Debate on the Address

My Lords, I am saddened by how low a priority transport issues seem to hold in government policy-making. Of course, health, education, the fight against terrorism and environmental issues are very important but so, too, is transport. To the average citizen health becomes an issue only when you or one of your family are ill; education becomes an issue when you are a student or when you are putting your children through school; and to most of us terrorism is just something we read about in the papers, although I suspect that the Government, for their own reasons, would like to give it an even higher priority. But transport—the getting from A to B—is something that directly affects most of us nearly every day of our lives, and congestion and overcrowding appear to be getting worse, not better. The only reference to transport in the Queen’s Speech is a vague assurance that the Government propose legislation to tackle congestion and improve public transport. That is good to know. Ruth Kelly, the new Secretary of State for Transport, though, quite rightly acknowledges that, "““transport influences our communities, our environment and ultimately our quality of life””." It seems very important, therefore, that we should come to grips with the growing problems of transport congestion and that the Government should present us with a coherent, integrated, long-term transport policy rather than papers that deal with each mode of transport individually and separately. The fact that Ruth Kelly is the ninth Secretary of State for Transport since new Labour came to power suggests either that the department is regarded as of little political significance or that nobody particularly likes the job—perhaps both of those are true. However, the recent spate of government reports and papers on the subject—which include the Eddington Transport Study, the White Paper entitled Delivering a Sustainable Railway and the expected Crossrail Bill and Local Transport Bill, set for this Parliament—suggest that transport issues are just beginning to get a marginally higher priority. But the Government improvement plans, although welcome in themselves, are nothing like bold or far-reaching enough and their continual support for air travel runs contrary to their policy of seeking to contain global warming. For most of us, travelling by any form of transport has long ceased to be a pleasure. By car it is one traffic jam, tailback or frustration after another; by air it is queuing and waiting and having to take your shoes off and put them back on again; and by rail it is the worry of whether you are going to get a seat at all and, if you have booked one, whether you will end up sitting next to someone speaking loudly on his mobile phone throughout the whole journey. It is estimated that 67 per cent of the trains in and out of London in the rush hours are overcrowded. How much longer will commuters remain so long suffering? And all this is only going to get worse. Going by government predictions, every year will see more cars and lorries on the road. The population of Britain is rising and as the country becomes more prosperous, more people will have more cars. In spite of the Government’s lip service to global warming, there will be more aircraft taking off from more runways and from more airports. To give the Government credit, they say that they are committed to spending money to improve all these various transport services in order to accommodate this anticipated extra traffic—an improved and more frequent bus service, for instance, more rolling stock for the railways, longer trains, longer platforms, better signalling, safer and more customer-friendly rural stations. But as soon as these improvements happen, the weight of traffic increases and we will still be struggling to keep up with demand. The promised extra carriages will attract extra passengers and very soon we will be faced with the same overcrowding problems again. The only solution to the problem lies in building more railways. There will never be sufficient capacity within the present network system to meet the growing demand, however better integrated and computerised it becomes. More and longer trains are necessary and welcome but there is nothing like enough. You see, it is not just a question of making provision for the extra passengers we expect in future years—as the Government claim to have done in their White Paper—it is also a question of enticing some of those existing travellers who presently prefer to fly or take their car to use the railways instead. Apart from the bicycle, train travel is the only form of transport that has relatively little effect on global warming. And in order to cut down on pollution and relieve congestion on the roads and in the air, we must make the railways a more attractive alternative than the car or plane. We should be starting to plan these new railway routes now, not wait until 2014 when the Government say that the situation will again be reviewed. This is where I agree with my noble friend Lord Mar and Kellie. In particular, we should start budgeting for the new, high-speed north-south rail service—so often mooted but, so far as I know, not yet off the starting blocks—of London to Glasgow in under three hours, perhaps avoiding city centres but linking up with many of Britain’s airports. We should be aiming for the day, some time before 2020, when air travel within the British Isles will be unnecessary and unwanted. Of course, the main objection to a new high-speed rail service is its cost. The cost may have to be borne, partly anyway, by the road user and the air traveller, and that will not be popular. No Government like to upset the powerful car lobby. Too many of us have become accustomed to the convenience of our own cars and greatly resent further costs to the price of motoring, added to the frustration of increasing road and parking restrictions. One advantage of being a member of a party that does not expect to be in government in the immediate future is that we can be less inhibited in pointing out the inconvenient truth. The fact is that we must reduce traffic on the roads—there are too many cars, lorries and white vans—and that means we must divert more people and freight on to the railways. We want to keep air travel to a level no greater than it is at present. One of the ways of doing that is by making life more expensive for the road user and the air traveller. That money—a tax if you like to call it that—needs to be ring-fenced to go to helping finance these new railways. Besides the fact that massive investment in the railways is the only possible solution to future transport deadlock, it is also the only civilised method of travel—at least it should be if properly managed. Now we are also talking about the quality of life. On a train you can do your work, you can read, you can sleep, you can stretch your legs, you can—or should be able to—go to eat in the dining car or drink in the bar. These and other facilities should all be part of a long-distance train journey and considerations that will encourage you to travel by train and leave your car at home or in the station car park. However, the Government’s view is that, "““it would not be prudent to commit itself to an all-or-nothing high-speed line at the present time””." So my plea to the Government is to recognise that more railways, as well as better trains with more carriages, are the only answer to our impending transport deadlock. Railways take a long time to build. Look how long it took to build our one high-speed line to the Channel Tunnel and how long it took even to make a decision on Crossrail. A review in 2014 is already too late.