HC Deb 26 June 1984 vol 62 cc813-7

Lords amendment: No. 1, page 2, line 10, after first "to" insert "(a)"

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Sir George Young)

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said' amendment.

Mr. Speaker

With this it will be convenient to take Lords Amendments Nos. 2, 16 and 18 to 21. I inform the House that Lords Amendment No. 1 involves privilege.

Sir George Young

We are considering two groups of amendments here. The purpose of the two amendments to clause 1 is to regularise the position of London boroughs as regards the levy to be imposed under that Bill by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport. London Regional Transport is to be funded partly by Exchequer grant and partly by a levy issued to all the rating authorities in London—all the London boroughs. It would not be right to expect the LRT levy to be funded from within a rate-limited authority's expenditure level or rate limit, and these amendments to clause 1 will allow that levy to be excluded from any maximum. This is the same arrangement that we agreed for the precepts of the major precepting authorities and the Receiver of the Metropolitan police.

The other amendments, all of which are to schedule 1, are consequential upon the setting up of London Regional Transport in place of the London Transport Executive.

Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West)

The Opposition would like all authorities to be excluded from rate capping. However, I do not argue against the amendment but merely comment upon it, because in many ways it adds insult to injury.

Democratically elected and accountable bodies in London are to be rate capped. I shall stick to the London example because the amendment specifically relates to London Regional Transport. A whole range of its services will have to be met from within the limits of its rate-capped income, yet the Government are making an exception for London Regional Transport and the Metropolitan police. In effect, those two authorities, which are neither directly elected nor directly publicly accountable, will be given some form of exemption. That is like rubbing salt into the wounds.

The setting up of London Regional Transport and the removal of responsibility for London Transport from the GLC have nothing to do with the efficient organisation of transport needs in London, but has all to do with making the Government's already thin case for the abolition of the GLC a little stronger. Therefore, transport is to be taken away from the GLC.

The Secretary of State for Transport will be responsible for the tranport needs of Londoners. I have great fears for London's transport system if it falls into the tender mercies and cavalier hands of the right hon. Gentleman. He will no doubt try to flog it off. Perhaps he will be more successful than his attempt to flog off Sealink.

The GLC—a democratically elected authority—is to be penalised by having London Transport taken away from it, and the Minister will allow the rate-capped authorities to fund their side of London Regional Transport without incurring penalties. What about all the other services that are of equal importance to the boroughs? No exception will be made for them.

The exemptions from rate capping, including London Regional Transport and the Metropolitan police, are part of the Government's approach to local authorities. Underlying it all is the Prime Minister's paranoia about the GLC and Labour-controlled local authorities. It seems that if local authorities get in the way of the Prime Minister their powers are taken away. In essence, that is what the Bill is all about.

Alternatively, selective hit lists are drawn up to get at Labour-controlled local authorities. That is the selective vindictiveness under which I am to be dragged in front of the Committee of Privileges. The Government are quite capable of—and perfectly willing to do it—drawing up a selective hit list when it suits their own purpose; then if the local authorities still get in their way they decide to abolish them.

This is a crazy way to approach the strategy for local government. It is an appalling attitude, given the way in which the Government seem to have made art absolute virtue out of their total hypocrisy and cant.

Another strand in the strategy is even more worrying. How much does the Secretary of State know about this morning's incident, when Mr. Bill Bush, the head of Ken Livingstone's private office, was arrested on Waterloo bridge and accused of handling a leaked Cabinet document? It had the Secretary of State for the Environment's signature on it when it was shown to him in Rochester row. How much does the Secretary of State know about the arrest of the head of Ken Livingstone's private office? Is this all part of the hotting up of a campaign of paranoia, hatred and victimisation against the Greater London council?

The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Patrick Jenkin)

The hon. Gentleman asks how much I knew about the arrest of Ken Bush. The answer is, absolutely nothing.

4 pm

Mr. Banks

As a matter of fact, it was Bill Bush. I shall accept from the Secretary of State that he knew nothing about this case, but I cannot believe that none of the Ministers who are now sitting on the Front Bench were entirely in ignorance of that incident this morning. It just shows that we have reached the point where local authorities can be harassed by the Government in legal terms, and, when that clearly fails to gain electoral support, no doubt the instructions will go out to the police to start harassing GLC staff. There will be other quest ions asked of other Ministers to see whether they were involved in that incident.

This amendment adds insult to injury. London transport is to be taken away from a democratically elected GLC and given to an unelected, unaccountable quango. The Secretary of State for Transport will then be able to decide whether he will install certain services or cut them, and what fares will go up. The Government are giving themselves an exemption while attacking all others. This is one more example of the selective vindictiveness that comes from the Tory party.

Mr. Nigel Spearing (Newham, South)

I rise to support my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) on one point. For the first time in many years, perhaps ever, the running and responsibility for a local service, in this case London transport, is being taken by the Department of Transport and there is no other body than the London Passenger Transport Committee available for consultation, except the quangos set up in the Bill. If the money is to come from the boroughs—I understand the Minister's exemption, which is both welcome and unwelcome for the reasons that my hon. Friend has mentioned—that means that there will be taxation without representation, other than by Members of Parliament. In other words, the Secretary of State for Transport of the day will be responsible to the users of the service either through consultative committees or through hon. Members. I put that point on record because it is one of constitutional accountability. If and when there are arguments as to the terms of reference for questions or anything of that sort, the fact that there is taxation with representation only through hon. Members should be borne in mind.

Mr. Jack Straw (Blackburn)

I share the concerns expressed by my hon. Friends the Members for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) and for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) on the amendment. Within the scheme of a thoroughly objectionable and undemocratic Bill, it is necessary to excuse from the criteria for rate capping those parts of a district's rate bill that are nothing to do with that district. That would include the Metropolitan police and London Transport.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West was right to draw attention to the double standards that the Government will now operate, and one such case that the Under-Secretary has not mentioned. The Metropolitan police are subject to no serious control over their activities. It is well known that their costs have risen far faster over the past five years than even those of the county police authorities, yet their efficiency is the lowest of any police force, even allowing for special circumstances.

London Regional Transport hovers like a terrible spectre over the future of London's public transport system. If previous experience of transferring services from democratic authorities to controlled Government boards is anything to go by—the experience of Conservative Administrations with water authorities and ambulance services—Londoners can look forward to higher charges and a much worse service.

I rarely accuse my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West of understating his case or not going far enough. However, he said that there was a thin case for abolition of the GLC. I know that he was using a piece of litotes to emphasise his point, but there is no case for the abolition of the GLC and no case for removing the control of London Transport from the GLC.

I travel on the London transportation system—an experience that many hon. Members enjoy, but one that is alien to the Secretary of State for Transport, who neither cares nor knows anything about the London transport system. One of the great things about London Transport is that one can read the posters while waiting for a tube—one has to wait a much shorter time than one used to. The posters show the good news that there are improvements in services. It is possible to get a number 3 or a number 195 bus without waiting an inordinate length of time.

These are real and tangible improvements which have been made for Londoners who voted for them, but which will be taken from them by an authoritarian Government who hate the fact that London voted for an authority of a different political complexion from themselves. They cannot cope with that fact. They therefore wish to remove from its control the running of London transport and many other services and to abolish it. Not only did the people in London in 1981 elect to control the GLC a party of a different political complexion from the Government, but if elections were held in 1985 those people would, as the Secretary of State knows only too well, overwhelmingly re-elect a Labour-controlled GLC. The metropolitan county councils would be similarly re-elected.

We have been lectured this afternoon about the rules of sub judice. Apparently, they permit Ministers to pre-judge with impunity the outcome of railway accident inquiries. However, it would be neither right nor proper for me to pre-judge the outcome of the case of Mr. Bill Bush, who was arrested this morning but has now been released. However, there is a connection between that case and the authoritarian way in which the Government have removed the powers of democratic control over London Transport and have then sought to abolish councils and elections because they disagree with those councils.

In today's climate it is possible for members of the special branch to detain someone who works for an opposition party and to interview him over a leaked document that is related not to national security but only to the Government's embarrassment. Before Thatcherism and its authoritarian tendencies became rampant, there would not have been a climate in which the police could even have considered using their power to arrest and detain someone who worked for an opposition leader of a London council. What a hue and cry there would have been 10 years ago if somebody from Central Office had handled a leaked document—many leaks were being handled then—and had been arrested on Westminster bridge. This is not somebody who would have signed the Official Secrets Act. The hue and cry would have been enormous then, but now the climate is such that this is apparently likely to become commonplace.

I hope that, with the leave of the House, the Under-Secretary will seek to reply to the debate and will deal with the double standards that the Government are establishing. Under those double standards crucial services that could have been run by the district authorities are to be screwed down by the legislation. As we know from the experience of the water authorities and the Metropolitan police, there will not be proper accountability or democratic control over these new quangos and Londoners can look forward only to higher charges and a worse service.

Sir George Young

The debate has verged on a Second Reading debate on the London Regional Transport Bill. I shall try to reply to some of the arguments.

The hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) exhibited almost terminal paranoia. He produced not a shred of evidence for his wide-ranging accusations about Ministers and others. He should use with care the words "selective vindictiveness" of which he accused Ministers in connection with the case that has gone to the Committee of Privileges. I regret that the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) associated himself with the innuendo in which the hon. Member for Newham, North-West indulged.

s There is no disagreement about the principle. The object of the Bill is to curb local authority expenditure, so it makes no sense to include the LRT levy within the rate-capped expenditure of local authorities. Opposition Members were misleading in what they said about accountability. The LRT levies will be decided by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport who will be accountable to the House for his decisions. He will have to place the levy before the House in an affirmative order. He will want to ensure that LRT is run as economically as possible. No further powers will be needed to achieve that end.

It would be unacceptable if LRT were subject to rate limitation. That would amount to one Secretary of State capping another. That would be foolish and unnecessary, although perhaps somewhat amusing. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will strive to ensure that London Transport is run efficiently and effectively. I reject what the hon. Member for Blackburn said about the future of London transport when it comes under the LRT. I am confident that under the new administration Londoners will enjoy an efficient and effective transport service. I ask the House to accept the Lords amendment.

Question put and agreed to. [Special Entry.]

Lords amendment No. 2 agreed to. [Special Entry.]

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