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Road Pricing

: I begin by thanking the Liaison Committee and the Transport Committee for promoting the debate and for giving us the opportunity to discuss these important issues. I seldom get to my feet with the opportunity of speaking uninterrupted for an hour and a quarter. However, since the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) is anxious to be at home for his little boy's birthday—and I am rather anxious that he should get to that party and pass on the whole House's good wishes—I shall try to speak for somewhat less than an hour and a quarter. One of the dilemmas that the Government face is that when we come forward with a firm plan and a set of proposals, everyone says, ““You should have consulted more. Why did you not come to us to ask our views before you came forward with a plan?”” When we do exactly that and come forward with a blank sheet of paper indicating that there is an issue that we must address together, and that we need to grope our way to a solution, we are accused of not having put a plan in place. I rather feel that that has been the theme of this debate; it began with my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) saying that we needed to offer more of a plan and to include a timetable, a point at least partly reiterated by the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings. We recognise that, as several hon. Members have said, the scheme will only move forward if we can get public agreement that it should move forward. Also, we have to get the public to understand how it will work. We have to deal with the complex problems that people are raising on how the scheme will work and the effects that it will undoubtedly have on social and economic policy. Unless we can deal with all those questions and come up with answers on which there are broad agreement, the scheme will not go ahead. The right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) said that he was offering a certain amount of ““political cover””; I would not call it that, but he is absolutely right that we will not go ahead with the scheme unless there is political consensus. We have made it clear that if, ultimately, we end up with a national system of road pricing—and there is still a question as to whether we will, but we have to accept it as a possible objective—it will take at least 10 years to do it. That means probably two, perhaps even three, general elections between now and then. If we do not work together on the scheme, and if there is no political consensus and political understanding on the issue, there will be a temptation for somebody to say to the people, at some point during that time, ““If you vote for me, I won't do it.”” By that point, we may have spent billions of pounds on moving towards the scheme, so it is absolutely vital that we work together across the parties to resolve the matter. I am grateful that the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings has suggested willingness to do so, and that the Liberal Democrats have indicated a willingness to share ideas. I welcome that, whether it means corresponding or meeting. The Secretary of State has said that he is prepared to have discussions with Front-Benchers—shadow spokesmen—from other parties to try to get some understanding on the problems that confront us and the difficulties that we will face in resolving them. I must say that I do not know the answers to many of the questions posed today, and I am probably closer to the problem than anybody. I do not have answers to all these questions, but I know what many of the questions are, and I have some idea about potential answers to them. I know which questions do not yet have a full answer, and frankly probably never will. We have to accept that if we move along this road, some problems will be caused by the policy, and others will be solved by it. Nothing will be easy. We have to grope towards a solution that we can all buy into. Anything that I say in the next few minutes, and anything that the Government have said in recent weeks, has to be put in that context. We have started a debate that we genuinely want to hold. We genuinely want to identify the problems and come up with answers that everyone can buy into. We have some ideas and are putting them in the public domain—I will put some more before the House today—but I do not want anyone to think that anything in the debate is locked down or decided yet. None of it is decided; all of it is open to debate, discussion and moving forward. That will also apply to those councils chosen to move forward with us in developing pilots, and those that are involved in the pilots that have applied for money from the transport innovation fund. I told the hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd) that more than 30 councils have shown an interest in working with us on pilots and in being involved in transport innovation funding projects. We are narrowing that number down to a much smaller group that we would like to work with in the immediate future, and we will make an announcement on that shortly. I am sure that hon. Members will forgive me if I do not go into detail now; clearly we have to notify the House first. We will work closely with the short-listed authorities on recognising local issues, identifying how a pilot in their area might contribute towards answering the questions that have been asked today and clarifying the bigger picture.