| Previous Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |
Lord Lucas: My Lords, as usual, there is a great deal of sense and correctness in what the noble Countess says. If I may, I shall write to her on some of the detailed points she raised. From my limited knowledge I am sure that in some systems the knives are sterilised between carcasses or they certainly should be. However, I am familiar with all the problems she raised, particularly those caused by the modern large-scale meat industry where meat is produced, processed, slaughtered and distributed on a large scale. It provides an opportunity for nasties such as E.coli 157 to proliferate in a way which would not be possible in the old style meat industry where a local herd went to a local slaughterhouse and distribution took place locally.
I do not believe that we can do anything to get away from modern practices, but it is one of the reasons we have to put much greater emphasis on hygiene
procedures and facilities in the big slaughterhouses to ensure that the opportunities which E.coli and other bacteria can find in such places are denied to them.
Lord Merlyn-Rees: My Lords, what is the status of the Meat Hygiene Service? It is of interest to a number of us on the Select Committee, but I ask the question for myself. What kind of agency is it? How accountable is it to Ministers? If it comes up with recommendations, how binding are they on Ministers? What is the relationship between the two? If the service recommended fewer abattoirs how would it be received? Would the recommendation have to be carried out? Is the service independent or semi-independent? I do not believe that the whole matter of executive agencies has been thought through.
Why are there no problems in Northern Ireland? The Northern Ireland agricultural service and the way it deals with abattoirs is highly efficient. There are far fewer abattoirs, the service receives large sums of money from the European Community, and whatever the Republic receives the north receives as well. The problems that have arisen in England, Scotland and Wales have not arisen in Northern Ireland. Having had responsibility for Northern Ireland a long time ago, I recommend that we should have a good look at the situation there. It could show us a thing or two in this part of the United Kingdom.
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I am not sure that I can give exactly the right answers to either of the noble Lord's questions. I do not know the technical name for the type of agency that the Meat Hygiene Service is. It is clearly not an agency with an independent existence in the way that the schools inspectorate is. It does not have control over its own destiny, nor, when it makes pronouncements, do those pronouncements have the force of law. They are not pronouncements that it is impossible to circumvent. It is an agency on its own because it carries out a separate function and it is most efficient that it should be set up like that. However, it is totally responsible to, and reports directly to, Ministers. Its independent existence is to help with increased efficiency and better operations rather than having any additional importance.
As regards Northern Ireland, I have no information that it is better or worse. I just do not know the independent position of Northern Ireland. I shall write to the noble Lord. I have no particular reason to think that slaughterhouses there are better but certainly some aspects of the cattle industry are a great deal better in Northern Ireland.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, I wish to draw the Minister's attention to paragraph 2 of the Statement that,
- "before any redmeat carcass goes into the food chain, it has to be individually stamped by Meat Hygiene Service Inspectors as fit for human consumption".
The simple question is: how on earth do they know that it is fit for human consumption? In recent years we have been concerned with BSE, now we are concerned with E.coli, and particularly E.coli 157. How is the Meat
Hygiene Service able to stamp a carcass in an abattoir as fit for human consumption when, on the Minister's own admission, one cannot even see E.coli 157 with the naked eye? That is at the heart of the problem we face. It is all very well having men in white coats with white hats standing with a stamp saying, "This is fit for human consumption", but the fundamental question is: how do they know?The supplementary question is: what is being done? I presume that the Minister's answer to my original question will be that they do not know, they cannot tell. But what is being done about the possible risk of E.coli 157? Is action being taken further back in the food chain to ensure that the cattle infected with E.coli 157 do not go near an abattoir, just as cattle that are infected and are seen to be infected with BSE go nowhere near an abattoir.
The noble Countess's question is pertinent. If the Minister writes to her I hope that he will also write to other Members of your Lordships' House who have contributed this afternoon.
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I am delighted to do so and to include some of the more detailed information for which the noble Lord asked. The short answer is that we do our best within the limits of our knowledge and as our knowledge and experience increase, we shall do better.
Transport: An Integrated Policy
5.27 p.m.
Lord Haskel: My Lords, when my noble friend Lord Berkeley told me last week that his Motion was to be debated today, I congratulated him and decided to keep a travel diary. I live in Richmond. Monday morning: travel to Carlton Terrace for 9 a.m. conference. Arrive at Richmond Station 8 a.m.; queues out into the street because most of the ticket machines are out of order and the booking clerks busy with people buying weekly season tickets. Managed to find a ticket inspector who sold me a ticket to Waterloo on South West Trains. Fortunately the train arrived late so I was able to catch it. When it did arrive, it had only four carriages; travelled like a sardine. Got to conference on time, rather dishevelled.
Tuesday: travel to Beaconsfield. I always travel there by train. South West Trains to Waterloo and then the Bakerloo Line to Marylebone. I knew that the Bakerloo Line from Waterloo to Piccadilly had been closed for months. Got to Piccadilly by another route. Found that the Bakerloo Line was closed that day all the way to Paddington. As a result I missed my train from Marylebone. However, there was another one 17 minutes later. It is a pleasure to travel on the Chiltern Line from Marylebone. There are new diesel trains with signs inside saying where they go. The stations and the line have been modernised, but that was before privatisation.
On Wednesday, I had to go to a funeral at Golders Green. South West Trains to Waterloo and the Northern Line to Golders Green. The system worked perfectly. However, I had anticipated problems and arrived early. The most depressing appointment for which to arrive early is a funeral.
My experience exactly mirrored the points in the report Making Connections, which we are debating this afternoon. The report is absolutely right to emphasise the importance of reliable connections within passenger journeys; the importance of information during the journey; punctuality--the report used the word "time" but I prefer the word "punctuality"--and reliability, which are important on each section of the journey because of interconnections; physical convenience; personal safety; and cost. All those factors will make travelling by public transport much more user-friendly, as many noble Lords pointed out. That was the key lesson of my short diary.
Not only is that lesson confirmed in the paper that we are debating today, it is also the policy objective envisaged by the Technology Foresight Panel on Transport in its report published in 1995 by the Office of Science and Technology. The same objective is envisaged in the Government's 1996 White Paper called Transport, The Way Forward. Labour's transport strategy also works toward the kind of seamless "multi-modal" transport system.
So all the right words are there--they were repeated by the noble Lord, Lord Cadman--but how are they being translated into practice? The answer is not at all well because the Government's policies are having a contrary effect to those objectives. I agree with my noble friend Lady Symons and other noble Lords that the unco-ordinated privatisation plans and the piecemeal approach to policy mean that the fragmented bus and rail franchises which are supposed to compete with each other are simultaneously obliged to try to work together. To try to enforce that contradiction--of competition on the one hand and seamless travel on the other--the various agencies and regulators are creating an increasingly complex web of rules to deal with each problem as it arises.
The licensing system requires the operators to take the initiative regarding services and alterations. But, surely, if we are committed to a seamless inter-connecting system (which all the documents advocate), it is the transport authorities which should be taking the initiative. Instead of just reacting to operators' applications, surely we need a more positive approach showing the leadership and initiative called for by many noble Lords in this debate. We need to pursue those objectives to achieve our seamless system. Only a partnership between the public and the private sectors, as proposed by Labour, will achieve it. Noble Lords may well laugh, but it is absolutely true. Privatisation and regulation alone will not do it.
Privatisation of the transport system may solve some of the Government's public sector borrowing requirement problems. But the ability of privatisation to renew rolling stock, improve stations and finance the infrastructure required to provide the seamless system,
cannot be taken for granted; neither will it provide the technology, according to the noble Viscount, Lord Chelmsford. The Channel Tunnel is one example of how such private sector projects can go badly wrong. So is the Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway System. That was to be financed by property development alongside stations but the Hong Kong Government had to make repeated injections of public money to stop the system going into bankruptcy. The finances of the Jubilee Line do not look too good either.The public would like to see targets set for reducing road congestion, with powers given to either passenger transport associations or local authorities to use road pricing and parking restrictions in order to reach those targets. As the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, reminded us, those authorities should also have a say in the investment plans of the transport infrastructure, so that the planning and social dimensions contained in the report that we are debating, in the Government's paper and in the Technology Foresight paper can all be considered.
There are many concerns about transport. There are the environmental concerns of noise, pollution and congestion; the concerns of industry that congestion, lack of co-ordination and poor infrastructure can threaten Britain's competitiveness--the CBI made that point in its paper in 1995; and the social concerns that urban congestion and poor co-ordination are adding to the divisions in our society by penalising those passengers who most need public transport. Poorly co-ordinated public transport only adds to those divisions in our society.
Fortunately, on these Benches we are here to speak up for all those concerns.
5.35 p.m.
Lord Desai: My Lords, the report Making Connections, to which my noble friend Lord Berkeley drew attention, is 20 pages long. I am the 15th speaker in this debate. As the 15th speaker, it is hard to say very much new about a 20 page report.
The report emphasises a small part of the total problem of integrating transport and sustainable development. It does not quite connect the relevance of its recommendations to the other parts of the transportation problem. The 18th report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, which dealt with transport and the environment, makes the whole context clear. We have been discussing among other matters the problem of intermodal transport changes and information. But the point is that facilitating those things, whatever it costs, produces a much larger pay-off by reducing reliance on car transport. The benefits of reducing reliance on car transport should have been put at the forefront of our concerns.
In The Times Higher Education Supplement this week, there is a review of a number of books on transport. One book mentioned was The True Costs of Road Transport, written by Professor David Pearce and other authors. They are good economists. They are people who, unlike those at the Treasury, understand economics and not just cash flow. They have
estimated that, if the costs of car transport are added together, including greenhouse gases, air pollution, noise, congestion and accidents, there is a total cost of nearly £50 billion a year. That is a staggering sum of money. Those are what economists call externalities. If the total cost comes to £50 billion--or even if it is halved to £25 billion--enough damage is being done to society, for which we pay in one way or another, either through the National Health Service, accidents, early death, time delays in travelling, or unsafe public transport, as my noble friend Lady Symons pointed out. Surely it is good economics for somebody somewhere to invest some money in improving the system.As the noble Viscount, Lord Chelmsford, pointed out, that is where the report Making Connections does not get the matter right. It does not point to the sophisticated technology that is currently available, which would be very cost-efficient. The noble Lord, Lord Mountevans, also pointed out that other countries try to manage their transport better, both in terms of hard printed information systems and in terms of access to information technology.
There are some questions that we must face. If it costs, as the report says, 2 per cent. of total revenue to improve information systems, can that 2 per cent. be raised by a general levy on the industry? Or can the Government decide that 2 per cent. of that small sum of money is a good investment in public welfare? Or can the Government decide to have some decent economics and road user charges?
For a long time we have allowed the motor car to become the most under-priced transport system in use and the costs are being borne not by car drivers, but by people like me who do not drive. I am not a reluctant car driver; I am a non-car driver. I use public transport all the time. I do not want to drive; I want to live and I want others to live.
Why have we not made any progress on the efficient pricing of car driving, especially in inner cities? Why, when we know that cars cause a substantial amount of pollution--the larger proportion being caused by cars over five years old--do we not have a differential rate of excise duty taking account of age? Why is fuel efficiency not a criterion by which we issue licences to cars?
Those are sensible and economic measures that the Government could take. But it needs a government which believe in economics rather than cash, as I hope the next government will. They need to follow sensible economics, looking after public welfare and obtaining it cheaper, rather than privatising merely to save money on a PSBR which is falsely calculated.
5.41 p.m.
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: My Lords, we thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for initiating this debate and for drawing the report to our attention. The report consorts pretty well with the policies of these Benches, and no doubt will contribute to them at one date or another.
I speak towards the end of the debate which means that many aspects have already been tackled. I do not intend to repeat them all, but I want to associate myself with what was said by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield, the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos, the noble Baroness, Lady Symons of Vernham Dean, the noble Viscount, Lord Chelmsford, and the noble Lord, Lord Desai, who always adds a tone of broad-minded, economic good sense to what goes on in this Chamber. I look forward to hearing the Minister's response to the valuable points that were made.
First, I want to make a couple of general points. The report has some omissions. One word which is noticeable by its absence is "parking". If a carpark is available at nil or low cost at the other end of one's journey--as it is to your Lordships and indeed to myself--one's incentive for travelling by car increases enormously; the cost is so much reduced. We must therefore tackle the issue of car parking at places of work much more thoroughly. Many local authorities no longer prescribe minimum standards of car parking but maximum standards, thus gradually exerting a downward pressure on the number of spaces provided. That is just one of the two points not covered in the report.
The report challenges government--any government--over what they intend to do to play their part to achieve the ends it deems to be desirable. Nobody has challenged those ends as not being desirable. Everybody supported the recommendations made by the report. Seven out of the nine recommendations are to government, and it is therefore important for us to learn how this Government will respond to those challenges. I shall name just a few of them.
Many references were made in the report to the effect of institutional fragmentation on the seamless journey by public transport. Those of us who have been in this business at county or other levels for quite a long time have often raised that point as an essential element of public transport if it is to compete with the motor car in terms of comfort, reliability and so forth. Paragraph 14 of the report notes the "tensions between competition"--between service providers--which can lead to better services on a specific route and integration, which is essential for easy transfer. It says:
- "Unless these problems are overcome, the potential benefits from increased competition may be more than outweighed by the disadvantages".
That approach is linked to Recommendation 1 which states:
- "The Government should raise the profile of intermodal transport [by instructing] The rail regulator ... to take account of transfer issues in setting the regulatory framework. The Government should [give] new ... guidance to local authorities, public transport operators ... on transfer issues".
Similarly, Recommendation 5 states that the Government should encourage operators to co-operate voluntarily on ticketing and information matters and should clarify the existing legal framework for such co-operation and should consider options for changes in
the legal framework which would enable greater co-operation to take place. Will the Government respond in the affirmative to those suggestions? They are important, practical suggestions.Again, when considering freight movement by rail--an extremely important subject, often left on one side in discussions about the movement from road to rail--the report points out a lack of strategic consideration of freight transport in general and intermodal terminals in particular. In other words, suppose one's freight leaves the factory on a lorry and one wants to put it on a train. Where and how can that be done conveniently? Interestingly enough, it draws attention to the poor road systems around some of our main freight terminals. I agree with its criticism of Willesden, which I have always felt was an idiotic site to choose as the main transfer point for the Channel Tunnel rail link.
The need to retain land currently held by Railtrack so that it can be used for passenger and freight intermodal transfer is also emphasised by the report. Do the Government accept Recommendations 3 and 8? They would place a duty on the Government to act in various ways to address the situation. Finally, do the Government accept that better track and trace arrangements for freight carried by rail, both within the United Kingdom and across the European Union, would encourage better use of rail by freight movers? Will they ensure that our voice is strong within the European Union to achieve better co-ordination in that sphere?
We are not all such skilled travellers by public transport as the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, whose exploits were both educative and amusing. But we urgently need to raise the percentage of journeys made by public transport, whether by ourselves as passengers or by freight. To do that we must attract new users; for example, those who now travel by car simply because they own one or those who carry their freight by lorry simply because they own a lorry. It costs no more than the cost of the petrol to go from point A to point B.
The report challenges the Government to play their part in solving this specific little nexus of problems. I should like to know, as would everybody else--not just here but beyond this House--how this Government will respond to those recommendations.
5.49 p.m.
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, I begin by joining with my noble friend Lord Cledwyn in his tribute to the late Lord Listowel, a man of great dignity who gave a great deal to this country. We shall miss him.
Secondly, I thank all noble Lords who have participated in what has been an exemplary and excellent debate. We have had many innovative ideas produced and both the Minister who will reply and I will have our work cut out in ensuring that we properly canvass those ideas in terms of policy-making.
We have also had some novel contributions; the first edition of the Haskel Diaries--we shall look with interest at the future development of my noble friend
as an author--and we shall no doubt have another chapter of the Minister's book entitled Self Delusion. The Minister lives in a world of some pretence. He likes to think that the privatisation of London Underground is enormously popular with the people of London. In fact, a day or two after the announcement was made in another place an opinion poll was taken. The poll showed that 65 per cent. were against privatisation and only 13 per cent. supported the sale. Splitting the figures down on political lines, 42 per cent. of Tory voters were opposed to privatisation as against 31 per cent. in favour. The Minister is once again living in a world of illusion. But all that will collapse quite shortly.I would also pay tribute to the work that has been done by those who compiled this excellent report Making Connections, on which so many of my noble friends and others have commented. What is interesting is that it was the Government who set up the inquiry. Each recommendation represents a huge indictment of the Government's policy, if one can dignify it as such, over the past 17 years. It comes to this: fragmentation, mounting congestion, lack of public accountability, inadequate co-ordination between different modes and failure to achieve, or even try to achieve, proper complementarity between the different modes. The report does not refer to the use of short sea shipping, which is something else the Government have demonstrably neglected.
No concept of sustainable economic development and environmental protection is sustained by the Government's policy. Theirs has been an ad hoc approach, a government distancing themselves from the desirability of having a national framework for transport policy and failing to provide any sufficient involvement of local government, particularly through the PTEs and PTAs. The country is paying very heavily for this neglect, a huge and unpardonable neglect. We have seen that, as they were developing their privatisation policies, inordinate delays occurred in terms of refurbishing the infrastructure, and the investment that was needed was again neglected.
We witness these situations every day in our lives. We see that London Underground is in a parlous condition. We see the gridlock on the roads. According to the CBI, all this is costing the country around £19 billion a year. The Government have done very little to arrest the situation. There is a complete lack of coherence about seeking to get more traffic from the roads on to rail. I remember very well Mr. Malcolm Rifkind, when he was Secretary of State for Transport, making a pledge about that. Has that pledge been honoured? Perhaps the Minister can enlighten us as to the move from road to rail that has been accomplished since Mr. Rifkind gave that undertaking.
It is clear that in May the next Government--the Labour Government--will inherit a transport mess. Our aim will be to secure a coherent national transport strategy, making the best use of all the modes of transport, and to ensure greater mobility, greater access and greater efficiency. That involves one of the important elements dealt with not only in the
report but in the report of the rail regulator. He expressed great disappointment in the information about railway services that was being given:
- "A failure to tell passengers what the railway network is offering in prices, in choice, in availability, in making sure information is accurate, in encouraging passengers to use the railway with confidence from the time the first inquiry is made to the completion of a satisfactory journey".
So the indictment is repeated in the rail regulator's report. He said:
- "Train operators can and must be impartial and accurate when giving information about and selling their own and other operators' passenger services".
And they have not been. The Minister has done nothing to ensure that these matters have been properly corrected because he is powerless now. He is entirely in the hands of the rail regulator. We shall change that situation. The Minister smiles. Smiles will get him nowhere. He has totally failed over the years--not him personally, because he does not deal with the railways; he just deals with the appalling position of aviation and shipping, so his endeavours are confined.
It will be a difficult task. We have to try to win more passengers and more freight onto rail from the roads, and railway investment obligations and duties under franchise agreement have to be honoured. There are simply too many cases, which have been revealed over the past few weeks in particular, where the fundamental obligations are being dishonoured. That is not acceptable. The mere fact that South West Trains is prepared to give away a free ticket for one day is no answer. What will happen to South West Trains as a result of this breaking of a fundamental obligation? We read in the Observer that South West Trains may escape fines for breaking its franchise agreement despite cancelling hundreds of services and plunging commuters into chaos. Will the Minister kindly get some information about that?
The fact of the matter is that he has said in this House that it would be subject to penalties. Will it be? Or will the regulator take a rather different view and say, "Well, it is not too serious"? I challenge the Minister about that. We want to know. What will happen as a result of this breach of a fundamental obligation?
The main way of achieving a publicly accountable and integrated rail system is by regulation. We shall examine the present powers of the regulator to see how they can be utilised more effectively and how, where necessary, they can be strengthened using secondary amendments to the Railways Act 1993 if that can be undertaken. We shall contemplate four key changes. There will be increased accountability of the regulator to the Labour Secretary of State so that he is under no doubt what our intentions are for the railway industry and how we expect him to fulfil his duties through tighter and more effective regulation. There is no question that that is needed. The regulator will be given powers to ensure that the system and its assets are managed in the public interest and with efficiency.
Given the public subsidies which the Government have chosen to provide, is it not essential to underline the need for public accountability, which the Government have relinquished? We are talking here of some £850 million a year. We shall ask the rail regulator to examine the present subsidy arrangements and to take steps to see that this subsidy is re-routed into infrastructure. That has been done in Holland and in Sweden with success. We are intent on ensuring that the necessary levels of investment and proper passenger services are put in place. The subsidies have a crucial role. We shall seek to give greater emphasis to standards of safety. There is increasing evidence that workers are undertaking excessive hours. That may well imperil safety.
As regards Railtrack, we shall certainly review the high access charges which are currently being levied and deflecting freight transport from the railways. The benefits would flow primarily to the travelling public rather than to the shareholders. We believe that that is a priority. The present situation is grossly unsatisfactory. It costs £170,000 a year in track access charges to add just one passenger coach to the system compared with £300 to £400 in vehicle excise duty to put one coach on the road. Is that equitable?
We shall ensure that the income realised by Railtrack from the sale of property and from development is actually put into the railway system. There is no guarantee that that has or will happen under the Government's own proposals. Railtrack inherited huge amounts of land. As the noble Baroness has just said, we are surely entitled to an assurance that those assets are used in the public interest and within the railway system and not for the benefit of shareholders.
As regards the train operating companies, tighter regulations will be required to encourage higher levels of investment and a fair and inclusive relationship with the staff involved. We shall negotiate with the rolling stock leasing companies and rail manufacturers to encourage higher levels of investment in rolling stock. It is quite wrong that so much of this component of the industry has suffered in a very dire way, particularly with regard to York.
The bus industry is also in a parlous state. There has to be a much greater degree of influence as far as concerns the local authorities. Once again, this matter has been dealt with extensively in the report. It will be interesting to hear what the Government have to say. This Government have been dismissive of every alternative idea that has been put forward. I hope that the Minister will not dismiss those which have been put forward in the debate tonight. The Government have not achieved any measure of success in their transport policy, at least in overall terms. Of course, it is possible to point to a measure of success here or there, but overall the Government's policy has been a catastrophic failure. That is demonstrated by the views of the CBI, local authorities and of so many people who are interested in securing a good and successful transport system which has been found to be incapable of achievement under the present Government. Thankfully, their days are numbered.
Next Section
Back to Table of Contents
Lords Hansard Home Page