HC Deb 21 July 1982 vol 28 cc506-14

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.— [Mr. Garel-Jones.]

11.38 pm
Mr. Neil Thorne (Ilford, South)

An efficient transport system is an essential ingredient in any industrialised economy. If, therefore, the authorities charged with the responsibility of maintaining the system fail in their duty, it is a serious matter, particularly to the businesses in the area that depend on the transport system for both the movement of their staff between home and work and the transport of goods between supplier and customer, both of which are vital to the provision of profitable employment.

In London, much of the responsibility for that duty has been vested by Parliament in the Greater London Council and, for many years, under the control of both main parties, the system has worked well. Of course, there have been differences of political emphasis over the respective priorities for expenditure of available funds, but that always appeared to be done for the intended benefit of both ratepayers and taxpayers.

However, all that seems to have changed recently. Now that responsibility for housing management has rightly gone to the London boroughs, the ambulance service has been transferred to the DHSS, and the London boroughs are taking an increasing interest in absorbing other function, such as planning and traffic regulations, the GLC appears to be turning its attention towards finding itself a number of new interests of a politically contentious nature. At the same time, the authority seems to have lost the will and the ability adequately to perform those responsibilities which it retains under the London Government Act 1963. Faced with that background, I ask the Minister urgently to consider the Government's policy on transport in the Greater London area.

The most basic of the responsibilities for transport in London is the road network. The recent rail strikes have demonstrated the vulnerability of London's primary road network to overloading through traffic congestion which increases travelling costs.

The prime reason for London's congested traffic is the absence of adequate modern roads to cope with the traffic volumes. The 1,000 miles of main roads which are the responsibility of the GLC are mostly all-purpose carriageways, often no more than 12m wide and with frequent intersections, while only 15 per cent. of the main roads in London have dual carriageways.

Despite having the biggest traffic control system in Europe, London's traffic speeds fell by 5 per cent. in the 1970s, in contrast with other metropolitan areas where speeds on average rose by 10 per cent. That is due to the low spending on roads in London compared with the rest of the country.

In 1978–79, spending on London's roads was only 4.4 per cent. of the national road expenditure, whereas the capital contained 12.7 per cent. of the population. To put it another way, the road construction spending per head in 1978–79 was £5 for London compared with £15 for England, £28 for Scotland and £41 for Wales.

The only long-term solution to the problem of London's increased congestion is the construction of new and improved roads. With responsibility split between the Department of Transport and the GLC for London's primary roads, there is at present a lack of strategic planning, and in the case of the GLC a lack of political will to address the problem.

The total GLC expenditure on new and improved roads in the period 1982–85 is forecast at £181 million. The London boroughs will be spending £129 million in the same period, making a total local government expenditure of £310 million. Those figures include a number of small but locally important schemes, such as the A118 Ilford town centre diversion in my constituency.

To put the figures into some perspective, it should be noted that it is estimated that in 1980 alone the 2.38 million registered motor vehicles in London paid road tax and petrol tax totalling £1,380 million.

The standing conference on London and South-East regional planning made proposals, which were adopted by the County Surveyors' Society in its report, "Transport in the 1980s", and supported by the British Road Federation. They advocated an investment in London's roads of £3,300 million in the 12 years from 1980 to 1992.

Much still needs to be done which does not yet appear in any programme, and I hope that my hon. Friend will look most carefully at those issues of vital importance to the future well-being of the capital.

The railway system is also a divided responsibility between London Transport, under the control of the GLC, and British Rail, under the Department of Transport. The latter, we are only too well aware from recent debates, is in receipt of subsidies exceeding £2 million a day. With the new awareness of what the taxpayer expects for his money, I hope that we shall start to see some real improvement in productivity to give the national network a future leading into the twenty-first century.

London Transport has been under the control of the GLC since 1969, when the Government of the day handed over the entire network and rolling stock free of charge to the GLC, so that, unlike the other major transport undertakings in the world, it has no interest to pay or debt charges to reimburse on those major cost items. In addition, it also receives transport subsidies to help pay for new rolling stock and new lines and to help towards running costs. In spite of all that, the GLC has got itself into the most frightful mess.

The Minister will remember that I sent him a copy of a letter that I received from a member of the majority party on the GLC, complaining that the Secretary of State was not prepared to pass legislation to help it out of its difficulties. The councillor went on to complain that the Secretary of State had suggested that it should implement productivity measures to help reduce costs. It transpires that, on reflection, the GLC has now discovered that it does not have to break even, to remain within the law. In the circumstances, one can only draw the conclusion that its entire attitude has been one to cause the maximum political antagonism, and only when it found that this behaviour did not pay off in the London borough elections earlier this year did it have second thoughts and make any attempt to face its responsibilities.

I know that many of my hon. Friends have come to the same conclusion and that they have been most active in drawing the Government's attention to the waste and incompetence caused by the present GLC leadership. If my hon. Friend is still not convinced that something is sadly wrong, I would draw his attention to a particular example. A constituent of mine, a Mr. G. E. Diaper of 69, Meadway, Ilford, travels daily from Barking station to Westminster on the District Line. He purchased a season ticket on 21 April 1981 for £407 to run until 20 April 1982. On 4 October 1981, as a result of the ill-fated "Fares Fair" policy, fares were reduced at the expense of the ratepayers. To avoid a mass of surrenders of current tickets and taking out new tickets at the reduced price. London Transport brought in a scheme whereby claims could be made for refunds. However, the scheme did not apply to tickets purchased at British Rail stations for use on London Transport trains. Here the arrangement was that the claim had to be made on expiry.

By 20 April 1982, the House of Lords ruling was known, but my constituent, having been promised a refund for the appropriate period, attempted to lodge his application form for a refund, but it was refused. He wrote to the London Transport Passengers Committee on 23 April: My ticket has now expired and I am told by British Rail that refunds are being totally suspended. I have been in touch with London Transport … who have confirmed this policy. They say that the House of Lords ruling was that the lower fares should never have been available and therefore there will be no more refunds". There was no mention of all those who had already had refunds or those who had had tickets at the lower price throughout the period. He went on: This is manifestly unjust; firstly because many, perhaps most, people had a refund and secondly because the low fares did operate for several months. It seems quite unfair that those of us who, because of BR policy, had to wait are now debarred altogether from reclaiming, in my case, some £60 or £70. I seek your comment, advice and help". Mr. Diaper was surprised to receive a letter from the London Transport Passengers Committee which said, among other things: The Committee have discussed the implications of this decision with representatives of the government, the GLC and LT. According to the GLC's interpretation of the Law Lords' ruling LT must do 'everthing practicable' to break even". The letter then gave the committee's view on what the Government should do about subsidies to London Transport. It finished by saying: The Committee sympathised with passengers who had not obtained a refund and realised that they could claim to be unfairly treated in view of the number of people who had been issued with refunds prior to the Lords' judgment. However, in view of LT's financial difficulties together with their legal opinion and the problems for passengers generally the Committee have decided that they were unable to take further action in this case. I am sorry not to be more helpful". That is surely a most unhelpful attitude for a body that holds itself to be a passengers' watchdog.

It appears to me that in cases of this kind perhaps the only solution is for the passenger to go to law to solve the matter. I for one have completely lost faith in the ability of the GLC to co-operate with the Department of Transport and its own passengers and staff in running London Transport, and I believe that it is essential to make alternative arrangements as a matter of urgency. The Government should consider creating a separate transport authority and appoint someone with a reputation for getting things done—perhaps someone like Sir Michael Edwardes—to take change and give taxpayers and ratepayers a sound and efficient service that is a credit to all concerned.

11.49 pm
Mr. Sydney Chapman (Chipping Barnet)

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Thorne) on raising a subject of great importance to every Londoner.

I wish my hon. Friend the Minister to consider sympathetically one point. In the considerations that must be taking place about a new transport authority for our great city and metropolitan area, will my hon. Friend take up the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South and consider a greater integration of the British Rail suburban commuter services and the London Transport Underground services? There is no doubt that the position is anomalous. A ticket for an equivalent journey on British Rail costs about half that on London Transport. This is a very serious matter for many Londoners. It makes a mockery of a public transport system, the purpose of which should be gainfully to assess how each part of transport can help a great city.

11.51 pm
The Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. Reginald Eyre)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Thorne) for raising the topic. I shall do my best to answer his points. The Government's objective is to provide the framework for the development of a coherent transport policy for London. That requires a sensible balance, within the resources that the nation can afford, between expenditure on roads—I note my hon. Friend's points—and on public transport. For their part, the Government are making substantial resources available: for investment in the trunk roads programme within and bordering the GLC area, involving about £1 billion during the next 10 years; to support British Rail's London and South-East commuter services; to the GLC for expenditure on the building and maintenance of local roads; and—a point that has recently been severely misrepresented—for substantial support to London Transport.

The major responsibility for developing and implementing sensible, balanced and cost-effective transport policies rests with the GLC as the strategic authority for London. As we all know, the present GLC has a declared bias towards a public transport solution for London's problems and has decided against proceeding with the preparation of all but a few major road schemes.

The GLC's road programme is selective and on a much more limited scale than had been planned. I have noted carefully my hon. Friend's points about road building, and the most helpful thing that I can do is to arrange for my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, who has responsibility for roads, to consider those points and write to my hon. Friend. The GLC decided that it could solve London's traffic problems at a stroke by introducing a massive reduction in London Transport fares at the expense of its ratepayers. We all know the seriously unsatisfactory outcome of that lack of balance towards its responsibilities for transport in London.

By any standards, the events of the past year have been extraordinary. They have also been disruptive to the travelling public, placed unnecessary burdens on London's ratepayers and thrown into disarray the workings of London Transport. As the present GLC has been in office for a little more than a year, now is a good opportunity to review the events of the recent past and to try to place them in perspective.

The first point to be clear about is how the current situation arose. Prior to May 1981, when the present GLC came to power, successive Governments and GLC administrations of different political complexions had managed to work together reasonably amicably in ensuring that London received a fair share of the available resources for transport and that services were maintained at a reaonable level.

The question that we must ask ourselves, therefore, is: what has happened to change all this? The GLC has been trying to persuade everyone that all the problems stem from the House of Lords judgment and the Government's refusal to introduce legislation to enable it to return to its former policies.

Let us examine the facts. The GLC decided to introduce its so-called "Fares Fair" policy without any proper consideration of how it could be paid for and the devastating effects it would have on London's ratepayers. It was mainly for these reasons that House of Lords judged this policy to be illegal. Having had its half-baked political experiment shown up for what it was, instead of coming to the Government to discuss the issues sensibly and to try to overcome the problems that it had created in a reasonable manner, the GLC then mounted a massive publicity campaign, full of half truths, which was designed to delude people that they could have something for nothing.

Simultaneously, to alarm people into supporting a return to its ill-considered policies, the GLC insisted on an unnecessarily restrictive interpretation of the House of Lords judgment in trying to make London Transport break even as soon as possible and inflicting a 100 per cent. fare increase on the travelling public as well as threats of ridiculous service cuts.

Throughout this period the GLC continued to mess London Transport about—I agree with my hon. Friend about that—making management's life impossible by refusing to give it firm guidance on its capital budget, encouraging the work force to take disruptive action and undermining the possibility of improvements in efficiency.

In these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that a number of inconsistencies have arisen, particularly of the sort described by my hon. Friend. As he no doubt knows, my Department has no locus in the matter of fare levels on London Transport. Nor can the Government be expected to underwrite all the consequencies flowing from the GLC's illegal action and the operators' subsequent dealings with their customers.

I was sorry to hear of the unfortunate experience of my hon. Friend's constituent, and I sympathise with him in his frustration. However, I am afraid that the only answer that I can give is that the question of refunds on season tickets must be pursued with those directly responsible.

The decision of the GLC to introduce and then abandon its low fares policy created a number of anomalies. I understand that London Transport was advised that the payment of refunds to season ticket holders would be unlawful following the House of Lords judgment. The executive felt that it had no alternative but to cease payment immediately as a first step towards returning to legality.

Although the suspension of the lower fares was also a legal imperative, it was not capable of immediate implementation because of the complex administration necessary to implement a fares revision. The London Transport Executive recognises that this has led to unequal treatment as between one passenger and another.

Moreover, and I say this with regret, this is only one example of the sort of inequities brought about by GLC mismanagement. Another is the fact that London's ratepayers, whose burden was relieved by the House of Lords judgment, are nevertheless still having to pay off the considerable deficit incurred during the period that the policy operated.

All of this irresponsible activity on the part of the GLC has been conducted in the face of clear advice from the Government that the Law Lords judgment did not rule out a reasonable level of subsidy for public transport and that the task of the GLC should be to prepare a balanced and sensible plan based upon the considerable level of resources which had been made available to London Transport in the past, and which the Government made clear would continue to be made available.

Against that background, we should examine the Government's record in all this. We made available to the GLC the Attorney-General's opinion that the revised GLC budget for 1982 was perfectly legal. Therefore, there was no reason for the GLC to have delayed approving London Transport's capital budget.

We rushed through legislation to safeguard the position of the pensioners and disabled who were threatened by the consequences of the GLC's own policies. We offered legislation, which the GLC declined, to enable the deficit which London Transport had been forced to run up as a result of its low fares policy to be spread over five years, so cushioning the impact on fares.

Mr. Chapman

Will my hon. Friend confirm that if London Transport had taken the Government's offer this year's rates would not have needed to be increased to the extent that they were? In my constituency the GLC precept was increased by no less than 90 per cent.

Mr. Eyre

I am sorry to hear that. There is no doubt that the GLC's decision in this respect operated to the detriment of its financial arrangements in the way that my hon. Friend mentioned.

We have made it clear that we are committed to a continuing substantial level of financial support for public transport, in London as well as elsewhere. It must by now be perfectly clear to everyone that in recent years London has had the lion's share of transport supplementary grant paid from the Exchequer to local authorities—£180 million in 1982–83, as much as 40 per cent. of the total for the whole of England.

London Transport gets about £250 million a year in subsidy, £100 million of it from the national taxpayer. In addition, London's BR commuter rail services get a subsidy, wholly from the taxpayer, of about £150 million a year. Those are considerable sums, rightly so, to provide a substantial subsidy towards the cost of London's transport services.

On the question of legislation, we have also made it clear that, although we have no intention of legislating to allow the GLC to return to extreme high cost-low fares policies, we are quite prepared to consider whether there is a need to define more clearly the extent of the GLC's discretion to pay subsidies.

Therefore, we have made our policies towards public transport in London perfectly plain. We have leant over backwards to try to help the GLC extricate itself from the mess which has been entirely of its own making. We have invited it to put forward a proper plan which has due regard to the level of resources which can reasonably be made available for London. We have made it clear that we want to see fares held and if possible reduced, with a substantial contribution being made from lower costs within London Transport.

We recognise that London presents particular difficulties in this, but the fact of the matter is that London Transport's costs have grown at a much faster rate than those of operators in other conurbations. It has begun to look at this, but much more needs to be done.

The Government's position is perfectly clear. We are waiting for action from the GLC. After all the havoc that it has created by its extreme policies over the past year, there are some signs that the GLC is now busily trying to reverse engines. It has recently acknowledged that the Lords judgment does not, as it was claiming, require London Transport to break even without subsidy, and it has at last approved this year's capital programme for London Transport. It is a pity that uncertainty was left hanging over London Transport for so long on much needed capital investment and with detrimental effect upon manufacturing industries in other parts of the country.

The GLC says that it has now produced a draft transport plan on which it intends consulting widely. However, what that amounts to is four or five so-called options which are in fact only illustrative cases of the effects of different subsidy levels. There are many other possibilities. Public consultation on this basis is no substitute for responsible decision by the GLC.

We have made it clear that what is needed now is a proper plan, not a series of options. If the GLC', claims for transport supplementary grant support are to receive proper consideration along with those of other counties, we must have firm proposals by the end of July. I hope that it will now come forward, as we have asked it to, with sensible proposals for London transport and not use this consultation exercise merely as another attempt to drum up support on a misleading basis for its former discredited policies.

It is disquieting to see that the GLC still seems to be plugging its "Fares Fair" policy, although there are some signs that it has at last recognised that a policy that would put an extra £1¾ billion on the rates over the next five years, and cost £3 billion in total, is not a viable proposition in today's circumstances. The alternatives which it seems to be advocating, however, which it refers to as "Restrained Needs", would still require an extra £l billion over the next five years. There is nothing very restrained about that.

No proper argument has been adduced in support of that in terms of the needs that would be met. Instead, the GLC merely puts forward generalised statements about the need to return fares to about the same relationship to average household income as they were in 1970. This represents a very disappointing response to our request to prepare a balanced plan using as a bench-mark the current level of resources going to London Transport. Instead of starting from this level and putting forward a well argued case for any increase, the GLC has started from the top and moved only slightly downwards.

The council has reluctantly recognised the burden that its high-cost policies would place on the ratepayer. But its response is simply to misrepresent the effect of block grant penalties, which, in fact, operate even-handedly for all authorities, and to ask the Government to change the whole structure of local government finance in order to accommodate it. Rather than trying to work within the existing arrangements and to come forward with sensible policies, it still seems to be in danger of persisting in policies which have no regard to the present financial circumstances and the level of resources which can reasonable be made available to London.

In the light of events over the past year, we have been looking seriously at the organisation of transport in London. I assure my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mr. Chapman) that the valuable point that he made about integration will be carefully considered.

The deliberately disruptive activity of the GLC has cast serious doubts over whether the present institutional arrangements are any longer workable. In consequence there have been widespread representations, by Parliament, by the chairman of London Transport and others, concerning possible reorganisation. What is quite clear is that there is a need to clarify the lines of responsibility between those who pay for the services and those who provide them.

A more arm's length relationship is required. London Transport needs clear strategy guidance but should then be allowed to get on with the major job of management and providing services without back door interference. Secondly, a better definition is required of the purpose of subsidy and more accountability on the uses to which it is put. We need to redefine the powers and duties of those involved.

Then there is the whole question of the efficiency and scale of London Transport—whether it would operate more efficiently with smaller accountable units and whether there is room for more private enterprise operators, what further scope exists for reducing costs, for adjusting services more closely to demand and for using capital investment in order to increase efficiency, for instance, through automatic ticket dispensing and collection and more one-man operation.

More widely, there arises the whole question of the relationship between public transport and highways and between London Transport and British Rail fares and services. These are matters which we have been considering very carefully. We welcomed the Select Committee inquiry into transport in London and we shall be looking at its recommendations, which are expected soon, with great care.

London needs a stable, balanced and properly coordinated transport policy. Regrettably, that has been totally lacking over the past year. We are determined that Londoners will have a better deal in the future.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at seven minutes past Twelve o' clock.