---

Address in Reply to Her Majesty's Most Gracious Speech

My Lords, this is the second occasion on which I have had the good fortune to follow a Member of your Lordships' House who has been returned in a by-election. Indeed, it is by strange coincidence that the first occasion was also in a debate on transport, when I followed the excellent speech by the noble Earl, Lord Glasgow, from the Liberal Democrat Benches. Although the convention of this House does not allow me to congratulate a maiden speaker, I know that I speak for all Members when I say how much we look forward to hearing further contributions from the noble Viscount in future. In addition, I join others in welcoming to this debate my two noble friends who speak in it on behalf of the Government. I would like to add my own congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, on her very well deserved promotion. To the noble Lord, Lord Bach, I suppose I offer my commiserations on his leaving the deep peace of the Ministry of Defence marriage bed for the hurly-burly of the Defra chaise- longue. I particularly look forward to engaging with him in future on issues such as climate change, and here I declare an interest as the chairman of the All-Party Sustainable Aviation Group and treasurer of the All-Party Railways Group. One of the curiosities of the recent election campaigns was how little transport and the environment featured as issues—a point made earlier in the debate by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich. But for there to be virtually no debate on the Government's stewardship of the railways presumably counts as a great success, because if the focus groups say that the public do not want to talk about it, it is not an issue. I rather regret that because, contrary to what some of my noble friends in this House say from time to time about the West Coast Main Line, along with my noble friend Lord Snape, as someone who also uses the railway many times a week whenever possible in preference to travelling by car or air, my general perception is that the services are generally getting better. They are more punctual, investment in new stock is delivering a more comfortable and cleaner service and, as the noble Lord, Lord Snape, said, there is a stirring of pride among many of the people who work on the railway. However, of perhaps even greater significance is the fact that, in terms of passenger journeys, rail travel is now more popular than it has been since the 1950s. Then the network was twice the size that it is today. The demand growth year by year, at 4 per cent, is now faster in Britain than on the railways in the rest of Europe. This is true across the system, particularly in the more lightly used but socially necessary lines that are part of the community rail partnership, to which the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, referred. Perhaps I may give a couple of statistics. On the Chester to Shrewsbury line, passenger numbers have increased by 300 per cent over the past seven years and by 180 per cent on the Bittern line, which runs from Sheringham to Norwich, since the introduction of a community rail partnership there in 1995. Given such statistics, I find it astonishing that a journalist as respected as Matthew Parris should call for "another Beeching", as he did in an article in the Times on 14 May. The words that he used in the article were: "Close the rural lines that everyone knows make no sense. The screams will be deafening, but do it". In one respect, he is absolutely right. If any government were to attempt to close the rural railways—your Lordships will recall that we had a very clear promise from my noble friend Lord Davies of Oldham during the passage of the Railways Bill just before the election that the Government had no hidden closure agenda—there would indeed be deafening screams of outrage, many of them starting in this House. Although closing lines and reducing the size of a network are not options, it is, however, important that the Government face up to the serious transport and environment issues that will face this country over the coming decade. We can no longer avoid making the connection between climate change, transport policy and individual travel behaviour. Transport now accounts for 26 per cent of emissions in the UK, and road traffic continues to rise by about 2 per cent per year. Aviation is predicted to double or even treble by 2030. Just a week ago, the Royal Society issued a report stating that the UK will miss its targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions unless urgent measures are taken, such as the introduction of a carbon tax on all users of fossil fuels, including motorists and industry, and on domestic gas and electricity prices. That advice was also offered by the excellent report on climate change by this House's European Union Committee, which we debated on 23 February. In paragraph 193, that report commented: "The EU should dissuade states from holding the view that strong economic growth is axiomatically linked to large increases in the use of fossil fuels". A similarly authoritative study on the external costs of transport was carried out by the INFRAS consulting group, published last year by the University of Karlsruhe. That group reported that the current external costs of air transport are estimated to be about €53 per 1,000 passenger kilometres, which, if imposed on ticket prices via a combination of aviation fuel tax and en route emissions charges, could begin to reduce the sector's impacts while still allowing sensible growth. Similarly sound, but also politically difficult, advice has been offered by Transport 2000, the environmental campaigning pressure group. I declare an interest as one of its vice-presidents. It has offered the Government a 10-point plan on how to tackle some of these issues. That includes a much greater focus on improving public transport—railways, buses and trams— and reducing the demand for air travel, which would involve introducing emissions taxes on European flights, taxing aviation fuel, scaling back airport expansion, getting European agreement to auction landing slots at airports and developing rail as an alternative to short haul flights. The Government are making the right noises in some of these areas. In particular, I welcome the determination of the Secretary of State for Transport, Alistair Darling, to press ahead with his plans for a nationwide road-user charging system, presumably using the latest satellite technology. That will indeed build on the success of the congestion charge in London and marks a complete departure from the predict and provide road construction approach of the past. I also look to the Government for a robust response to groups such as militant hauliers and farmers, who seem to believe that bullying the rest of us over fuel prices will dissuade Ministers from doing what is right for the environment. Defra's own figures show that carbon dioxide emissions from road hauliers increased by more than a third between 1990 and 2002. The lesson there is clear. All these are serious issues, and I hope that we shall be able to engage with them in this House during the life of this Parliament. I also hope that the BBC, which came in for some criticism at Question Time today, will want to engage with these issues in a rather more serious way than it has done hitherto. I would ask the BBC to take seriously the complaints that it has received about the programme "Top Gear". I hope that I may be able to tempt my noble friend to agree that at a time when everyone is talking about how to reduce car use, cut climate change emissions and make the roads safer, it is not appropriate for our public service broadcaster to screen a programme that glamorises speed and fails to make the connection between speed and danger on our roads. The programme also encourages an obsession with unnecessarily powerful and therefore heavily polluting cars, is in danger of promoting a yobbish attitude on the road and inconsiderate behaviour to other road users, and focuses hardly at all on greener cars, the need to cut car journeys or the alternatives to car travel. I hope that it will take some notice of this. Finally, I should like to commend the noble Lord, Lord Broers, for his excellent Reith lecture, which I had the pleasure of reading last week. I shall quote one section from it. Commenting on recent journeys by air between Glasgow and London, which were delayed either on the ground or in the air, he said: "For a country that claims to be putting global warming high on its agenda, it is incredible that we allow air travel to expand, especially as research has shown that emissions at a high altitude are much more damaging to the environment than emissions at ground level. And yet in this mad world, aircraft fuel is untaxed. Why on earth was it faster for me", the noble Lord, Lord Broers, asked, "even with the delay, to fly from Glasgow to London rather than take a train?". Why indeed? I hope that the Government will agree and, in the course of this Parliament, will redress the balance between air and rail and other forms of transport.