Lord Dykes
Main Page: Lord Dykes (Crossbench - Life peer)
Lord Dykes
My Lords, I am glad to follow the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, but I hope that he will forgive me if, through inexperience and lack of knowledge, I do not adhere to his maritime theme, which was extremely interesting, but return to some of the more general themes enunciated in the debate. I make the brief reflection that this appears to have been a rather unusual and bizarre procedure: the distinguished Peer, the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, made a speech after the first Statement, after which we immediately had a second ministerial Statement. I do not think that I have experienced that before. For the convenience of the House—I hasten to add that I am not stressing my personal convenience—it might have been better if the second Statement had started at about 6 o’clock, rather than 5 o’clock, so that we could have had a substantial additional portion of the transport debate before the Statement. The decision was reached through the usual channels, I suppose, but perhaps Ministers could reflect that their personal convenience should take second place to the general convenience of Members of the House.
A number of anxieties have been expressed in speeches in the transport debate about what will happen with the capital cuts programme in the department. One of the inevitably sad reflections is that, as the Independent said today, the overwhelming bulk of the department’s expenditure is for the Highways Agency, which maintains major roads with a budget of £6.5 billion. There will be no cuts in road repairs, which is probably a good thing, but work on congestion and on providing information will suffer.
There will presumably be quite serious cuts in railway infrastructure expenditure just at this crucial time when one needs additional spending, particularly in the freight sector—I see the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, who is a great expert on this subject, in his place—so there will be quite a few anxieties. This is definitely not a personal observation on a distinguished politician in the other House, but the former shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury is now the Secretary of State and so will quickly have to shed his culture of preparing the axe. He had assumed that he would be a Minister if the Tories won either on their own or in coalition but now has to change his tune and say that capital investment in transport projects is a good way of helping the private sector, as he did in his recent interview in the Financial Times.
Incidentally, I hope that means that it is a very good thing for the private sector and the public sector. I remain sceptical about the notion of bashing down the public sector—which has a stronger multiplier effect in respect of capital outlays on jobs, employment creation and general economic growth than any other sector, as figures certainly show—and relying entirely on the private sector to make the difference. That is a distinctly old-fashioned theory from pre-war days, which remains to be tested. Be that as it may, these are early days and even coalitions are known to learn from experience. This is an unusual coalition for us, and it is the first post-war one. We all hope that it will be very successful. I also wish the Minister on the Bench well in his task of handling this portfolio and speaking in this debate.
We know that there is a serious crisis facing rail freight. I have here the latest RFG magazine. I will, mercifully, not quote from it because of time, but it is an excellent magazine. I pay tribute to what the RFG says; it expresses very serious anxieties. I hope the Minister will spend at least some time in his remarks today dealing with the RFG’s arguments, which merit close attention. I am anxious that we are to be more concerned with cutting transport outlays than outlays on defence or security. Defence expenditure is often very wasteful. In the whole world there is not a single conventional enemy facing this country. We are dealing only with terrorist dangers. We have to be very careful about priorities and the proper use of even scarcer capital resources.
The McNulty report, which came out in March, is an incredibly difficult document to fathom if you are not an expert on the detail. I refer briefly to the section entitled “Rail industry costs and finances”, on page 15. It certainly needs a considerable brain to understand all the things in there, except to reach the general and harrowing conclusion that, for a mysterious reason which people cannot quite fathom, our infrastructure costs in terms of railway engineering remain higher than those not only in all other European countries but in other countries in other parts of the world as well. Noble Lords have already referred to the heavy infrastructure costs and bureaucracy of the Network Rail system. Equally, the infrastructure installation costs for the Transit Light tram system, which is developing in more and more British cities, are mysteriously higher in this country—by a significant and worrying amount—than in other countries. I hope the Minister will tackle that matter, too, in this debate today.
I switch from that for one comment before I finish on High Speed 2. The Minister referred to the menace of drink-driving and what the Government are quite rightly doing. We wish the Government well in dealing with those matters. There are some horrendous recent examples of people who have been well over the limit and had some very nasty accidents. However, I hope the Minister will, if he has time, comment on drug-driving. This, too, is a growing menace. Sometimes there is a combination of both, but examples of drug-driving are growing. The police are very worried about it and more needs to be done.
I turn quickly to mobile phones. Even if they are fixed—rather than hand-held, which is illegal, as we know—they are, none the less, a major factor in reducing concentration when driving in increasingly congested conditions, not just in cities but on our country lanes. These are more and more congested, used not only by private drivers but by trucks and lorries as well. That, too, has to be tackled. It is utterly irresponsible, particularly for parents driving with children in the back, to talk into mobile phones and not concentrate on driving complications. Incidents can spring up in seconds and it can be too late to control the vehicle properly.
I have anxieties about High Speed 2. I remember the dramatic Statement made in March by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis—then the Secretary of State—in which he announced the plan for HS2. I am worried about the reference in the coalition agreement to this. It states on page 31:
“We will establish a high speed rail network as part of our programme of measures to fulfil our joint ambitions for creating a low carbon economy”.
I hope that it is being done for other reasons as well, of course, but that is a very important reason. The document continues:
“Our vision is of a truly national high speed rail network for the whole of Britain. Given financial constraints, we will have to achieve this in phases”.
The ominous warning we face is that the high-speed network might eventually be scrapped due to pressures on spending and the Government’s budget cuts, subject to the comprehensive review in the autumn. Or it might be postponed, thus making it more expensive than it would have been. If that occurs, money will be wasted and we will not have the high-speed network that this country demands. Incidentally, it should go all the way to Scotland, not just to northern England. To achieve a harmonised economic system, we need a high-speed network over the whole country.
I have touched on a number of themes which the Minister, if he has time, should deal with, as there are great anxieties about the future. People are worried that this process will take much longer than we thought.