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Lord Inglewood: My Lords, there is a considerable difference between the European Commission and the
domestic Civil Service. However, the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, asks Her Majesty's Government to seek an injunction,
- "prohibiting individual commissioners or any officer acting on their behalf from participating by speech or otherwise in any of the matters at issue or under discussion among the electorate of the United Kingdom in the forthcoming general election".
Effectively that means that they can conduct no business as it affects the United Kingdom. Were that to apply to the United Kingdom, it would apply no doubt also to other states of the European Community, and that would effectively drive the European Community into a state of complete gridlock.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, is the Minister aware that Eurosceptics, or Eurorealists as I prefer to call them, are certainly not running scared? No one who stands up for this country and for the continuation of democratic rule by our elected representatives needs to be running scared.
Are the European Commissioners who make such incursions into our national life doing so with the use of taxpayers' money? Is that illegal? It would certainly be illegal during an election campaign.
Lord Inglewood: My Lords, no one would accuse the noble Lord of running scared of anyone.
The European Commission is funded by taxpayers' money throughout the Community. As long as there is a general election within this country, the Commission is therefore in receipt of taxpayers' money, some of it emanating from this country.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, does the Minister accept that Members of this House are not in the strongest position to talk about the observation of democracy? The two Commissioners about whom we are talking were previously Members of another place and have been elected politicians. They were nominated by Her Majesty's Government to their present clearly political positions. I do not see the fundamental difference between the healthy debate that we have in this House and the healthy contribution to a broadly European debate which members of the College of Commissioners have. Does the Minister view the position in the same way?
Lord Inglewood: My Lords, the noble Lord has expressed his opinions most clearly for the benefit of the House.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, does the Minister agree that this is a great deal of fuss about nothing, since neither Mr. Neil Kinnock nor Sir Leon Brittan is likely to have even a minimal effect on the voting intentions of British citizens?
Lord Inglewood: My Lords, I do not know whether I can speak for the general election. However, were the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, able to have a vote, it is unlikely that the utterances of either of those two gentlemen would affect the way that he voted.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, is the Minister aware that his answers give me cause for disappointment
in comparison with those given to me directly by M. Delors during his period in office? As he will be aware, I criticised M. Delors for having criticised our British Prime Minister at the time--which he had the impertinence to do. In reply to me, in a public gallery and televised, he turned round and said, "Well, it's a free country, isn't it?". That is a far more convincing answer than the noble Lord has given me.Is the Minister further aware that in the course of an interview given to the distinguished correspondent of The Times, Mr. Bremner, on 7th February, Jacques Santer delivered himself of the following observations:
- "Impatience over Britain's approach to Europe could lead its European Union partners to sidestep London, requiring a future government to choose whether it wants Britain to stay in the EU, Jacques Santer, the President of the Commission, said yesterday".
- "the project for a single currency was 'not just an economic process but a profound movement towards political integration'. The EU's founding fathers had intended it as a step towards 'an economic government of Europe'".
That is not a matter that is generally accepted within the United Kingdom by any party. He had no business to make any observation as to what was or was not the attitude of the British Government.
Lord Inglewood: My Lords, I thought the noble Lord had just explained that it was a free country and one could express oneself in the way one wanted.
Business
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, at a convenient moment after 3.30 p.m. my noble friend Lord Lucas will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement that is to be made in another place on meat hygiene.
Education Bill
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Henley, I beg to move the Motion standing in his name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the amendments for the Report stage be marshalled and considered in the following order:
Clause 75.--(Lord Strathclyde.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Transport: An Integrated Policy
3.2 p.m.
Lord Berkeley rose to call attention to the recent report of the United Kingdom Round Table on sustainable development Making Connections and to the need for an integrated policy for national and local transport; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I welcome the opportunity for the House to debate this very important part of the transport scene. First, I congratulate the authors of the report who, as the House may know, were appointed by the Government. The Secretary of State, Mr. Gummer, and Sir Richard Southwood were co-chairmen. The strength of criticism of the Government contained in the report is therefore quite surprising. It may reflect the fact that the Secretary of State is the only member of the present Cabinet who has even the hint of a green tinge. I declare an interest in relation to the Rail Freight Group, the Piggyback Consortium and Adtrans.
The Round Table report states that the group was conscious of the importance and difficulty of making multi-modal journeys seamless. That is a difficult concept to understand. The group gave as its remits:
- "To identify key barriers to inter- and intra-modal transfers within passenger and freight journeys, and to recommend ways in which these could be overcome, with the aim of achieving a more sustainable transport sector".
What is inter-modal transfer? For those who may not be embroiled in the subject, it simply means using more than one mode of transport for a particular journey. It may mean a complicated journey across the country; but the term is equally applicable to local journeys to do the shopping, to take the children to school or to the park, or to visit relatives--journeys made every day and often several times a day. For freight it means easy transfer between road and rail. Is there information? Are there suitable sites for terminals and services?
On the basis that it is apparently the stated view of the Government, at least in the abstract, to encourage people to use public transport, it is generally agreed that in order to persuade people to leave their cars at home and walk to school, take the bus or buses to the shops or use the bus and train to get to work, there has to be the carrot of better public transport as a reasonable alternative. But the report demonstrates just how far the Government have let slip that most important ingredient to a seamless journey--the change of mode.
We may go back over 18 years of Conservative non-policy--the massive road building programme, Roads for Prosperity, and the great transport debate during which the then Secretary of State, Dr. Mawhinney, generated tons of unread paper, which all sank without trace when he departed. There followed the sudden cutbacks in the road
programme when the Treasury and the green lobby got together with the same objective but for different reasons.The railways have seen similar disastrous restructuring. Just as Bob Reid was delivering real benefits from his reorganisation, rail was privatised. Railtrack was going to be kept in the public sector. However, there was a U-turn and it was privatised because the Government could not sell the franchises.
The Government privatised the buses. In London, presumably because the odd parliamentarian uses them, the routes structure was preserved and each one was let off individually. The service is poor, but at least some of the network benefits are there. Elsewhere, where few parliamentarians or persons of influence travel by bus, the free market reigns supreme. There are more buses on the road, but, except in London, there are fewer passengers. The report states that between 1985-86 and 1995-96 bus passenger journeys in London increased by 5 per cent., which is good, but elsewhere decreased by 29 per cent. That can only be a result of the inability of people outside London to find out how to get a bus, where it goes and when.
Do the Government care? They did the same with rail freight. It was sold off to private companies. There is a policy of encouraging rail freight. I do not know whether the Government are shortly to announce that there will be 44-tonne lorries across the whole country; I do not know whether they will encourage a planning regime for rail connected sites or announce any other measures. The property of Railtrack and BR is being sold off as if there were no tomorrow. Has that approach ever been thought through?
From the Government's point of view it may appear on the surface to be a success story. Underneath, as the report states, the quality of the transport experience could be very much better. The few have made a lot of money. But what about the many--those who have to use the new system that the Government have created and, I submit, forgotten about? The report is about making connections--changing trains, changing from bus to train, changing from one train operator's service to another. The sub-group chairman, Dr. Susan Owens, said of the report:
- "It's really indicative of a terrible failure of our transport system in terms of its co-ordination and organisation. Competition in transport is not just producing the integrated network that is essential if we are going to tackle the problems of traffic growth".
Unless we can achieve that, travel choices will continue to be weighted heavily in favour of seamless journeys by car or lorry.
Let us examine some of the main points of the report and what has happened more recently to support its conclusions. It gives a clear message that if we are to encourage people from the private car onto public transport, that transport has to be attractive, and passengers must have information about where they are going, when, where they can change, how much it will cost and, most important of all, what will happen when things go wrong. Noble Lords might think that all those questions are quite reasonable.
Starting with passengers, what are the barriers to journeys that involve interchange? First, people need information before a journey. It is possible to obtain train timetables. But is it possible to take a bicycle on the train? What happens if one leg of the journey is delayed? How do people find out? Well, there is a train timetable.
Now, after years of requesting, there is one national number; and it is good. I support it. But for buses, if you want to go to Ripon or Bridport, two towns which do not have rail services, how do you find out how to get there from the nearest station? Whom do you ask? Whom do you telephone? Bridport is on the territory of South West Trains. The new operator said that it would be starting a new bus link from Dorchester to connect with the trains. The problem is that the person who was dealing with the link was sacked as an economy measure--so there is no bus service and no person to ask. When you get to Dorchester, where do you find the bus stop? Is there a map?
It is the fragmentation of responsibilities for information which is so serious. In paragraph 45 the report states that the authors were told that a full information service, presumably for all forms of public transport, down to the very local level of postcodes--which is close--would cost 2 per cent. of total public transport expenditure. They thought that that was high. I am told that the airlines spend an average of 2 to 3 per cent. on advertising and promotion and expect to do it to attract traffic. So why should not the surface public transport operators spend the same? They are, after all, in competition with the private car. Why will not bus companies work with each other and with the train companies?
The Government should have foreseen all this in their policy of privatisation. I do not suggest that the Government should have paid for it all, but they could at least have required the rail and bus franchisees or operators, as a condition of their licences, to contribute to and participate in a national scheme. But they did not. They did not care and probably do not now. They have washed their hands of it at the level where it matters to the users and customers.
Moving on to information, passengers have to feel in control of their journey--where they are going, that they will get off at the right stop and that they are heading in the right direction. Some new trains have signs inside saying where they are going. Buses do not give much information. It would be nothing spectacular but they could display maps. There could be a system whereby people can ask where they go. But there are few, if any, announcements on buses and never an announcement about competing buses. Yet they are part of the transport system.
Physical inconvenience is another matter raised in the report. It points to the difficulties and the safety problems faced by people who are frail and disabled or by those carrying heavy baggage or with small children when crossing busy roads in transferring between interchange points. It is quite frightening, as I am sure many noble Lords will know, when lorries are rushing past, you cannot find the bus stop, and the children are screaming.
Whose job is it to sort it out? I have no doubt at all that it is the duty of the Government to set the scene and the structure and the duty of local authorities and the operators to participate. Each is now passing the buck, complaining that they have no money. The 2 per cent. figure, however, is still there.
As regards tickets, the railways pay lip service to giving impartial information, but there are endless stories about people doing the same journey every week and being charged different prices. The operators have abolished super savers on some routes and you cannot get reductions for network card holders on other routes. Sometimes you cannot get a return ticket; it is all different. Sometimes you can pay on a train and sometimes you cannot. It is better in London, again, I suspect, because many parliamentarians have had a hand in the legislation. But all-operator season tickets and single and return journeys of several elements with different operators are not common outside London.
There are problems with timings and connections between operators. Does one train wait for another? Sometimes it does; sometimes it does not. Does a train wait for a bus connection? I suggest that there are not many examples of that. The bus probably goes nowhere near the station. And anyway how does one know in advance? Does the bus or train run at all? We have talked quite often in this Chamber about South West Trains. Not only were many trains cancelled, but the timescale for the reinstatement of the original service gets longer and longer as the weeks go by. The company, I believe aided and abetted by the franchising director, makes the point that cancellations are only in off-peak services. That is fine if you are a commuter. If you are an off-peak traveller, because it is cheaper, it is tough.
I was interested to note the comment by Sir George Young who recently visited Bournemouth at the time of the cuts. He said:
- "I know that South West Trains is doing all it can to restore services quickly".
There was not a hint of criticism of how this first and flagship franchisee got into the mess in the first place.
Of course, the situation was exacerbated by signalling problems near Woking a week or two ago when Railtrack managed to put up a signal gantry back to front, so the signals pointed in the wrong direction. The company wondered why it did not work. It spent a lot of time putting new paths beside the railways for the safety of its staff, although they appear to have done quite happily without them for 100 years. The best thing is that at the end of each path there is a single post which says "End of path". I am waiting for a sign four feet further on, saying "Beginning of next path". Is that really all Railtrack can find to spend the £1.6 billion on when it should be improving the infrastructure, keeping the tracks on line, replacing rotten sleepers and even repainting the Forth Bridge? The House will recall that the railway inspectorate has had to slap several enforcement notices on Railtrack to make it improve the track at Euston and at the Forth Bridge as well as making it invest, we hope, in sensible activities rather than footpaths or notices.
We have heard all about jobs and job losses. South West Trains has only lost 70 jobs but there are more to come elsewhere. Can the company keep the trains going with all those jobs being lost? I very much doubt it.
Then there is the question of shortening the length of trains. It may surprise passengers on South West Trains and Connex that all passengers on a journey of over 20 minutes should have a seat. Who checks that? The operators check whether their trains are long enough, but they also save money by shortening them. Who checks the operators? The franchising director is supposed to, but he has quietly dumped this pledge. He has only done one census; he should have done two. And guess what? His report will not be out until after the election, I think. Surprise, surprise! So we will not know what the congestion is, although those who travel on the trains will be well aware of it.
In summary, the report gives many government failings. It is, one might say, sponsored by the Government. The failures result in ageing buses, falling numbers of passengers, poorly co-ordinated timetables and, as people move to the car, even more crowded roads.
It is interesting to comment on what Will Hutton said in the Observer early in February:
- "They could have added [in the report] that the old public monopolies that so displeased our Conservative masters are rapidly being replaced by private monopolies, with 50 per cent. of the routes dominated by Stagecoach, Cowie and First Bus".
What is the difference between the two? Can we assume that since Mr. Gummer was co-chairman of the group, in the unlikely event of his government being re-elected he would implement the recommendations in full? Only a year ago, Sir George Young issued a Conservative Party press release which stated that,
- "we have a clear consistent policy [which is designed] to produce better services for passengers at less cost to the taxpayer. It is that simple".
Many passengers would say that he has not delivered to them and the savings to the taxpayers, however good they may look on paper, have yet to deliver the goods. If they do not, then it will be after the election and someone else's problem.
I conclude with a quote from the noble Lord, Lord Deedes, that well known Conservative supporter, who says:
- "Under our new masters, Connex South Eastern, certain trains have got shorter and more crowded".
As the cattle trucks clattered into London Bridge, the noble Lord, Lord Deedes, complained to the driver. The driver said: "I wish more of you would complain". That sums it up.
It is a disaster. It has been 18 years of disaster, but the connection problem is heightened and emphasised in the report and it is what we need to debate today. I beg to move for papers.
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