London’s Economy

I thank the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) for his excellent introduction of this debate. I was pleased that he mentioned that London has some of the poorest areas of the country as well as some of the most affluent. My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) made the point that some areas of London have the highest unemployment, as well as obvious wealth. I vouch for what the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) said about London’s creative talent. I had the pleasure last Thursday of being present at the launch at the Hackney Empire of the English Touring Opera’s season, which certainly justified her claim of there being a high proportion of creative talent in Hackney. The English Touring Opera, which will go around the country, also makes the point that London is not a metro-centric body. It is a generous capital—it exports its talent to other parts of the country. The hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor), who, sadly, has departed—perhaps in good time, from his point of view—might bear that in mind. The issue that I want to return to—very briefly, Mr. Williams, in view of your remarks—is transport and the point that the hon. Member for Hendon made about overcrowding. It is extremely distressing to stand out in the open, particularly in this weather, on a platform in, say, Orpington or any other station in south London, to find that the eight-coach train that one is expecting does not have eight coaches but six or even four, or that it is cancelled altogether and two lots of people have to get on one train. That causes problems. The problem is the same in reverse when people are going home in the evening. We have heard about road rage, when people lose their temper on the road because of congestion. I have seen rail rage—or platform rage—at Charing Cross, when trains are cancelled and people are not told what is happening. Understandably, they are absolutely furious, and sometimes they take it out on each other and on the poor platform staff. That does not mean that trains are not often punctual and very satisfactory, but problems occur far too often. If from time to time Members speak, as I obviously do, to people who work in the House of Commons, they will find that the constant complaint—the biggest complaint of all—is overcrowding and the conditions that people have to put up with to get to and from work. That is a dreadful state of affairs in a city as affluent as London is at present. As we know, the situation led to an excellent campaign in the Evening Standard called ““A seat for every commuter””. Unfortunately, as is usual with the Government, they responded not to the people but to the media. We had a response from the Secretary of State for Transport, who, as I said in my intervention on the hon. Member for Hendon, came out with a statement about 1,000 more carriages by 2014. My good friend Mr. Brian Cooke, who is the chairman of London TravelWatch and also a constituent—and therefore knows about commuting at first-hand—calculated that 1,000 extra carriages, apart from being seven years away, will provide only 80,000 extra places. I hesitate to say ““seats””, because we know that these days ““places”” does not mean seats. One does not often get a seat on a commuter train. As he pointed out, given the expansion of London at the present rate, another 325,000 people will have come into London by then, so the plans of the Secretary of State for Transport are for overcrowding to get markedly worse. The promise is not for a golden future but a rather bleak and distant one. It cannot be taken at all seriously, and it is certainly no comfort to my constituents. My plea to the Minister and his colleagues in the Department for Transport is for some short-term, quick-acting measures to alleviate the situation in the near future. The hon. Member for Hendon mentioned the fact that there is now a seventh coach on some underground trains. That improvement was effected fairly quickly. It is perfectly possible to change the licensing and franchising arrangements so that operators are incentivised to bring in more coaches when necessary. The arrangements can be changed. They were changed only a year ago, so it is not an excuse to say that they were inherited and cannot be changed, or anything like that. Furthermore, if there is a problem with platform lengths, it is also possible to do something about that fairly quickly. I am not a fan of Transport for London, but its experts on the matter, which I clearly am not, have told me that short-term measures could be taken within a year or two to alleviate the situation that commuters in south London face. I am telling the Government that unless something is done fairly quickly, I and no doubt many of my colleagues will continue to nag them about this disturbing, everyday problem of life in London.