Queen’s Speech

My Lords, not much transport legislation was foreshadowed in the gracious Speech. What we have had from the Secretary of State is something of a progress report on initiatives that were already in train. In making my points, I should be very grateful for a response in writing if there is no time to give one at the end of this debate. I should say to the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, that this is also a challenge to the Conservatives. We do not buy very easily into the idea that they were first in the field with high-speed rail. I remember working for the railway when a Conservative Government sent a member to the British Railways Board with a remit to preside over the orderly running-down of the railway, so I will take no lessons from them on that. Three things matter: congestion; energy use; and climate change—perhaps, following the noble Lord, Lord Lawson of Blaby, I should say pollution. I will give two examples of congestion. Congestion in London is forecast to rise by 17 per cent by 2031. Last year, on the A34 between Oxford and Newbury, it rose by 16 per cent. These figures are alarming. I bring to noble Lords’ attention the words of Reuben Smeed in the 1930s, who described congestion as a self-exciting phenomenon. That is, it will get worse and worse until very quickly you get gridlock. We want the efficient use of public transport and a greater restriction on road use. An item in the Observer two weeks ago said that Thameslink and Crossrail were under threat of £750 million of budget cuts, and referred to the usual Treasury mandarins carrying out a "value for taxpayers’ money" exercise. That may be journalistic licence, but I would like to know from the Minister whether these schemes are really going ahead as planned, and from the Conservatives whether they will support them if they become the Government. Are there any other plans in hand for road-user charging, because many people—including Boris Johnson, because he said so in his draft transport strategy—believe that it is inevitable? The Government really do need to do some serious work instead of pretending that there are technical obstacles. There are no such obstacles, because this works in so many parts of the world. The electrification to which the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, referred is vital for reasons of climate change, efficiency and the cascade of rolling stock. Many areas of the country are dependent on rolling stock from the electrified lines being transferred to them to keep services going. The very old trains in many parts of the country are well past it; many Members of your Lordships’ House who have travelled in Pacer trains know exactly what I am speaking about. I do, however, suggest that the electrification programme outlined by the Secretary of State is wrongly conceived. I still believe that there is a much better case for electrifying the Midland main line and the Gospel Oak-Barking line rather than the Great Western line beyond Oxford. I say that as a user of the Great Western line, but I know the advantages that would come particularly for freight and for linking Nottingham, Leicester, Derby and Sheffield into the electrified network. I do not know whether the Conservatives have a policy for electrification. Perhaps we will hear about that. It is absolutely essential that the east coast line remains in public ownership until the Government have sorted out what the franchise system is supposed to be about. What the passenger experiences should be the centre of our attention. You do not monitor franchises by measuring train punctuality very approximately, because that is not what the passenger experiences. Train companies have become very well able to manipulate train times to show how good they are, but passengers do not get the quality of service that they should. I know that Passenger Focus is doing some work using sampling methods of passengers’ actual experience rather than these crude punctuality measures. If the Minister does not know about it, no doubt he will familiarise himself with it. The week before last I was perchance given one of these forms on Banbury station. It is very long, with around 80 questions, but it does test everything connected with your journey. Everyone who uses the railway knows that there is not enough luggage space in carriages, that the fare structure is almost impossible to understand, and that the impact on the tourist industry—I imagine that my noble friend Lord Glasgow will refer to it—must be awful. The Secretary of State has published a paper on station improvement, and that is welcome because many stations are almost slums. Indeed, I shall pick up on one point he made about battery charging points for cars. Railway car parks would be excellent places to recharge cars, and it is my view that we should be making friends with the motorist, not treating him as the enemy. More rolling stock is desperately needed. I know that 200 extra diesel carriages were cancelled. That was absolutely wrong and I do not believe that it would have required money from the public purse. Provided that we had come to an agreement under Section 54 of the Railways Act 1993, I know that the roscos would have financed them out of their own resources. Those carriages are urgently needed in many parts of the country. We strongly support high-speed rail, but that would not involve spending a lot of money during the next Parliament. The east coast railway needs action now. It is overcrowded and could be substantially improved. My noble friend Lord Mar and Kellie will refer to this when he speaks. The Secretary of State may have seen an article in the Yorkshire Post yesterday which appeared to be a transmission of a Railtrack press handout about a second high-speed line from London. I am somewhat puzzled as to who is calling the shots. Is it the Secretary of State, is it Sir David Rowlands or is it Network Rail? If people are putting forward different schemes, in reality they are enemies of one another because they will simply start debates rather than take action. Some time ago, the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and I went to see the Secretary of State about NATA, the new approach to traffic and transport appraisal of all forms of public transport. We are still awaiting a real response to our requests. If you use econometric measures to analyse the impact of schemes, while that makes work for civil servants and accountants, it does not usually produce anything. We need schemes that treat issues such as congestion and pollution as important ones. I shall describe Network Rail in very short terms. It is inefficient and arrogant, it is not under public scrutiny and is not delivering a 24/7 railway service. I should like to know what the Government are going to do about it and I should be interested to know what the Conservatives are proposing to do about it. Network Rail is totally dependent on government funding yet we seem to have no influence over what it does. I have suggested a few things that we could spend money on, but there are some things that we might not spend money on, such as the intercity express train, the ERTMS new signalling system and the sheer complexity of the system we are trying to operate. I turn briefly to buses, which provide more journeys than any other means of public transport. However, they are plagued by congestion and by a lack of enforcement of traffic law. A debate has been started by the department on a fuel duty rebate apparently based on the thinking that operators might buy buses that are not fuel efficient. The fact is that every operator buying new vehicles looks at fuel efficiency as one of its major concerns. There is too much regulation in the bus industry. The concessionary fare business is, apparently, being sorted out—I have read the paper and I know it is out to consultation— but it is a running sore. The Secretary of State may have seen an article in the Evening Standard last week about where bendy buses go to die. There is a picture of all the bendy buses off route 38 parked, it looks like, in a field—certainly among a lot of trees—and I wonder what this has to do with efficient Conservative policy. So may he wonder, because these buses cost a huge amount of money and they are not being used. As far as I can tell from riding on them and talking to users, they are a popular means of transport. I shall stop there because I have gone on for long enough. I hope I have given the Minister a few things to respond to, either in writing or at the end of the debate.