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28 Jan 2003 : Column 776—continued
Mr. Tim Collins (Westmorland and Lonsdale): The right hon. Gentleman has twice said that he has made it clear to the Mayor that no more money is available. There are, however, media reports that he may be discussing with the Mayor bringing forward to an earlier timeframe some money that was otherwise programmed to be available. Will he confirm whether that is being discussed?
Mr. Darling: There are a variety of reports in the media that are not right, and there appear to be a variety of people telling the media various things for their own various interests.
It is very important that the House understand the situation. I set out in some detail last December the position in relation to the transfer and the funding. I have allocated funding to Transport for London,
not just for the Tube but for non-Tube activities. As I said last December, the Department made it clear to London Underground and TFL that if something unforeseen came along the Government would look at it, in the same way as we would need to deal with it if the Government were directly responsible. If there is nothing unforeseen, the next time the spending will be looked at is in 2004, in the spending review in that year, which is when we shall look at all spending across the whole of government in the normal way.Because of what I regard as an extremely helpful development on the part of the Mayor, who I think recognises that it is desirable to make progress, it is now possible to discuss how a transfer would take place.
Two matters that came to our attention in December need to be resolved before transfer by amending the Greater London Authority Act. It was always intended when the Act was drafted that as soon as the PPP was in place transfer would follow immediately. In other words, the drafters had not anticipated that there might be a prolonged dispute or appeals to the European Court, or to anywhere else for that matter.
Therefore, it is necessary to do two things, which clause 105 achieves. First, it allows the contracts to operate as intended and allows the guarantees in place in relation to the PPP to remain. Secondly, there need to be changes to the possible insolvency provisions. At present, on transfer were either of the two consortia running the PPP to become insolvent the assets would come back into the public sector. As the Act is drafted, if there is a delay and there is insolvency, that would not happen. Clearly, Parliament intended that the tube's assets should remain in the public sector. So those two changes are essential to make sure that the PPPs work.
For the sake of completeness I would add that the Tube Lines contract has now been signed. Tube Lines is now operating its three lines. I believe that the Metronet consortia will reach a financial close in March or April this year, which will allow the investment to go into London Underground—something that is desperately needed and long overdue.
The Bill puts in place significant steps to improve safety, not just on the railways, but also at sea and in the air. It is backed by the necessary investment, which is critical, as well as changes in management to ensure a better safety culture. It also makes some minor adjustments to the GLA Act. It will contribute to making sure that money goes into the London Underground railway, which is absolutely essential.
I hope that the Bill is relatively uncontroversial. There will be points of detail, which can be dealt with, but I hope that the whole House can support it without division. I commend the Bill to the House.
3.44 pm
Mr. Tim Collins (Westmorland and Lonsdale): I can pick up on the Secretary of State's last comments by saying that I believe that the Bill is largely uncontroversial. Clearly, issues of detail will need to be examined in the Committee, but there are many parts that we welcome. Indeed, they are a worthwhile and important contribution to the cause that I am sure all parts of the House share—the wish to see greater transport safety.
In particular, we welcome the Government's decision to legislate for the creation of a railway accident investigation branch, which my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) proposed when he was shadow Transport Secretary back in December 1999. It is a sensible modelling of the successful arrangements relating to aviation and maritime accident investigation. While there are again issues of detail—no doubt the industry, practitioners and others will want them to be pursued in Committee—we have no difficulty in principle with the creation of the body. Indeed, we welcome the Government's decision to create it.
More generally, a great deal of the Bill involves the incorporation within new aspects of transport provision of legislation passed by the last Conservative Government. I refer to the extension of the Police Act 1996 to the British Transport police, matters relating to alcohol control and the Road Traffic Act 1988, the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 and the Transport and Works Act 1992. Of course, it would be somewhat anomalous if the Conservative party, having introduced such provisions in many other respects, were suddenly to find it difficult in principle to support their extension in the way that the Government propose.
We have no difficulty with that, but issues of detail need to be considered. As the Secretary of State and his colleagues know, there are areas in which the Government—perhaps for sensible reasons, perhaps for less sensible ones—have chosen to amend rather than simply copy over the existing provisions. We want to explore in Committee exactly why they have chosen to do that.
The debate has already proven itself worth while, as it has enabled us to have a wide-ranging discussion on some general principles that perhaps ought to apply to transport safety. I want to comment on one or two things that the Secretary of State said in that context. I very much hope that we can continue to achieve a degree of cross-party consensus, and our starting point should be the fact that a life is a life is a life. Saving a life on the roads or in the air is at least as valuable to society as saving one in any other context.
One aspect that Conservative Members will want to explore in Committee and on Report is whether we should be thinking about moving towards a system whereby the Government seek to save life and to commit resources that are likely to save life on the same basis across all modes of transport without differentiating, as sometimes happens now, between expenditure that would save lives on the railway as opposed to that which would save lives in other contexts.
Mr. Redwood: My hon. Friend is on to an interesting question. Was the Secretary of State too dismissive when I made the point that if slowing cars down makes them safer, surely slowing trains down makes them safer? Are not the Government speaking with forked tongue here? After every serious rail crash, they impose speed restrictions. Does not that show that similar principles apply and that speed has something to do with safety on the railways as well as on the roads?
Mr. Collins: My right hon. Friend and I are absolutely united in that we believe that similar standards and similar beliefs should be applied across modes of
transport. That leads me to a particular issue that the Secretary of State touched on. Although I hope that there is no major difference between the parties, it is important to achieve clarification.The Secretary of State talked about the aftermath of Saturday's serious and worrying incident on the Central line. He made it clear—none of us would disagree with this—that he wants to ensure that London Underground can conduct thorough safety inquiries, which I am sure it is doing. He also wants to ensure that it learns the lessons of the incident and takes whatever steps are necessary to prevent its repetition. Again, I am sure we all agree with that. However, I am perhaps a little disconcerted that he did not demur when the hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes) said that the Central line might be disrupted or even shut for weeks.
In that context, we in this place need to be clear about the signals that we are sending out to the railway industry, whether they relate to London Underground or the main line rail industry. It has been widely reported that 500,000 people a day rely on the Central line, so we must consider what may happen if even 10 per cent. of them switch to the roads as a result of its closure or disruption. I declare an interest in that I normally travel to the House on the Central line, but I have been unable to do so for the past two days. I have driven in, and I suspect that tens of thousands of people working in and around London have done the same.
Given what we know about the relative safety of road transport compared with rail transport, it follows that tens of thousands of our fellow citizens are risking life and limb in a way that would not be necessary were the Central line operating. We do not know, but the Central line may be kept out of service for a period of weeks. If it is, Saturday's incident, which no doubt was terrifying for the people involved in it, may lead to actual loss of life. That would be tragic.
I hope that all hon. Members will agree that London Underground should bear that possibility in mind, even though today's London Evening Standard is reporting that the rail unions are pressurising it to contemplate taking out of service permanently all the rolling stock currently running on the Central line if it is concluded that some design flaw was involved in Saturday's incident. I remind the Secretary of State that that stock has been used successfully for about a decade, and its removal from service would seem strange.
I hope that the House will agree that London Underground should reach a balanced judgment on these matters. A decision to shut down the Central line for several weeks for reasons of safety should not be taken lightly, if the consequence will be that more people risk their lives travelling by road.
The Opposition also hope that it will be possible to examine some of the other matters mentioned by the Secretary of State. I join the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) in welcoming what the right hon. Gentleman had to say about European train passenger warning systems. The Secretary of State is right to look at the practicality of such measures, and to aim for systems that work. Some siren voices always call for money to be spent on rail safety, even if that might not be terribly effective. Opposition Members will back the right hon. Gentleman if the actions that he takes to enhance rail safety are clearly based on the best science
and the most rational case. Those actions should not be taken merely in response to public or media pressure to spend money for the sake of spending money.In fact, the UK rail system is extremely safe, and becoming more so. It is not as safe as we should like, but there is no doubt that it is getting safer every year. The Transport 2000 spokesman, Mr. Stephen Joseph, has said that, even after recent serious rail accidents, it would be irrational for people to conclude that they would be safer travelling by road. That is entirely sensible: sadly, more than 3,000 people lose their lives, and about 300,000 are injured, on the roads every year. I hope that that statistic will be noted in the Standing Committee's deliberations on the Bill.
I hope too that the Committee takes note of the recent observation by Andrew Evans, professor of transport safety at University College, London. He commented that a person was far more likely to suffer an accident on the way to a railway station than at any subsequent stage of the journey. The Government are right to establish, through the Bill, a rail accident investigation unit, but the message must not be that the rail industry is unsafe in its absence, nor that we need special legislation to protect people from an unsafe system. This country's rail system is basically safe. Measures can be taken to make it safer still, but we do people no favours by perpetuating the myth that travelling by road is easier and safer than travelling by rail.
The Opposition also welcome the provisions relating to the British Transport police. The Secretary of State did not mention it, but at 10.30 pm this evening BBC 1 is showing the first part of a documentary series on the British Transport police. It will show why we have many reasons to be grateful to that force for the work that it does on behalf of so many people. I believe that tonight's episode will focus on the unpleasant but essential tasks that many members of the force perform in collecting objects—and sometimes, horrifically, body parts—from the rail network. That job has to be done and they undertake it with great care and diligence. It is right that they should have the status that will be accorded them in their incorporation under the Bill. They will no longer be treated as second-class police officers but will be recognised for doing an extremely important public safety job.
At a time when the Prime Minister rightly warns of the continuing threat to our national security from international terrorism, and given that on so many occasions in the past terrorists concentrated their attacks on parts of the rail network, it is important for the British Transport police to know that they have the full support of people throughout the country and on both sides of the House for their work. I hope that the Secretary of State's prioritisation of their work in the Bill will also be reflected in the negotiations that he and others hold with the Treasury on the provision of resources for that police service. Conservative Members continue to hold the view that our police, in general, need more backing and that certainly holds as true for the British Transport police as for any other organisation.
We note that the Secretary of State had to be prompted to refer to part 2, which relates to the changes to the Office of the Rail Regulator. He rightly referred—as I suspected he would—to the report of the Better Regulation Task Force in favour of the proposition that
it is better for regulatory bodies, in general, to be organised as a board rather than as an individual. However, we shall want to explore, if not in this debate certainly in Committee and on Report, the full background to the Government's decision to change the way in which the rail regulator operates. Is it the case, as some people suspect, that the Government were not exactly reluctant to implement that recommendation of their taskforce, given that the current rail regulator, Mr. Tom Winsor, has demonstrated that he is capable of being independent not only of individual concerns within the rail industry but also of Her Majesty's Government? Some Members will recall the occasion when the regulator gave evidence to the Select Committee on Transport about a difference of opinion, or of recollection, between him and a former Secretary of State. It would be a matter of great regret and some seriousness if the Government's decision to change the whole nature of the operation of the Office of the Rail Regulator were to stem from their frustration at the regulator's actions on that occasion. We hope to be able to establish clearly that getting their own back played no part in the Government's motivation.The Secretary of State also referred to the relatively short but none the less significant provisions towards the end of the Bill on the London underground. In his evidence to the Select Committee on 18 December, the right hon. Gentleman explained why the Bill took so long to produce, even though, when it was announced in the Queen's Speech, it was welcomed by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition as a measure that we were unlikely to oppose. The Secretary of State said that the main reason was because even by 18 December he had not reached final conclusions about whether the regulations on the London underground and Transport for London should be dealt with by primary or secondary legislation. I do not invite him to comment on that point, but I suspect that it was the main reason for the hold-up in our debating the Bill.
Earlier, the Secretary of State said that we should not believe everything that the media reported about the state of negotiations between him and the Mayor—indeed, I think that we should not believe everything in the media on any subject. However, I welcomed his comments on the tone of those negotiations and his optimism that progress is being made. It would be helpful if the Government could indicate in the Standing Committee whether, if they reach an agreement with the Mayor that incorporates the provisions to which the Secretary of State referred—that is, a binding undertaking by the Mayor not to return to legal challenge or legal action—the provisions in the Bill would be otiose and could be struck out of the draft. We shall wait to see whether the Government get into that position, but it would be helpful to know perhaps hypothetically what their view on that would be.
Transport for London does not agree with the Secretary of State that the provisions in the Bill are intended simply to carry out the original wishes of Parliament as set out in the Greater London Authority Act 1999. After all, TfL in its memorandum to the Select Committee dated 11 December points to the rather unanswerable argument that the primary purpose of the Act was to transfer responsibility for the London
underground to TfL and the London Mayor. It is perfectly true, as the Secretary of State says, that other intentions were inherent, lay behind, were implied and in some cases were stated, but the primary purpose was to transfer responsibility to Transport for London. That is something that the Secretary of State does not at present propose to do.
- "It is also certainly possible that these changes, once enacted—"
- "would permit the Government to retain control of LUL for an indefinite duration."
The legislation will on the whole have a positive effect. Its intention is clearly to address serious and important issues in a serious and proper way. We will wish to examine points of detail. We shall in particular want to examine the way in which the welcome restrictions on the use of alcohol or drugs by aviation and maritime personnel will be implemented. The Secretary of State did not state otherwise, but he will acknowledge that legal safeguards already apply. It is an offence for someone in charge of an aircraft, for example, to be under the influence of alcohol, but he is right to say that the courageous measures introduced by Barbara Castle, who received an enormous amount of criticism for introducing the breathalyser for motorists, are not now an issue of serious public controversy or debate. It seems to me highly likely that that will also be the case once similar procedures are introduced for pilots of aircraft and maritime vessels. We will examine the detail of that in consultation with the industry, but we do not have any difficulty with it in principle.
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