---

Local Transport

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Traffic commissioners are badly underfunded. If they had more resources, there is no doubt that their impact, even on a deregulated system, would be positive. I hope that in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Mr. Truswell) I was making the different point that however good they are at examining the current system, they are unelected. There are also other hurdles in the White Paper that might be difficult to overcome. There is a completely different system in London. The balance of funding between the rest of England and London has changed from roughly 50:50 to 60:40 in London’s favour. That has been done without being explicitly stated, and I would be grateful if the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Gillian Merron) could justify it. When we ask the Secretary of State, the reply is always that London is different. London is no more different now than it was 10 or 15 years ago. It is special, as are many cities in this country. My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) has already referred to other contradictions. Three sets of priorities sit on top of local schemes. There is the interference—as I would characterise it—of the regional transport plans, which are sorted out in a vacuum by people who are not directly elected. There are the local schemes, with priorities that have been agreed between the Government and the Local Government Association. Those for local transport schemes are congestion, access to public transport, safety and reduction of pollution. I believe that every local authority representative who has come before the Select Committee and been asked the question, in this inquiry and in others, has always said that they wanted regeneration to be a priority. Clearly, there are conflicts between the set priorities and what most councils—particularly those representing deprived areas—want, which is to regenerate their areas, create jobs and bring wealth and prosperity to the people whom they represent. On top of that is the transport innovation fund system. As the report says, it is a centralising system with two priorities, one of which is to relieve congestion and the other is to improve economic performance. Those are all central controls and they contradict each other. Last Tuesday, when I asked the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln to explain what a TIF bid meant for Greater Manchester, I was, in a sense, not surprised when, as I went through aspects such as the regulation of buses, tram system funding and control over trains, she said that it was ““quite a shopping list””. It is exactly the same sort of control that obtains in London, but at the end of her reply on 6 March last week, the Minister said that ““local solutions”” were ““the right way forward””. I agree, but when central Government is effectively imposing on people an extra tax of potentially more than £2,000 in real terms, we need to know what the public offer is. Is it or is it not the Government’s intention under the TIF proposals to fund the whole of the Metrolink scheme, as approved in 2000? When we asked these questions, and in response to our report, the Select Committee was told—I refer hon. Members particularly to point 22 in the response—to see the Government’s consultation document on light rail and its improvement. Of course, when the Government recommend something like that, I immediately respond and look at it. Given that Ministers have regularly said that they are committed to light rail schemes, will the Under-Secretary explain why that document was a year late? Since April 2005, and in our report on light rail, we asked what excuse there was for that document to be a year late. How many officials were reprimanded? Was it a change of Government policy? Are Ministers going to tell us why the report was a year late? Is it because they have no commitment to Metrolink? I would like to know. One Minister asked me why I thought officials in the Department for Transport were against light rail, so this is one of the reasons. When I read the report—I advise my colleagues on the Select Committee to read it—I found that it was written in such a biased and unfair way that its clear objective could be only to damage light rail, not to respond to the needs of local people. The report carries on by saying that light rail is not always the best alternative. Of course not; sometimes buses are the right alternative, but in many cases light rail is. Does the report say what the benefits are? No, it is completely silent about them. It does not explain that the only real example of ““modal shift”” as the experts call it—people leaving their cars at home and using public transport—is Metrolink, which has an impressive record on regeneration and air quality. There is no response in the report on capacity issues, either. If we really want to get more people to use public transport, we need to provide the capacity. Sufficient evidence has been given to the Government and to the Select Committee that, even if we took all the cars off the roads in areas such as the west midlands and Greater Manchester, there would not be the capacity for people to change to public transport. We would have to increase that capacity and, in the case of Greater Manchester, that would best be achieved by using Metrolink. Why is that not mentioned in the report? I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply, but I can only draw the conclusion that officials and Ministers are anti-Metrolink. That is why I want to know whether the Government are going to fund Metrolink if congestion charging is brought in. Why is the contribution to Metrolink and the tram system 25 per cent. at the start and not 10 per cent., as for other major schemes? That shows bias against the systems. Possibly the most worrying statement in the consultation document is that there is apparently a problem with giving state aid to tram systems. This appears in paragraph 7.45 of the document. It is unexplained, and no distinction is drawn anywhere in the report between new tram systems and existing ones that might be extended. I understand the statement to mean that the Government envisage a legal obstacle to investing in trams because it would create unfair subsidised competition with buses. If that is the case, the report should have taken more than two sentences to explain it. I would be grateful if my hon. Friend the Minister would explain whether there is a European competitive hurdle to be overcome before we can reinvest in trams. Has the position changed in the past few years? Several tram systems have been brought on track recently, including those in Nottingham, Manchester, Sheffield and the west midlands. Has something changed, or has this obstacle been thought up by unhelpful officials? Many of the transport problems in this country were caused by the Tories over 18 years ago—