the private sector?

What about the all-important 5 per cent. that is to be shared among the staff? The calculation is this: 49 per cent. for the private sector; 46 per cent. for the public sector; and in the middle, performing a balancing act, NATS employees who get a share. What will happen to the shares? I assume that, at some stage, they will be traded on the market, as BT shares were traded. One day, someone will want to buy those shares. When I raised that with my noble Friend the Minister for Transport, it was suggested--the idea was not fully worked out--that there would be a period of five or seven years during which the shares could not be traded. What happens after that period? The shares will be traded, the private sector will buy them and NATS will be privatised. I do not want that to happen; no Labour Member supports that. Conservative Members who think they have scented blood will be disappointed this evening. For me, at least, the amendment is a shot across the Government's bows. Much debate is yet to take place in Committee to ensure that, whatever argument the Government devise, NATS remains in the public sector and does not generate profit.

7.25 pm

Mr. Cynog Dafis (Ceredigion): I would like to say a few words about the way in which the Bill will affect Wales--and from the perspective of a Member of the National Assembly for Wales. I shall concentrate specifically on rail.

The Assembly recently debated the Government's legislative programme, and an amendment stating:

"the Assembly . . . calls on the First Secretary and the Secretary of State to seek to ensure that all Bills which impact on the functions and responsibilities of the Assembly are drafted in such a way as to permit the Assembly to implement their provisions with the maximum flexibility, and to develop policy in the areas concerned in a way which best reflects the views of the Assembly and the needs of the people of Wales".

Those words are taken from a Plaid Cymru amendment, which the Government accepted. The amended motion

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was supported by all Assembly Members except the Conservative group. During his contribution to the debate, the First Secretary said:

"We need to make the case for primary legislation to be framed in a way that allows us to develop policy to meet the needs of Wales."

He went on:

"this should involve the whole Assembly, not only myself and the Cabinet."

That is the answer of the government of Wales to the fact that the Assembly has no primary legislative powers. That should and will be rectified. In the meantime, however, it is important to make the current system work towards the priorities that the Assembly identifies.

It was agreed during that debate that in the new year the Assembly would agree a response to the Government's legislative programme, for submission to the Secretary of State for Wales. I assume that the response will be carefully studied and that account will be taken of the Assembly's views.

The Transport Bill is an important test of the effectiveness of the process and of the Government's willingness to respond to the views of the Assembly and the needs of Wales. Transport policy has been discussed in the Assembly in the past three weeks not only in the debate on the Queen's Speech, but in two short debates--the equivalent of Adjournment debates in this place. I initiated one of them and another, on north-south transport links, was initiated by Alun Pugh--in the Assembly, we are allowed to call Members by their names--who is Labour Assembly Member for Clwyd, West. I urge the Deputy Prime Minister and his officials to read those debates. Alun Pugh stated:

"improving north-south links is a policy objective that unites parties in the Assembly"--