Transport: Investment

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for repeating the Statement that was made in the other place earlier today and congratulate him on making the best fist of a pretty poor job. We all looked on the Secretary of State for Transport in his shadow role as some kind of Grecian figure with a huge club to wield on the public sector. Now that he has been translated to Secretary of State for Transport, we see that he is seeking to cover himself with some small fig-leaf of decency by investment in transport. But it will not do. He has not changed his visage or his perspective. This is not a Statement about significant investment in transport. It is a cover for limited investment in transport—a reduction of proposals under the previous Administration and no guarantee except in the most minimalist form of what will be delivered over the next four to five years.

If one looks at the major road schemes, apart from those that were put in place under the previous Administration, none of the new ones will begin until some time before 2015, if conditions allow. Certainly, they will not begin before 2015. There is no suggestion at all that they will be an investment of completion to the advancement of the nation, so delay is built into it. There is already an excuse for the delay because the whole document is presaged on the assumption that, if we can make the efficiency savings, if we can cut the waste at the rate at which we intend, and if we can get all the measures through in the way in which the Government intend, there may be some dimension for investment.

The Government will not get all they expect in terms of efficiency gains. They will not achieve all they expect in reducing waste. They will be disappointed in some areas and they will find difficulty in certain areas in getting their proposals through. After all, one element of the coalition might summon up some reserves of energy and resource at some stage to put a delaying tactic on certain aspects of these cuts. Therefore, we should look on these nugatory promises of investment for what they are: promises that are in the main contingent except where the scheme is already in place.

What we do know is where the cuts will fall. The Statement is about highway and local transport schemes but the noble Earl was very early on to the issue of rail and took pride in the fact that the Government are sustaining Crossrail. How could the Government do anything else with such a significant project? Crossrail, a rail issue, was introduced into this Statement about roads because it is an indication that the Government supposedly have their heart in the right place. Is their heart in the right place? The Government are prepared to contemplate increases in rail fares over the five-year period up to 2015—rises in certain rail fares of 25 per cent. Does anyone think that this will have anything but a detrimental effect on railway demand? Does anyone think that commuters and others will look at the choice between rail fares that are escalating and road costs and, having found the equation more to the advantage of road, move from rail to road to the detriment of our environment, to the detriment of our economy and to the detriment of the very objectives that the Government purport to secure through their overall railway policy?

What the Government are about is pricing certain people off rail. The Secretary of State for Transport indicated in a recent newspaper article that he expected some fares to go up by some 10 per cent, which merely indicates his economic innumeracy. It is quite clear that what is being contemplated is an increase vastly above that. For season ticket holders, we will see increases in fares of such significance as either to hold rail passengers to ransom or cause them to go on to our already crowded road system.

What is the case for rail is also the case for buses. There is a straightforward, unembellished clear cut in the subsidy to bus operators. What does that mean? It means higher fares or reduced services, or more likely both. We will see our rural areas become more and more dependent on the car because of this onslaught on the buses, and we will see the pressure reflected in the needs of those who have no access to a car but face increased bus fares.

What is also absent from this Statement is any comment about the cuts of more than 25 per cent in the resources of local authorities. What does that mean for crucial aspects of local authority operations? Certainly with regard to road maintenance it means a very great deal indeed, but it also means something to another dimension, on which the noble Earl was singularly silent in his Statement. I hope he gives some response to these questions. What does a cut to local authorities’ resources mean for road safety programmes? What does it mean to the ability to introduce and maintain road safety measures and monitor road safety? We will be watching this very closely indeed. We have real anxieties about the extent to which this Government seem to set at a very low priority the very significant improvement in road safety provision on our roads over the past decade or so. The British position is better than the rest of the industrialised world; it is the best in Europe. It is also a reflection of the significant amount of resources made available to local authorities, which have responsibility for road safety. The local authorities are to sustain a very significant cut. I say to noble Lords and particularly to the Minister that, if during the time when this Government are in office we see a reversal of the trend towards improved figures with regard to road safety, we will hold them to account, because they have set this issue as a low priority—so low that in this Statement about investment in highway and local transport schemes there is not one mention of road safety.