---

Transport Innovation Fund

I, too, thank the Secretary of State for an advance copy of the statement. But in keeping with the experience of the official Opposition spokesman, my office received this unusually long statement—compared with normal statements in this House—only 20 minutes beforehand. As the official Opposition spokesman also suggested, a title for today’s statement such as ““Road User Pricing”” would perhaps have been a more accurate description of the subject that we are briefly debating today. However, our position on road-user pricing has not changed. We welcome this debate, we agree with the Government that radical measures are needed, and it is of course sensible to implement pilots first. Only in years to come will the House be able to tell whether the transport innovation fund has proved effective in funding delivery of the pilot schemes. A number of questions arise from the statement. Is the transport innovation fund new funding, or has the money in fact been taken from elsewhere in the Department for Transport budget? The statement makes it clear that such funding is available only for pump priming, yet for many projects there will be revenue implications. It is regrettable that, apparently, the transport innovation fund will be unable to provide such support. Will the Secretary of State say whether there is any risk of local authorities that have secured transport innovation funding discovering that they then have to underwrite the costs—underestimated costs, regrettably—associated with providing free bus passes, for instance? The risk is that funds coming into the system at one point might have to go out at another. The transport innovation fund might deliver the pilots that we need to test the feasibility of road-user pricing—or not. In three years’ time, when the fund really comes on stream, the House will find out.