Debate on the Address

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, on her excellent, extremely intelligent and sensible maiden speech. It is very gratifying to know that she comes from the same part of Scotland as me. I hope that we may soon have a cup of coffee in my home town of Largs and that we will have a strong acquaintanceship. The Government say that they will introduce a draft Bill to tackle road congestion and to improve public transport, which I am sure we are all pleased to hear. However, what is that likely to involve? Devising more and different ways to tax road users may be necessary, but it makes sense only if alternative and cheaper forms of transport are provided as alternatives to using the car. Surely, that means improving public transport. I do not know what the Government mean by public transport any more. Are buses and railways public transport? I heard that they have all been privatised. Whatever the definition, travelling by rail is becoming more and more expensive, which is getting very worrying. I hope that the Government will give a higher priority to transport. It should be right up there with education, health and global warming. As the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, acknowledges, transport affects everyone’s daily life. It is simply the process of getting from A to B in the most practical way. It affects most of us nearly every day, is getting ever more frustrating and is even more stressful. Apart from concessions to us elderly and the superficial attractions of cheap air travel, it is getting ever more expensive. Incidentally, I have been abandoned three times now by Ryanair and have finally learnt my lesson about cheap air travel. The aggravation and expense of getting from one place to another, the congestion and the hassle, the security queues at airports, the inability to get a seat in a crowded train and even the risk-taking of cyclists in our inner cities are serious symptoms of our age, which must be given the highest possible government priority. Simply imposing more costs on motorists will not solve our transport problems. It is often said that accepting the job of transport Minister is accepting a poisoned chalice—whatever you do to alleviate short-term transport problems is almost certain to be unpopular. Yet, we cannot go on building more roads and motorways, which has proved counterproductive and is environmentally unfriendly. We cannot go on building more aircraft and airports because that is even more environmentally unfriendly. In this debate, a lot has been said about global warming. Unless a completely new, non-polluting form of transport is invented in the next few years, we will have to fall back on the railways. Our railways service has improved a little in the past few years and many more people are using trains. It seems that more services are more reliable and punctual, and that some old rolling stock has been replaced. As my noble friend Lord Bradshaw has already stressed, the greater number of train users has thrown up other problems. In some cases, there is intolerable over-crowding and there is not enough capacity on some of our congested routes. Rail travel is no more convenient than it used to be. There are not necessarily any more trains, new car parks at stations or better security at more isolated country stations, and the cost of travel keeps increasing. Surely, the only answer is massive investment in the railway network, which includes a new high-speed rail service from the south to the north of England and Scotland, as my noble friend has said. We should aim for a situation where internal flights in Britain are no longer necessary or desirable. People should be able to get to their destinations faster and more comfortably by train, which would mean that, unlike air travel, we would not have to take our shoes off or have bottles of water confiscated. Soon, a Government will have to have the foresight and courage to commit themselves to a huge investment in the railways, although the benefit will not necessarily be apparent for 15 or 20 years. Alternatively, and better, they must create incentives to encourage the private sector to invest in such a long-term venture. At the very least, this should be a time to expand our railway network. Yet, as my noble friend Lord Bradshaw pointed out, there are signs that in some parts of the country the service is contracting. For instance, from Glasgow—the fourth-largest conurbation in Britain and now a major tourist destination—there is soon to be no direct rail link with the new cross-country service. It will no longer be possible to go from Glasgow to the West Country without changing trains, probably at the evermore congested Birmingham New Street, which both my noble friends mentioned. The Government say that they want to improve our rail service to accommodate the ever-increasing number of rail passengers, yet there are these sinister examples of it going in the opposite direction. I believe that major investment in expanding our rail service is the only long-term solution to our growing transport problem. We need such long-term decisions. I hope that by the time we come to debate the draft Bill, the Government will have come to the same conclusion.