Local Transport Bill [Lords]

The hon. Lady fails to recognise that when factors such as subsidy and density of population are disaggregated, all the indications are that regulation in London has led to a better transport system and more passengers than can be found elsewhere in the country. What she fails to understand, and what I think every Labour Member does understand, is that with the good investment, good subsidy and real political leadership from which London has benefited, a regulated transport system will be a good system. The hon. Lady also failed to explain why, given a system that works in London on those grounds—she did not attempt to specify which of them should be removed—we should have two systems in England as a whole. She did not explain why England should have such an apartheid system of transport, whereby London gets political leadership because it has an elected body, so it gets subsidy and regulation, and therefore a better transport system. Those are the horns of the dilemma on which the hon. Lady was caught—and I must say that over the years I have seen one or two of my Front-Bench colleagues caught on the same horns and have similar problems in respect of why there are two different systems in the country. To understand why there are two different systems, we have to go back just over 20 years to when the then Conservative Government and Prime Minister launched a huge political onslaught on local democracy and local services. It went wider than transport, but for the purposes of this debate we should note that six metropolitan counties and the Greater London council were abolished, and we got a deregulated system. Although the Bill can be improved, one reason why I welcome it is that it attempts to deal with both sides of the problem—with the problems caused by deregulation and with those caused by the abolition of the metropolitan counties.