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Debate on the Address

My Lords, that I do not accept at all. If you study any time-series graph, you will find that the prosperity of the railways is based on the fact that the economy has grown steadily for 10 years. It was only during the slumps engineered by the noble Lord’s honourable friends when in government that the use of the railways went down. Congestion has obviously played its part in that process. However, in the red corner we have the Government, and what do we have from them? I am afraid that what we do not have is any new rolling stock. This is the fourth document to announce that we shall have 1,300 new carriages. I wonder whether the Minister can say when the orders will be placed. The situation is desperate. No rolling stock is available to carry the increased numbers of passengers whom the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, claims are there because of privatisation. However, as I say, I do not accept that. I welcome the inclusion in the Queen’s Speech of the long overdue Crossrail Bill. We shall support the Bill; there is no doubt about that. However, the peripheral areas of the scheme—that is, the bits outside central London—need a lot of attention. I take simply the case of Milton Keynes, where a lot of the new houses that we have been talking about will be built. Those people will come into Euston where they will be disgorged on to the Underground system, which is incapable of carrying them. If a link into Crossrail went out from Paddington towards Milton Keynes, they would be transported direct to the City and the West End, where they want to go. It would link up where they live with where many of them will work—whether we like it or not. There are many other peripheral issues such as a proper service to the airports and extensions to Reading. Those are all matters that need addressing. We have to be careful that we preserve freight coming into London, which is very difficult. I am not talking about using Crossrail to take freight across London but about freight that uses the lines that Crossrail uses. The position of the Mayor is slightly odd. If he were to specify the services on the line, they would all be slow trains serving London; but the lines serve lots of other people who live further away. We are concerned that the regulator’s powers are set aside in the Bill, and we would like to preserve the independent regulation that is necessary for the whole railway. The Local Transport Bill is a very good Bill. It strengthens the powers of the traffic commissioners, and it gives highway powers to PTEs—passenger transport executives—so that for once we are going to manage the buses and the roads together. The authorities, which have not had that power in the past, will be able to put in bus lanes, phase traffic lights and do all sorts of things that are necessary to run a good bus service. The biggest enemy of a good bus service is congested streets. If you get rid of congested streets, you will have a good bus service, you will save money and you will make buses more attractive. Two issues in the Bill concern me a bit. First, there is the modification of competition law to allow agreements between local authorities and transport operators. It should be taken a bit further, because the ingress of the Competition Commission to bus travel has been wholly disruptive. It has taken up lots of the time of the Office of Fair Trading and of the Competition Commission, and we have had more inquiries about the bus industry than all the other things put together. It has produced very little, and the law needs altering. I will now address community transport, because there have been several speeches about rural communities. Although the matter is dealt with in the Bill, it is not yet clear whether the Bill will somehow prevent parishes and rural areas that have a bus—which they will be permitted to have—from charging people separate fares. You can have a bus in a village to carry people from the youth club or from the church, but you cannot run it as a bus service with people paying separate fares. It is a fault in the Bill that needs to be corrected. We were told by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, that his Benches would oppose any extension of road pricing. The freight industry desperately wants foreign lorries to pay to use the roads. A lorry road-pricing system could be introduced very quickly. It would not offend most people; it would not even offend the noble Lord, Lord Taylor. It is unfair that British hauliers compete with people who not only have the advantage of cheap fuel but who use our roads for free. The number of foreign hauliers is increasing month by month. The fact that the Government have backed away from this, when the system works absolutely satisfactorily in Germany, is an indictment of the Government. I hope the noble Lord will take that away. I was given the briefing from the Countryside Alliance, for which I have no particular brief. I will read out one sentence, because that is about all it is worth: "““Given the evidence showing the negative impacts road pricing schemes can have for those living in rural communities, such schemes should not be introduced””." I do not know anyone who thinks that road pricing should be extended to rural communities. It should be in very congested areas at busy times. The general propaganda put out by the Daily Express, the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph says that one should send them an e-mail saying that you are against road pricing. But they have fed the people an entirely fallacious story, with, I am sure, the aim of stirring up trouble for the Government. I hope that the Minister will pay particular attention in his summing up to what the noble Lord, Lord Best, said. There was more concern in other speeches, too, about the activities of the private rented sector. Road pricing is a real case of hyperbolic discounting, as the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, mentioned. The question is always put off to the next moment. The time to do it is now. Do it in the sectors in which you can do it, and once it works in those it will be easier to extend its influence.