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Local Transport

It is important to put the debate about local transport planning and funding into context. With the best will in the world, any Government, of whatever colour, would have difficulty in operating the current arrangements between local democracy and central Government. The arrangements were arrived at, after a lot of confrontation and argument, in the mid-1980s, when the metropolitan counties were abolished, bus services were deregulated, and the poll tax was introduced and replaced by the council tax. That ended up with many public services not being controlled by directly elected local councillors, and where councillors did have control, it was over only a tiny percentage of their income, with the Government controlling the rest. That obviously puts some obligation on the Government to ensure that the money is spent sensibly. That is not the right balance, and it makes things difficult. I hope that Lyons gets it right and that after the ongoing reviews we will end up with a better balance between central and local government. I do not believe that there is another country in Europe where, if cities the size of Manchester, Leeds, Southampton and Nottingham wanted to control their buses and invest in tram systems, their central Governments could or would stop them, but that is the situation that we face. Some of the greatest cities in Europe cannot determine whether they have tram systems. That cannot be a satisfactory arrangement. The Committee therefore first considered the context and interviewed Michael Lyons. Having done that, we considered the position as it is. We asked whether the relationship between local transport plans and central Government was the right one, and whether it functioned effectively, efficiently and economically. When we took evidence, council after council, expert after expert and councillor after councillor answered no. They said that the system was burdensome, costly and inefficient, and that they did not feel that they were in control of their local priorities. A measure of the extent of central Government control or interference is that schemes costing more than £5 million are determined by central Government. One of the Committee’s minor recommendations was to increase that figure to £10 million and to provide for applying a light touch and light regulation to schemes of £20 million. I thought that the Government would leap at that and say, ““Of course. These are trivial figures. What do officials know about such expenditure in local areas?”” The answer to that is, ““Almost nothing.”” However, the Government have effectively deferred making a decision in their response. Government decisions at micro level are not good. Let me give two local examples of Government officials forcing bus lanes on my constituency. Most of us are in favour of bus lanes and bus priority, but to achieve the right scheme the right debate must be held between local interests, such as shopkeepers, people who use the buses and bus operators; everybody has to have a say. Bus lanes were forced on the constituency in Cheetham Hill road and Bury Old road. Officials said, without examining the details, that if we did not accept the bus priority schemes we would not get money for other matters. There were two consequences. First, 18 months after bus priority was accepted, a big sign went up at the top of Cheetham Hill road to tell people to beware because 75 accidents had occurred on the road in the past year. That happened because the scheme was forced and badly planned. Secondly, as was said in the recent bus debate, just as the buses have been given greater priority in a deregulated system, the bus network has contracted. In a micro sense, that is what central Government control does to local priorities.