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3.17 p.m.
Lord Teviot: My Lords, I am honoured to be the first to have the privilege of thanking the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for introducing this important debate. As usual I must declare an interest. As many of your
Lordships know, I have been connected with the bus industry for many years. Therefore I welcome the opportunity to comment on Making Connections. I am afraid that my views and observations are quite different from those of the noble Lord because I feel the situation is quite sunny compared with the way in which he painted it.Contrary to press reports at the time of publication, the report has some very positive statements about the benefits of privatisation and commercialisation. It identifies a clear road ahead through quality partnerships and I shall come to them later. It also identifies the importance of local authorities being provided with sufficient resources for public transport. It is worth noting that in the mid-1980s revenue support accounted for 30 per cent. of local bus revenue. Now it has been reduced to 11 per cent. and the customer has a greater choice of services. That surely is a great achievement.
In the media there was much ill-informed and unhelpful comment about the commercialised bus industry outside London. Everyone recognises that we must "all" increase the use of public transport to ease congestion; but what people mean is "everyone else but me". Some people want the bus to provide the same door-to-door convenience as the car, when clearly that is not possible. Therefore, they look for any excuse not to use the bus. We are all impatient by nature. There are still some difficulties to overcome. Information and ticketing have been sources of irritation since time immemorial. However, the industry, the Government and the local authorities have recognised that weakness--not before time. No doubt my noble friend the Minister will inform us of the progress of the government working party which is studying this aspect of bus services.
Much is made in the report about the use of real time information. Of course, we all thoroughly approve of such systems, but we must also be realistic. In many rural areas a good, well designed and easy to read timetable is all that people need. The report, intentionally or otherwise, gives the impression that only in London does the customer have the benefit of good information. Personally, I do not believe that it is perfect in London. Let me assure the House that there is much innovation outside the capital city.
Where long distance travel is concerned there is, for the first time, an industry-funded national timetable and a national telephone hotline. That will give information on any inter-urban coach or rural bus service. Tickets for coach and train services can be bought over the telephone. That service is known as the Train, Bus and Coach Hotline and is available nationally. As the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, referred to the number, I shall tell your Lordships that it is 0891 910 910. Referring again to ticketing, it is simply not true that the London-type travelcard is unique. Many similar systems exist outside the capital.
A welcome comment was the key recognition of the role of quality partnerships. A quality partnership is a formalised partnership between local authorities and bus operators, aimed at increasing the quality of both vehicles and infrastructure. The report recommends that
the Government should encourage voluntary action between operators and local authorities. Such co-operation is already taking place. Quality partnership agreements have already been signed between operators and local authorities in the West Midlands and Glasgow. Several other such partnerships are in the pipeline.In the report, a review of the regulation of certain aspects of the bus industry is suggested. At this stage I am not entirely convinced of the need for change. There are already examples of partnerships by mutual agreement, and whether the weight of further regulations would be beneficial is somewhat doubtful.
Following a massive upheaval of the bus industry after the 1985 Transport Act, heavy investment is now on stream and ridership is stabilising. We must be careful not, once again, to change the regulatory regime, thereby placing in jeopardy either the newly-forged partnerships or investment in new buses. Passengers' needs must always come before political doctrine.
Finally, there is the recommendation that interchange sites should be safeguarded through the Government's Planning Policy Guidance. It is important that we do not spend money on developing interchange facilities at one end of a town and then authorise business and commercial expansion miles away. Therefore, such matters must be for local, not national, determination.
The dismissive attitude of planners towards coach travel leaves much to be desired. For example, if you happen to be one of the 2,500 tourists who come from Paris or Brussels on Eurostar every day to Waterloo, you are given a very poor deal indeed if you want an onward journey by coach. You must cross a busy road and carry your own luggage to a disused car park before carrying on with your journey. So, let us not forget that the coach is also an important mode of travel.
In the brief time that I have available, I should like to reminisce a little and confess that, when the Transport Act 1985 was a mere Bill, I was totally opposed to it and, indeed, cynical as to its aims. I could not see the purpose of altering a regulatory structure which had been in place since 1930 and which I thought worked perfectly well. Like many people in the industry, I could not see bus operation as anything but a necessary mode of transport--but one which was severely declining and with few opportunities for commercialisation.
History has changed all that. The industry is now more buoyant and purposeful. More importantly, the public are getting a better choice of service.
3.25 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Sheffield: My Lords, I should like to take the opportunity to draw attention to a silence in the Making Connections report and to a weakness.
The silence is on the subject of canals and water transport. We make less use of our navigable rivers and waters today than at any time in our history. I do not long to see Viking longships again sailing up the Humber; but I should like to see the Trent as it once was, full of traffic going up and down at high tide. I should also like to see our canals used. The Don navigation has been magnificently restored in the past 20 years with European money. It is a state of the art,
first-class canal, where locks open as a boat approaches. It is absolutely superb. There is only one thing wrong with it: it is almost entirely disused. A fine array of herons walks along the banks and, if I dare say so in your Lordships' presence, cormorants swim up and down the water. But of ships, boats and barges there is none.One of the reasons is covered in the Making Connections report. A canal cannot be taken into one's backyard or the factory gates. There need to be more thought-through ways of getting containers from the barges to where they need to be. But when we look at the pollution rate and so on, it is difficult to think of any better or more economic way of moving heavy goods about than by water. It has always been so in the past; I cannot understand why it is not so in the present. I find puzzling and regrettable the silence of Making Connections, which uses the word "canals" once, and the previous report from the same source which said that it did not have space to talk about waterways.
I also believe that we are failing to grasp the problem of the motor car. Lip service is paid to less of it but that is all. When we look back over the past 100 years, there is something rather extraordinary in the way the motor car has crept along by the legislators' blind side. Stagecoaches were regulated at every stage by the Turnpike Acts. On canals and railways not a movement could be made without an Act of Parliament. But once the red flag was given up, the motor car was allowed to get on with it, with dire consequences for us all that still continue.
In the 1930s we decided not to build roads, for the perhaps not unreasonable reason that Hitler and Mussolini were building roads and so it must be wrong. In fact, we did not do anything until we suddenly realised that the roads that we had would be lined from John o' Groats to Land's End with bungalows. So we began to control the car by planning where we put houses. That was a step in the right direction.
When we look back at our Victorian cities, we see that they were limited by the tramlines and walking distance to the tram terminus. There was no point in building further away than that. My moderately wealthy grandfather travelled by tram from his big house in Devon Road to Newcastle every day. He could not have built his house further away unless he had been very wealthy and into horses and carriages, which he was not. Those restrictions vanished when the motor car was invented.
We are still making some attempts through planning to control the spread of our towns and villages. But when I drive around South Yorkshire--now the East Riding of Yorkshire--which I do a good deal, I see in almost every village splendid groups of new houses. They are rather expensive new houses and new houses in which nobody could possibly live without having a car or possibly two cars. I do not understand what the planners are doing. They are building-in a situation in which there will never be public transport and people will be dependent on the motor car. We can multiply illustrations like that.
By increases in petrol taxes and by making the improvements in the quality of public transport about which other noble Lords have spoken, we can curb the desire to use the motor car. But I suspect it is wishful thinking to believe that that is enough. I drive a car; it is extraordinarily convenient. The thought of standing at a bus stop in the rain is not attractive when I can take the car. However, the car is an extremely destructive implement in relation to the quality of the life of our nation and indeed the world and we should leave it at home.
I am disappointed that the Making Connections report only advocates less use of the car and does not go on to say that we need radical legislation, certainly in the planning area and possibly in other areas as well. In that way we can again become a society in which the most sensible means of travel are used, both by passengers and freight. I like to think that freight could be transported by water, and passengers by public transport which is both trustworthy and convenient, as well as being accessible. Perhaps then, like my grandfather--who was no saint or hero--new generations will choose to go by tram instead of, as I do, by car. We need to be more radical than the report suggests if we are to bring the car under control.
3.31 p.m.
Lord Addington: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for bringing this report to our attention and I say straightaway that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield hit the nail squarely on the head when he referred to the historical basis from where our transport system came. Initially, our transport system was built around the waterways--arguably that is one of the reasons we industrialised so fast and so early. We had a system of waterways which allowed the transport of goods far more easily than any of the other major nations in Europe. We then backed that up with a train system.
Because we were one of the first to introduce a train system, we found ourselves building vast numbers of trains, many of which never made any money under the old privatised system. Arguments took place and ultimately we were left with a train system running on narrow gauge tracks. The first problem we encountered with our freight system, as the report pointed out, was that we had smaller carriages travelling on smaller tracks than virtually any other country in Europe.
We can never escape history, but we can go on from it. We are in danger of accepting the fait accompli; that we cannot transport goods by rail or waterways because of the expense of transferring them from their present mode of transport. That is what the report discusses. It takes time, effort and--dare I say it?--money to change the mode of transport of heavy loads to either rail or waterway, though once the transfer has been made, the unit cost of moving them around is incredibly cheap.
The report appeared to be primarily aimed at passenger transport, or found itself drawn towards it. Passengers have accepted the idea that travelling around in a metal cocoon--a car; one's personal mode of
transport--is the normal and indeed desirable way of transporting oneself. Cars of all types are sold from every angle in our consumer-led society. We want to travel in our own box with our own space around us.It is too late to try to convince people that cars are not the way forward. All we can do is try to restrict the numbers of cars on the road by offering alternatives which are comparatively easy to use. The report talks about making connections between the various modes of transport and there are many examples of how that can work. The first example that springs to mind is Victoria Station. Perhaps appropriately, it is the largest, if not the closest, mainline station to the Houses of Parliament. There one can find mainline trains, underground trains, bus services and taxis integrated inside the same building. If one wants to change between any of those modes of transport, one will not have to walk more than 100 yards, but even then it is not perfect.
The taxi rank at Victoria Station was left over from the days of the horse and cart--the taxi service originated with horsepower. The tube system grew up around it and through that area, but suffered greatly from a lack of private finance. It still desperately needs investment. Though improvements have been made, many parts need at the very least a wash and brush-up. However, it is there and it works.
The regulatory powers of London mean that we know where the buses are going and where to catch a train or a tube. A series of co-ordinating bodies are working together to give us that information. If we can do that on a 100 year-old site, surely we can do it in miniature at dozens of other points throughout the country, especially when possibly only two or three modes of transport are involved. Realistically, if we are not going to invest in trams or in some other form of light rail system--I believe we should, but that is neither here nor there in this debate--we must strive to co-ordinate the remaining transport systems, as the report suggests.
We must introduce tickets which are acceptable to all modes of transport so that the inconvenience of the journey does not outweigh the benefits. If noble Lords want to see why it is so important to get rid of such minor inconveniences, they should walk to Clapham Junction and watch young women performing the Herculean task of trying to carry four bags of shopping and two young children. It should perhaps become an Olympic event. With the best will in the world it is impossible to carry two children and a volume of shopping up and down those steps without assistance, even if a member of the public is generally willing to grab the pushchair, but that cannot be guaranteed. Negotiating the steps in itself is extremely difficult, but when one has to buy a ticket with junior running off in one direction and tins of baked beans rolling out of the carrier bag in another, it becomes impossible.
We must integrate the systems and give people information about where trains are running and where tickets can be bought. Without the one-stop convenience that that would bring, we are ultimately heading for disaster. We have sold the idea of the car being the best
mode of transport and the most socially acceptable; unless we can address all the other points, we are doomed to failure in making people change their minds.3.38 p.m.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, normally I would expect to see my noble friend Lord Listowel sitting by my side. But, sadly, our most distinguished colleague with his remarkable record passed away this afternoon. We send our deep sympathy to Lady Listowel and the family.
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