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6.17 pm
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Dr. Kim Howells): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Mr. Truswell) on securing the
debate and raising the issue of transport in and around Pudsey. Indeed, if all hon. Members were as vigilant as he on transport, the various responsible agencies and authorities would have to sit up and take a bit more notice than they sometimes do. It is right and proper for him to quote his constituents, who depend on and use the buses and trains.I ask my hon. Friend to understand that some great improvements have taken place. We have great hopes for the outcome of the rail review, because we are currently spending huge amounts of money on the railways and we want to get much more value for taxpayers' precious money. Our strategy is to tackle congestion and pollution by improving all sorts of transport. My hon. Friend used the word "integrated". It is mightily overused and its application to transport is often vague. We need much more integration and we should think about it much more strategically than we often do, at all levels of government.
We are interested in some of the issues that my hon. Friend raised. We want to establish a strategy for investment to create prosperity and a better environment, as well as to do all the things for his constituents that my hon. Friend mentioned earlier.
The step change in funding that we have made over the past four years emphasises the Government's commitment to delivering a sustained improvement to the transport infrastructure and thus a real improvement to people's daily lives. The total capital funding available for authorities' local transport plans in 2004–05 is £1.9 billion. That is a huge amount of money, and I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that, with that amount of money available, bus services should not be deteriorating but improving—as indeed they are in some parts of the country.
In Pudsey, a share of that sum of almost £2 billion will be delivered through the West Yorkshire local transport plan. LTPs have provided more certainty of funding for local authorities, with almost a doubling of funding in investment to improve road safety, to increase the capacity and use of public transport, and to reduce the backlog of road and bridge maintenance. My hon. Friend was right to mention that issue; it is a shame how far road maintenance programmes were cut back during those long years of Tory Government. Neither the Tories nor many others understood the importance of maintaining our roads in good condition, and we are now having to pay much more as a result.
The burden of my hon. Friend's concerns related to buses. A key area for an authority's LTP is to increase the use of public transport and to improve the service to users. The sustained development of bus services is key to this. When I was growing up in the 1950s, every developing country wanted a steelworks and a state airline. Nowadays, every city and large town in this kingdom seems to want a tram system or light rail system. They are, however, enormously expensive. We have met MPs from Leeds, and my hon. Friend is right to say that there is a visionary project for a tram system there, but its cost has doubled over a very short period. The last costing that I saw was £1 billion, which is a huge amount of taxpayers' money to spend on such a project.
I shall be interested to see what we can do to improve the image of buses and bus travel, and the quality of bus transport. It is very much the Cinderella service,
although buses carry just as many people as the railways do. They are very flexible, and if they are run properly, they can and do provide a real quality service around the country. One of the problems is that we assume that there is a golden bullet that will cut through all the difficulties involved in making bus transport more popular. I do not think that such a golden bullet exists. It is down to good management, a committed work force, paying people decent rates of pay and making them feel as though they are part of a valuable service. That is the kind of ethos that the best of the railway companies have developed over the years. There is no reason why bus services should not be like that.
Mr. Truswell: Is not part of the problem the fact that where there are improvements to bus services, they tend to be on the profitable commercial routes? Under the pre-1986 system, that "profit" would have been used to cross-subsidise the unprofitable services that were necessarily very important to those without cars who depend on buses for their transport. That cross-subsidy no longer occurs, because any profit simply goes to pay shareholders.
Dr. Howells: That is partly true, but not entirely so. I have seen for myself bus services in rural areas of England, for example, that are developing interesting dial-up systems and flexible routes that can respond to the needs of people living in remote areas who do not have cars and who depend on buses. The notion of integration, which he mentioned earlier, can often be key. It is about trying to understand exactly what people need in those areas and how the bus service can best respond to those needs. My hon. Friend is right that in many ways flexibility has decreased as a consequence of what has happened over the past 10 or 20 years. I was in Carnforth in Lancashire recently, for example, where I saw an excellent scheme operating from Carnforth railway station, with proper integration, and a real sense of wanting to respond to the special needs of people who may live in remote areas, or who may live in inner city areas, who perhaps cannot afford cars or do not want cars and want to use public transport. Of course, there is an issue of affordability, but there is also an issue of good management, to which we have not paid enough attention.
May I add that that is also a big issue on the railways? I was lucky enough to go to Japan recently and see the Japanese railways, which have huge capacity. I have been going round boasting that last year we carried 1 billion people on the railways in Britain, which is the highest total since 1961. The Japanese railways carried 21.7 billion people. They do it not through space age
technology or rocket science but through very good management and responding to what passengers need. They charge a premium fare for it, by the way, but people are prepared to pay those fares if they know that they will get a very good service as a consequence. That is a target at which we must aim in this country, whether in Pudsey or anywhere else.My hon. Friend was particularly concerned about the question of future funding. Public transport subsidy in West Yorkshire was £66 million last year. If we divide that total by all the trips taken in West Yorkshire by passengers, it works out at about £3 subsidy per passenger journey. That is a big subsidy. It is not quite as big as the overall subsidy for passengers in Britain, by the way, which is a bit nearer £4 per passenger journey. It is a big slug of public investment. We must examine that carefully in relation to schemes that look very attractive, and my hon. Friend is right to have identified some of those in his area. We need to consider how we can improve on the way in which we use new vehicles on railways, and how to improve signalling systems so that we use more intensively the railways that are already there. Network Rail, the Strategic Rail Authority and some of the rail companies are looking closely at that and doing sterling work to try to improve performance. I hope that he will welcome that.
My hon. Friend mentioned briefly the ROSCOs—rolling stock companies—and the profits that they have been making. It is a remarkable story. There has been investment of £4 billion in 4,000 new carriages for our railways over the last seven years. That is the biggest order that has ever been placed, and it is hard to see how that could have been public investment alone—public-private investment was needed to get that sea change. As for the average age of our fleet, it is now one of the youngest anywhere in Europe, with more and more new trains coming on to the system, and the system will improve as a consequence.
My hon. Friend asked about the aviation White Paper master plan. Yes, I can give him an absolute assurance that the Department will issue guidance for airports on the production of master plans. On the question of surface access, he noted the quality of transport links to Leeds Bradford airport. Once again, I refer him to the aviation White Paper, which on page 143 states:
- "responsibility for bringing forward proposals and securing funding lies with airport operators, working closely with DfT, SRA, HA and regional and local bodies".
The motion having been made after Six o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. Deputy Speaker adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
- Adjourned at half-past Six o'clock.
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