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Mr. McNulty: Have you met Martin Salter?
Mr. Wilshire: Yes. Obviously one of the hon. Members for Reading has also had a go about that issue.
I then asked myself what the significance was of turning the train round at Staines. Transport for London could have turned the train round at Feltham, which is in London, or at Ashford, which is not. I became suspicious at that point, because I realised that Transport for London was seeking to gain control of the rail network in the whole of my constituency. I then decided that I needed to look at what the Mayor of London had been saying about his great empire. Surprise, surprise, I discovered that what was going on was not Transport for London wanting to improve rail services. It is probably part and parcel of a land and power grab by the Mayor, wanting to use TFL to get control of the rail network in the Spelthorne constituency and to say, ''We might as well go back to the original Maude report, which suggested having another London borough.'' The Mayor actually said that.
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The fact that I feel strongly about it, and am determined to resist it at all cost, is partly because of the rail services, partly because of my constituency and partly because of the power-crazed approach of Greater London. I would say the same things about what the Mayor appears to be up to if he were a Conservative trying to get his grubby little hands on my constituency. We do not want any part of that.
Taking Transport for London at its word, the Committee needs to consider what TFL intends to do if it gets some input, which is really control. I asked TFL what it imagined it would do to the railways in my constituency and presumably elsewhere if the Bill went through unamended. In reply, it said a number of interesting things. It said: ''This is what we really want
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to do. We want to get control of the fares.'' Transport for London wishes to determine the fares that my constituents will pay.
Mr. Tom Harris (Glasgow, Cathcart) (Lab): I am fascinated by the hon. Gentleman's conspiracy theories. I expect to hear the phrase ''black helicopters'' at any minute. For the sake of clarification, can he name the individual from Transport for London who is giving him so much information? It would be very useful for the rest of the Committee to double-check his source.
Mr. Wilshire: Yes, of course. It is Mr. Peter Field, who was in charge of South West Trains and is now one of the senior people responsible for the development of Transport for London rail services in constituencies such as mine. I was trying to shield him from being got at by people such as the hon. Gentleman. There is nothing secret about it. I did my level best to go to the correct source—I was not just chatting to a ticket collector on my way home—the official, authoritative voice of Transport for London. It was agreed that what was said to me was on the record, which is why I have a note of it. It was a question of what Transport for London wanted to do: to get control of the fare structure and the timetables and insert its priorities.
Mr. Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con): Is my hon. Friend aware that some of what he said is contained in a document issued on notepaper headed ''Transport for London'' with the words ''Mayor of London'' on the bottom? Paragraph 3,on the ability to set fare levels for rail services, states:
''In order to harmonise fares across transport services and zones, it will be necessary to change fare levels on National Rail and bring them in line with Travelcard and Oyster. To do this the Mayor will need to have the ability to set the fares for all transport modes in London.''
Mr. Wilshire: Yes. However, the document states ''in London''. My point is about outside London. The source is not only Mr. Peter Field but whoever wrote the document from which my right hon. Friend quotes.
I was told that TFL also wants to gain control of decisions on investment priorities. At present, we can conduct negotiations with South West Trains, Network Rail and any other organisations that the Government leave in existence, and decide what should be spent at Windsor, for example, or at Egham or Staines and so on, until we get to Greater London. I have no confidence whatever in Transport for London giving any consideration to the bits round the edge when it comes to its priorities for investment. I can envisage the money currently allocated by South West Trains for the platforms at Staines, or whatever else it has in mind, being hijacked by another scheme, be it the bid for the Olympics or something else. When I asked how the Government are going to fund the improvements, one answer was from fares. I am sorry, but I do not see why my constituents should be expected to pay extra fares on their railways only for somebody to decide to spend the money somewhere
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else rather than those who pay receiving the benefits. I am against the proposal on the basis of the investment priorities.
Mrs. Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con): Would my hon. Friend go even further and say that on this issue there is what is fashionably called a democratic deficit? Our constituents depend on transport in, to and from London, but they do not have a vote to cast in the election for the Mayor of London, so why should the Mayor and Transport for London spend any money benefiting those outwith Greater London when they will gain no electoral benefit from it? Forgive me if that is cynical, but it is true.
Mr. Wilshire: I could not have put it better myself; that is exactly right. I was going to talk about accountability later, but my hon. Friend has put me on this course—I nearly said down this track, but perhaps I should not under the circumstances. I shall give an example of how true her point is.
Perhaps in the name of accountability, the Government decided that there should be a police authority for London. On balance, I agreed with them that instead of responsibility falling to the Home Secretary, there should be a police authority of elected people. Because the Metropolitan Police district had historically always included the whole of the county of Middlesex, my constituents were policed by the Metropolitan police. The moment that there was to be accountability to the London assembly, the issue arose of how those of us outside Greater London would have any input into the accountability to the general public of the Metropolitan police.
When we raised the question with the then Home Secretary, he put it to us that there were probably two choices: we could either join London and be part of the democratic process in London, or my constituency and others around the edge of London could be policed by somebody else. It will come as no surprise to you, Mr. Amess, that we chose to be policed by Surrey police, which raises a certain amount of difficulty when I protest that we are not Surrey. However, we would far rather be policed by the aliens from Surrey than by aliens from Greater London.
That was the view that we took, and we will take it again in discussions about accountability of the railways. Of course there must be an input, and there are amendments to another clause about what consultation should take place, which I shall pursue later. There is precedent for these issues of accountability, and one of the options appears to be putting places like mine into London for a number of purposes, of which accountability is one. All I would say is that we do not want any part of it. The way to solve the accountability argument is to have the debate about how people in Greater London want accountability for their rail services and leave us to decide how we want accountability for rail services that have got nothing to do with Transport for London.
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Not only are there investment priorities when it comes to extending Transport for London, there are also customer-consumer priorities. Transport for London says, as it is perfectly entitled to and I do not wish to argue, that its priorities are commuting passengers going to and from work. However, when I get into a discussion with Transport for London from my point of view, it says that those are the priorities that it believes will benefit from extending its control over rail services outside of London. My point is to a certain extent parochial, but it also applies to the Brighton line. We have already seen the argument that in order to ease commuting passenger problems, the Gatwick express should be undermined as a discrete service to an airport in Sussex. There were attempts, which we happily beat off, to do the same thing to the Heathrow express, due to the priorities of Transport for London.
As far as I am concerned the employment profile of my constituency is such that anything that may undermine the success and prosperity of Heathrow airport automatically threatens the jobs of my constituents and the house prices that people have had to pay. The last thing that they want is for their houses to drop in value because Heathrow is no longer the success that it is currently. That is particularly relevant because when I spoke to Transport for London, I asked it what its view would be about investing in air track if it got control of the rail services in my constituency.
For those who are not familiar with air track, it is the proposal to do for the south of Heathrow what the Heathrow express did for the north. It would give a discrete, direct express service to the south of the airport from Staines, through my constituency. It could then go on to the south coast, Waterloo or anywhere else south of the airport. The reply I received took my breath away. I was told, ''We're not really interested in air track. It would be built outside London and it has nothing to do with commuting passengers.''
We have had an attack on the Gatwick express, and on the Heathrow express, and now I have been told that Transport for London could not care less whether air track is built because it is not its passenger priority. It is my constituents' priority. Anything that would stand in the way of improving surface access to Heathrow by public transport is something we are not best pleased with. One has only to consider the state of the M25, and the state of air quality, to see that. Here is something that the Strategic Rail Authority, BAA and others were almost ready to do until a load of changes came about. We are now told that it is to go right down to the bottom of the list of priorities because it does not fit with those of London.
In case the Minister is tempted to say that I am being totally negative and attacking anything he might suggest—he is too nice a man to say such things, but he will think them—there is an alternative. I am perfectly willing to join a debate about a better way of running railways in the south-east than the current one. My
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constituents are prepared to join such a debate, but we are not prepared to be handed over to the Mayor of London and Transport for London.
If the case for the service delivery of rail services to the south-east is better made in a different way, why do the Government not set up some sort of independent rail company? I shall not go into the argument of whether it should be the private sector or the public sector. I could, but that is not the point I want to make. If the view is that there should be a larger area, the Government should set up something special and independent with accountability right the way across, rather than handing the matter over to Transport for London and the Mayor. The Minister can argue for the service benefits if he wants to, but he will not persuade me that the Mayor of London has to get his grubby little hands on my railways.
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