London Regional Transport

HC Deb 25 January 1988 vol 126 cc121-43 10.14 pm

The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. Paul Channon)

I beg to move, That the draft London Regional Transport (Levy) Order 1988, which was laid before this House on 11th January, be approved. Any discussion of London Regional Transport's policy and performance is inevitably overshadowed at present by the terrible fire at King's Cross on 18 November, in which 31 people lost their lives. At the outset of the debate, I repeat the sympathy which I know is felt by the whole House and which I expressed immediately following the fire. I know that the House will join me in again expressing sympathy for the continued pain suffered by the injured and bereaved. I am equally sure that the whole House shares the Government's determination that all possible steps should be taken to find the cause of the fire and to ensure that any lessons that can be learnt are acted upon swiftly and effectively. I know that the chairman and boards of LRT and London Underground also share that determination.

It is not the purpose of this debate to speculate on the cause of the fire; nor would it be right for us to attempt to do so. That is a matter for the formal investigation led by Mr. Desmond Fennell, QC. Public hearings will begin again next Monday, 1 February. Mr. Fennell and his team, with the advice of experts, will consider in depth all the available evidence. I shall study the conclusions reached carefully, and report to the House as quickly as possible.

LRT's performance and plans are set out in its annual business plan, published earlier this month. Sound progress has been made. LRT has improved efficiency and reduced the revenue deficit. That has allowed record levels of investment to be funded, while the burden on taxpayers and ratepayers has been reduced. This year, productivity improvements of 5 per cent. are forecast. Passenger levels are also about 5 per cent. up, and the revenue deficit is expected to be approximately halved to £45 million compared with 1986–87. At the same time— this is an important point—investment is being increased to £294 million—a real increase of over 14 per cent. over last year. This has been secured as a result of strong growth in demand and improvements in efficiency, and will, I think, be recognised as an impressive achievement.

The progress made in turning round the business since LRT was formed will continue in 1988–89. For the first time since the early 1970s, LRT as a whole expects to be able to cover its operating costs from revenues, and thus will not require revenue support from the Government. London Buses will continue to need revenue support of £92 million, but will receive it from the revenue surpluses earned by London Underground rather than from the Government grant. Taking LRT as a whole, the annual business plan envisages a revenue surplus of £9 million, but I would emphasise that that will be a surplus before depreciation and revewals provisions. Both London Buses and the underground will continue to require and receive substantial support to cover their trading losses after depreciation and renewals. That, in addition to grants, will continue to fund new investment.

The year, 1988–89, will see a continuation of the policy of supporting the high levels of investment which are required to modernise and expand the capacity of the network. The Government grant of £190 million will, together with internal resources and external contributions, enable LRT to invest a record £365 million—£1 million a day. That is nearly 60 per cent. more in real terms than in 1984–85.

Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark and Bermondsey)

How much of that investment is already committed to safety and security, which are of greatest immediate public concern?

Mr. Channon

Considerable sums of money are involved in safety. I shall try to answer the hon. Gentleman's question in more detail in my winding-up speech. As Sir Keith Bright has made clear, safety is paramount in all that London Underground does. It is an important matter that the House will wish to debate in detail, but we shall be better informed after the inquiry into the disastrous fire at King's Cross.

Mr. Sydney Bidwell (Ealing, Southall)

Will that mean that in future hard-pressed commuters in London will be able to ride in trains that are less overcrowded than they have been for many years?

Mr. Channon

That will happen as our investment programme takes effect. It is one of the purposes of the investment programme. I shall give the House some of the details of investment for the next few years. An important and very welcome development is the degree of external funding for extensions to the Docklands light railway. Three quarters of the investment planned in 1988–89 will be funded by the developers of Canary wharf, or out of the proceeds from higher land values resulting from the construction of the railway. That is a fine example of public and private sector bodies working hand in hand to regenerate an inner-city area.

As usual, the underground will account for the lion's share of LRT's investment expenditure in 1988–89. As well as providing for essential renewal of the infrastructure—signalling, track, lifts and escalators — much of the investment will yield benefits in more modern and attractive conditions for passengers, and more reliable equipment. As far as London Buses is concerned, the investment emphasis is on management systems to increase efficiency and reduce costs further. Trials of electronic ticketing systems — designed to improve boarding times for one-person operated buses—are also in progress.

As far as bus services are concerned, I expect the impetus for improved performance in the immediate future to come from a greater use of tendering. LRT will continue to push forward its programme of seeking competitive tenders for bus services. During 1988–89, it expects to increase the proportion operated under contract by 50 per cent. to about 27 per cent. of its total mileage. That should mean better value for money. LRT is realising significant net savings on routes already operated under contract with additional passengers attracted to the more reliable and generally improved services.

In the slightly longer term, we intend to see Londoners enjoying the benefits of deregulation as soon as practicable. In preparation for that, I have asked LRT to bring forward early proposals for the restructuring of London Buses Ltd. into smaller units which will be able to operate commercially in a competitive environment.

As far as the underground is concerned, the major longer-term challenge after the lessons of King's Cross have been learnt is dealing with the continuing growth in demand. Some £75 million of investment has already been authorised for measures to relieve overcrowding. Those include the purchase of 16 new trains and improvements to ease bottlenecks at Angel, Tower Hill and Farringdon stations.

Further proposals are expected, and the identification and evaluation of longer-term options for increasing the capacity of the system is in hand. Within the next few months I expect LRT to bring forward proposals for a comprehensive re-equipment programme for the Central line, the cost of which will approach £500 million. A new generation of high-performance rolling stock is planned. Together with a completely new signalling system, that should result in a faster, more reliable service in the 1990s. It is likely to be followed by a similar re-equipment programme for the Northern line.

Finally, I turn to the order itself.

Mr. Robert Adley (Christchurch)

While we welcome the Docklands light railway, is it not almost a tragic waste of time that that railway system is incompatible in operational terms with the rest of London Regional Transport and with British Rail? Will the Minister include in any future proposals the necessity of building compatible railway systems in the Greater London area?

Mr. Channon

I shall certainly examine what my hon. Friend has said. The point is not an academic one. As I have said, many imaginative proposals are coming along, some of which are from the Docklands light railway, some from London Underground and others from British Rail. Therefore, I hope that there will be all sorts of exciting new investments to improve public transport by rail in London.

I shall now move on because I know that many hon. Members wish to speak. I shall try to answer all their questions at the end of the debate, if the House will allow me.

The proposed levy will pass on to London's ratepayers the benefits of LRT's improved performance. The figures tell their own story. They reflect the way in which the business has been turned round over the past few years. A levy of 6.07p in the pound is proposed. That is 1.7p, or over 20 per cent., less than last year and 4.73p, or over 40 per cent., less than in 1985–86, the first year of the levy. That means that in real terms the burden on London's ratepayers will have been nearly halved over just three years.

I commend the draft order to the House.

10.25 pm

Mr. Tony Lloyd (Stretford)

It is somewhat amazing to hear the Secretary of State talking about the sound progress of London Regional Transport and passenger levels being up by 5 per cent. Everybody who is a regular user of the underground system knows that it has come in for considerable criticism, not just from my hon. Friends but from Government supporters and even from that sound advocate of Conservative policy, the Evening Standard. On 30 November, only a few days before the King's Cross disaster, the Evening Standard had a headline on its lead story, which read: Find out why the Tube is So Bad. It talked about an independent inquiry that had been ordered by Lord Young because conditions on the underground were so bad. He said: Up to a dozen stations a day are often without a lift and escalator services since the decision was taken to put maintenance and installation out to private tender. I am concerned about the Secretary of State losing his job, not because of the interest of Lord Young but because of the inability of LRT to deliver any of the goods that we have been promised.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) asked Sir Keith Bright, the chairman and chief executive of LRT, why services on the Northern line were so bad. Sir Keith Bright rightly said that over the past two years or so up to November of last year, the number of passengers using the underground had increased dramatically. That increase was due not to any improvement in the operation of the underground system but simply because those passengers were forced on to the underground by the lousy road conditions in London and because Government decisions had not solved the road problems and, at the same time, had not done anything to solve the problems of the tube.

Sir Keith Bright went on to say: The sequence of events which actually occurred during the critical months of September and October now indicates that too much risk was accepted in the interest of economy and I believe we have all learned a lesson for the future. I hope that that is right. The reality is that the Government, who have systematically under-invested in London's transport system, have had a willing ally in the penny-pinching, cost-cutting exercises of the management of LRT.

Mr. Sydney Chapman (Chipping Barnet)

Surely the hon. Gentleman must know, even if he is not a London Member, that yesteryear the increasing subsidies went to cover operating losses. At long last we have a system whereby the revenues are now paying for much-needed capital investment.

Mr. Lloyd

The whole concept of funding capital spending directly from revenue is something that most people would recognise as nonsense. It is normal to allow revenue to cover the cost of capital in the long run, but not to fund capital from revenue. Conservative Members may laugh, but that simply indicates a lack of understanding of normal economics and accounting principles.

Even during the four years when I have been traveling regularly in London, I have seen a massive deterioration in the standards of travel on the tube. The Minister talked about reducing the number of passengers per tube as though it was a great achievement, yet, during the past five years, the number of people travelling in each carriage has increased dramatically. The response of LRT has been not to put on more trains, but to suggest removing seats from trains to make more room for standing passengers. There is no concept of comfortable travel. Instead, we shall have strap-hangers and the Japanese system of shoving people in using sticks. Indeed, LRT should import a few Japanese pushers to make sure that they can get more people into our underground trains.

The Secretary of State talked about the 16 trains that LRT is about to purchase. That purchase was planned by the Greater London council when it was in charge of London Transport, which was some years ago. The GLC planned to buy the trains because it recognised the need to reinvest in the rolling stock. But that reinvestment did] not take place in the years following abolition of the GLC, and it is now paraded by the Secretary of State as a great triumph that is about to take place. Those 16 trains will increase the amount of train mileage by 11 per cent. at a time when the number of passengers has increased by 50 per cent. That is why the system is falling apart and decaying.

The reality with LRT is that, where there has been investment, it has been under-investment, and the attitude of management has been cost-consciousness and cost-saving, at the expense of the interests of passengers. The travelling public in London are not, in the final analysis, worried about the cost of the service through the rates. Of course, it is a consideration, but it is considered alongside the wish for a tube to turn up to take them where they want to go. That is equally important to them, but it is not happening on the underground today. It is also important for the public to feel safe on the underground. King's Cross has been a great stimulus to the thought that people are no longer safe on the underground. For all those reasons, the travelling public believe that they are getting a bad deal from LRT.

There has been some investment in the transport system, especially in bus garages. The garage at Plumstead was improved at a cost of about £6 million, but some time later LRT tried to close the garage which, as a result of the tendering process, became surplus to requirements. That is the sort of inane and irrelevant investment that LRT has made, which is completely irrelevant to the needs of the travelling public and a sound economy. It is relevant only to an organisation which sees cost-cutting as the only way forward.

We have seen how that cost-cutting affects all aspects of travel, especially safety. I refer at this stage not directly to King's Cross, but to a report which appeared in the Evening Standard two days after the King's Cross disaster. It stated: London Underground chiefs were today planning a dramatic about face on their decision to delay vital safety improvements at 10 major stations. This could lead to a restart of the £9 million programme to fit false ceilings with emergency fire-breaks on all Victoria and Jubilee tunnels and escalator halls. The LRT spokesman said: The programme to install these fire-breaks is one of the action points arising from the Oxford Street station fire inquiry in 1986. That did not go ahead until the King's Cross disaster forced London Regional Transport to reassess its objectives.

The article went on: King's Cross was one of the 25 stations targeted for emergency fire-breaks. But that was not done at King's Cross or at several other stations. It is ridiculous that in 1987–88 a cost-cutting exercise which saved £3 million prevented those safety programmes from going ahead.

Great play has been made of the fact that London Regional Transport can now fund its capital programme from revenue. We know why LRT can fund its capital programme in that way. A monopoly market is driven off the roads on to the public transport system because of the appalling state of London's roads and the travelling public is forced to use those systems and forced to accept fare increases imposed by LRT this year of more than 9 per cent. on average.

In some areas, and especially in the inner-city areas where fare increases have been higher than average for several years, 9 per cent. is no small increase. However, the travelling public will accept those fare increases because they have no choice. Yet the increases run directly counter to the objectives set for LRT as long ago as 1985. It was then stated that LRT's fare increases would be pegged no higher than the level of inflation.

On 15 December my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Ms. Ruddock) asked the Minister whether the objectives for London Regional Transport laid down by the Secretary of State … are still in force. The reply was: The 1984 objectives cover the financial years 1985–86 to 1987–88. They have not been superseded or supplemented and are still in force."—[Official Report, 15 December 1987; Vol. 124, c. 430.] If they are still in force, the Secretary of State should explain why the objective that fare increases should be at a level no greater than inflation has been overridden in the interests of fiscal convenience for LRT and of saving the Government a few bob in their contributions to LRT.

The reality is that the sloppiness and penny-pinching financial consciousness of LRT's management has had a devastating effect on the quality of transport. However, the Government's decision to underfund LRT has meant that London has a transport system that bears no comparison with Paris, the nearest comparable capital city. The Secretary of State made great play of the number of people travelling on the underground. Some 2.5 million people a day are carried on the London system. In Paris, 5.5 million people are carried on a modern, clean, efficient system that is liked by the travelling public.

If London had such a system, if the Government were prepared to invest the money to provide such a system, and if the management of LRT was prepared to operate such a system, it would be possible to see a first-class public transportation system in London and we could also get the cars off the road. The Government are prepared to spend £50 million a mile on motorway systems. We should save that money and begin to accept that London needs public transport. That is the way to solve London's transport problems.

10.37 pm

Mr. Robert Adley (Christchurch)

I am grateful for the opportunity to intervene briefly in the debate, and I hope that I am not preventing any of my London colleagues from speaking.

I was slightly surprised to hear the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Lloyd) complain that the Government's policies were forcing people off the roads and on to public transport. I thought that that had been Labour party policy for years. One of the problems of this type of debate is that the Opposition believe that they must oppose everything that the Government are doing. I constantly try to be dispassionate about these affairs, although not always to the pleasure of my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Government Front Bench. I can hear the hon. Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Snape) making strange gurgling noises. If he believes that I fail in that task, I am sure that he will gladly tell me so, and I should be pleased to give way to him. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for staying firmly in his place.

Political dogma and public transport are and always have been uneasy bedfellows. Therefore, I welcome wholeheartedly the fact that there has been an increase in the number of passengers on London's buses and underground. I can tell my ministerial colleagues that their policy of nationalising London Regional Transport has been a considerable success. They may not put matters like that, but that is what has happened. LRT was nationalised, the Government are happily taking the credit for the results of that policy, and I do not want to detract from that.

The fact that London has escaped the full rigours of bus deregulation that has taken place in other parts of the country may give us a chance to look a little dispassionately at what we intend to do in London with the buses before we subject them to the same treatment. There have been distinct advantages in some aspects of bus deregulation. Frankly, there have been some problems, too. I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends will look at what has happened. My hon. Friend the Minister for Public Transport is glaring at me. I dare not criticise any aspects of bus deregulation.

My agent, who lives in a village called Burton in my constituency, and I are trying but failing to obtain assurances from private bus companies operating in that part of Dorset that they are not paying bonuses to drivers to beat each other to bus stops to pick up passengers. Serious road safety consequences could arise in that village. That is one possible by-product of deregulation which needs to be examined.

The other day, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State kindly saw my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster, North (Mr. Wheeler), my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General and me to discuss the effect of coach deregulation in London, which has been disastrous. Not only do the railways face grotesque unfair competition from vehicles that pay none of the fixed costs that the railways must pay, but the use of unsuitable roads by coaches, which were previously controlled by the traffic commissioners, has provided a situation that the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis has described as intolerable. I regret that the Conservative party's transport policy has given the Metropolitan police so much extra work to do.

Mr. Banks (Newham, North-West)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Adley

I am being brief. The hon. Gentleman can make his own speech.

Mr. Banks

Go on.

Mr. Adley

Very well; I shall give way.

Mr. Banks

I shall not make a speech. What was the Minister's response to the delegation? The hon. Gentleman appears to me to be the lone voice of sanity in Conservative transport policy.

Mr. Adley

That was one of the most unkind and unhelpful things that has ever been said to me. It will take me years to live it down. My right hon. Friend was totally sympathetic. He allowed us to put points with which he was not entirely familiar. He gave instructions that satisfy me that the problem will be studied in depth. If a satisfactory solution cannot be arrived at by negotiation between the coach industry and the local authorities concerned, further legislative action may be contemplated.

The side effects of deregulation cannot always be envisaged when various pieces of legislation are passed. I refer to the use of unsuitable roads and the illegal parking of commuter coaches on double yellow lines in London. Also, commuter coaches are left with their engines running for hours on end to generate air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter for passengers on coaches that are in competition with British Rail. These coaches are heavily subsidised by the taxpayer. As Sir Robert Reid said to me the other day—

Mr. John Wheeler (Westminster, North)

Who is he?

Mr. Adley

He is the chairman of British Rail.

He said that if he were to park his trains where coach operators park their coaches, there would instantly be an outcry. Of course he is right.

Mr. Allan Rogers (Rhondda)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Adley

I shall not give way in case I am praised again by the Opposition. I am not quite sure why the hon. Gentleman is waving his arms about. I am not a bookmaker. I cannot understand what he is saying. Very well, I shall give way.

Mr. Rogers

The hon. Gentleman mentioned that problems were not foreseeable. In Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Mr. Stott) pointed to such problems time and again. They could easily have been foreseen, but they were ignored and neglected by the Government.

Mr. Adley

The persuasiveness of the hon. Member for Wigan (Mr. Stott) caused me not to vote for the Bill at its Third Reading. Therefore, I am entitled to make my comments now.

We thus have several undesirable consequences of deregulation: the use of unsuitable roads; illegal parking; engines left running, causing considerable pollution to many of London's citizens; and, of course, the problem of speeding.

As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State fairly claims, while London's ratepayers are being saved a lot of money by the tremendous improvements made in the management of London Transport, many of the inner London boroughs are now having to spend money on kerb extensions and the construction of rows and rows of bollards to keep coaches out of particular roads —coaches which are there as a direct result of deregulation.

My right hon. Friend has done some good things. Some of them have had unfortunate side effects. The replacement of the bad, ineffective, GLC-driven management of London Transport has been wholly welcome; and perhaps the continuing debate about the relationship between central Government, local government and public transport could benefit from what happened in the same debate about our railways in the 1950s and 1960s.

Therefore, I plead with my right hon. and hon. Friends and with Opposition Members not to let political dogma become our chief motivation in these debates on public transport.

10.46 pm

Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark and Bermondsey)

The House is grateful to the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Adley) for being able to say, somewhat more influentially than some of us, some salient things about coach deregulation. I remember that my former hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Wight, Mr. Ross, made very similar noises when that Bill passed through the House.

As an hon. Member representing a London constituency living less than three miles away and coming over Westminster bridge every day, I ask the Secretary of State and the Minister of State to take serious note of the points made. Coach congestion is a major safety and amenity problem; it is totally unsatisfactory and needs serious attention.

Inevitably, a debate on an order of this kind has two elements: normally a short debate on the order and a longer debate on London Regional Transport. On the order itself, it is a foolish politician who resists a reduction in the amount of rates that his ratepayer constituents will pay, and the sharing out of the burden of paying for London transport between the grant paid by the taxpayer and the contribution paid by the fare payer is obviously a refined formula. In general terms, I do not think that any great exception can be taken to the idea that the balance be altered, although the fare payer has paid considerably more than inflation has caused prices to rise. There are some disadvantages in that—and substantial increases at any one time often discourage regular use of public transport.

I would like to put specific points to the Secretary of State about the various operations of public transport in London, starting with buses. There is still great dissatisfaction with one-person operated buses. They are slower. The most regular route from near my front door to near the front door of the House, the 53, has just gone on to one-person operation. There is the new ticketing mechanism. It is slower and results in general discontent; and at night, although I cannot remember whether the pattern has been consistent, and assaults may have gone down some of the time, for many passengers it is much more perturbing that there is only one person in charge and that person is closed in.

One-person operation is also less safe when it comes to boarding and disembarking. An elderly passenger was killed recently when her foot was trapped in the door and she was dragged along the road. That sort of accident, to say nothing of other safety risks, is one of the consequences of literally one person being in charge of a bus. There is no one there to help people—people with shopping, people with young children, elderly people.

So the public are still very resistant to the idea of one-person operation, in addition to the obvious consequence that it has for the staff of London Regional Transport. I am not one of those who argue that jobs should be created for the sake of it, but creating jobs for safety, to make sure that a system is safe, is surely acceptable and appropriate. The rush towards one-person operation goes against the will of the majority of people and delays buses; there is no doubt that services are slower.

Waiting times have increased. The graph in LRT's annual report makes it clear that, although the increase is not substantial, whereas waiting times for all buses stayed the same or decreased between 1982 and 1984–85, for high and low frequency services and the underground, waiting times have increased. Not only have they increased, the average waiting time for buses was nearly seven and a half minutes for high frequency services. Over the whole day there was a 27.1 per cent. chance of waiting more than 10 minutes. The wait is increased as a result of one person operated buses.

Regularly, people have to wait not 10 or 20 minutes but half an hour, three quarters of an hour, or hours. I wrote to the chairman of LRT on this matter because it is unacceptable that when one is waiting for the last bus it never arrives. That has happened on more than one occasion when I have been waiting outside this building.

With regard to competitive tendering, Kentish Bus runs some routes—the No. 42 is an example. Someone who frequently works on my team regularly tries to use that route but reports that that bus is up to an hour late two or three times a week. The regularity and reliability of the service is crucial in any city, particularly a capital city. The service is not being maintained at a high standard.

I ask the Secretary of State to show more urgency and less complacency about this matter and to pass that complaint on to LRT. It still does not understand that it is fundamentally important to some people that the bus arrives and that there are enough buses. It does not help the productivity of the capital city if that does not happen.

There are the same problems with regard to the staffing of the underground. There are complaints that there is more graffiti, that violence is increasing and that there is more rubbish. We await the inquiry into the King's Cross tragedy, but, as the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) said immediately after the disaster, clearly the lack of attention given to cleanliness — the passenger committee is concerned about this matter and it mentions it in its report—is because staffing has been reduced.

Increasingly, people are sleeping in tube stations. They have nowhere else to go; the Government's housing policy is not very helpful in that regard. Inevitably, on occasion such people represent a fire risk.

There must be proper and adequate staffing. The number of underground staff has reduced from 21,598 to 20,612 and the number of bus staff has reduced from 24,665 to 22,389 in a way that is a risk to safety, cleanliness and good management.

We must spend more, particularly on the underground, and I would be grateful if the Secretary of State would deal with my question about the Government's commitment to safety and security budgeting in the investment programme.

I should like to make one general point for the Secretary of State to consider. The Travelcard system is clearly right. The more that we can integrate British Rail, the underground and the buses the better. It is still impossible to obtain a Travelcard to travel across more than one zone. In the central zone one cannot obtain only a bus or tube card. An unfair financial burden is therefore placed on some people.

Every year I make the ritual plea of south London Members of Parliament for the area to receive some additional benefit from public transport. It receives substantially less than the region north of the river. The white hole still exists—look at any London Transport map. There is still no east-west connection between the northern line and the arm of the metropolitan line.

There are arguments about the sort of railway that the docklands light railway should have been north of the river, but the south does not have a docklands light railway or anything like it. The previous Minister of State said that she recognised the problem and that she would do something about it. Since I have been in the House, nothing has happened to improve the matter and fill that gap.

Secondly, I ask that we look at the security of the underground network, particularly in relation to women's security, and at accessibility for the disabled. Too often, that is still inadequate, and a means by which people could travel around the capital city is not used. For example, lifts are regularly out of order, where there are lifts, and one cannot get access.

Lastly, although £5 million is to be given to Dial-a-Ride this year, there is concern that that might be reduced. It would be helpful—and London Members have regular correspondence about this with the Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Eltham (Mr. Bottomley) — if the Secretary of State could assure those who rely for their mobility on Dial-a-Ride that the Government are committed to retain at least the real value of their commitment, and that they would plan to increase it substantially. Those most disadvantaged in transport mobility terms need public transport services most. Diala-Ride is a good example and it needs that commitment from the Secretary of State.

10.56 pm.

Mr. Hugo Summerson (Walthamstow)

I welcome this opportunity to say something about what my constituents feel about the services given by London Regional Transport. I have lived in London for nearly 12 years now, and during that time, I have got about by bicycle, bus or tube, so I see a great deal of public transport in London. This evening, for instance, I went out to my constituency on the Victoria line, and I am sorry to say that that journey was like most journeys made on the tube nowadays. The trains are unpunctual. They are filthy outside and revolting inside. They do not come when it is announced that they will come. Often, the signboard says that the train will go right through to Walthamstow, but it does not. It stops at King's Cross, and everyone gets kicked off. If one is a bit luckier, it will go on to Seven Sisters and everyone is kicked out.

This evening my train stopped at Seven Sisters. Admittedly, the board said that it would, so that is fair enough. I walked through to the other platform and I waited—and waited. I waited with lots of other people and during that time four other trains came up the Victoria line, all of which stopped at Seven Sisters, and more and more passengers were waiting on the platform for a train to take us to Walthamstow. We had to wait for about 15 minutes, and the people waiting with me were not very happy, and I do not blame them.

Another station that I use regularly is the Angel, which must be one of the most filthy and disgusting stations in the entire system. It is a truly horrible station, but I have to use it from time to time. Two new lifts were recently put in, but the chances are that they are out of order and one has to walk down the emergency steps. There are hundreds of them and as one gets nearer the bottom, they get smellier and smellier and even more revolting.

Mr. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North)

I agree thoroughly with the hon. Gentleman's description of the Angel station and the lifts there. Is he aware that LRT is trying to privatise the lift maintenance service, and dismiss the lift repair teams that have done the work so successfully and for so long, and that one of the major causes of delays in repairs is privatisation?

Mr. Summerson

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will know that the Angel is due to be entirely rebuilt, which I hope will take care of the problem there. I will come on to privatisation. At the moment I am setting out what I feel is wrong with the system.

It is not only the underground — it is the buses as well. Many's the time that I have had to stand out in the pouring rain in one of those apologies for a bus shelter. The wind whips up the street and one's trouser legs and shoes become soaked. As an hon. Member, one is supposed to turn up at one's appointment looking quite smart. However, when one eventually arrives, the creases in one's trousers have disappeared. One's trousers appear all baggy around the knees and ankles and that terrible white bloom has appeared on one's shoes. One does not look at all like a Member of Parliament.

I am happy to see the hon. Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen) in his place. When he and I were serving on a Standing Committee, he arrived late. I do not know whether that is endemic among Labour Members, but the hon. Gentleman told me that he had been delayed on the tube. That should not happen. Despite what Opposition Members say, the tubes and buses have been funded by the Government and the ratepayer to an enormous extent; LRT gets enormous amounts of money. I am concerned to know what LRT does with that money.

The hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) talked about staff shortages. Those of us who use the underground frequently know perfectly well that, before one can go on the escalator — if the escalator is not broken—one has to pass through a sort of pinch point where a man is sitting in a cubicle. Now, what is he doing?

Mr. Adley

Knitting.

Mr. Summerson

Yes, he may well be knitting. He is reading his paper, or doing the pools or doing his knitting. He is not in the least bit interested in the ticket that one dutifully shows him. One may have to drop all one's luggage to get the ticket out of one's wallet, and I can never find it when I want it. Eventually one gets the ticket out and shows it to the man and he does not even look up. Why cannot he be sent to work sweeping the carriages or scrubbing off graffiti?

The answer does not lie in trying to keep the public transport system going as a public transport system. [HON. MEMBERS: "Ah."] Now we get to it. The London underground system should be coining money. It is a monopoly. It carries millions of passengers and it is carrying more and more. It ought to be able to provide a decent, regular, clean, tidy and safe service for the people of the capital. The only way forward is to sell off the lines to private enterprise. They could be sold off individually—

Mr. Peter Snape (West Bromwich, East)

Does the hon. Gentleman think that if L.RT were sold off and privatised it would become as warm, caring and efficient as British Telecom?

Mr. Summerson

It will be a great deal better than British Telecom. One needs to consider the separate functions of the two companies. The function of LRT is to provide transport for the people of London, and the best way to do that is to ensure that private enterprise takes over and runs LRT. In particular, we need to sell off London Underground, which will mean a decent service both for the people of London and for visitors.

11.4 pm

Mr. Nigel Spearing (Newham, South)

Clearly the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Summerson) did not realise that his right hon. Friend the Minister had told the House that London Underground already makes a £92 million a year surplus. The reason why the Government are pressing on lack of staff and not doing what they should do for the London underground is that Ministers want to transfer that £92 million to the buses, which they are shortly to sell off.

Responsibility for London transport is no longer at 55 Broadway; it lies with Transport Ministers. Section 2 of the London Regional Transport Act 1984 says: It shall be the general duty of London Regional Transport, in accordance with principles from time to time approved by the Secretary of State", to provide transport.

The Secretary of State and his hon. Friends are, in effect, dictators for London Regional Transport because Parliament says so. I am not saying that they wish that—they probably do not—but Parliament says so and it is they who are planning the very programme that the hon. Member for Walthamstow advocates.

Page 6 of the business plan, to which the Secretary of State referred, contains an anomaly. It is clear that we are due for another set of objectives. In 1985, the Secretary of State laid down a number of objectives for London Regional Transport, which had to convert them into a strategic plan and had to convert the strategic plan into an annual business plan. One feature of those objectives was that fares should not rise, in general, more than the retail price index. The debate is taking place in the shadow of the 9 per cent., or thereabouts, fare increase earlier this month.

Clearly, the Secretary of State's objectives have been breached. My inquiries show that London Regional Transport's interpretation of that is that it was for three financial years. However, those objectives have not been replaced and in a parliamentary answer the junior Minister said that those objectives still operate. I suggest that the 9 per cent. increase was made on the instructions, under the London Regional Transport Act 1984, of the Secretary of State, and breached his own objectives. If that is not so, let us hear what happened.

The Secretary of State made it clear at the start of the debate that some of the rate income—about which we have heard today — has been transferred to invest in capital and depreciation provision, but that it will not be spent on revenue support. Those hard-pressed revenue supporters, through the rates, are no longer supporting the next year's revenue—the Secretary of State told us that; they are contributing to depreciation and capital investment. That is wrong in principle and should not be happening; nor should we have had that 9 per cent. increase in fares.

The £92 million, which we heard about a moment ago, is being transferred to the buses. It is clear — the Secretary of State has said so again — that we are approaching bus deregulation in the early 1990s. That means a reversion—again, the Secretary of State said so — to a number of private firms running what, since 1933, has been a single unitary London Transport.

I do not see how that will be done because the whole purpose of public transport by bus, pioneered by the London General Omnibus Company and carried on by London Regional Transport, is that a minority of paying routes pay for those that do not pay. Parts of routes that do pay, pay for the ends that do not. The routes that pay on weekdays or in the middle of the day pay for evening and weekend journeys. That is the principle of public transport as operated in London. How that will be split up either to provide public subsidy for the £92 million taken from the underground—historically, the money used to flow the other way — is a bit of a mystery, because central London provides the bus service. How will that pay for areas such as docklands, Newham and Ilford, and the outer areas, even Walthamstow, if the surpluses are made in central London?

Will the Travelcard facilities be continued? We should be given an assurance on that, because they have been a great boon for people in London, whether travelling on the British Rail Travelcard, the London Regional Transport one or the combined one. It also speeds up the one-man-operated buses that we do not much like. Let us keep the Routemasters as long as we can, because central London is the ideal place for their operation. They should be kept because they speed up traffic and are much better for passengers in central London. It is clear that all this has been planned for some time. British Bus Engineering Limited was closed, as was the centralised bus training depot, which has a worldwide reputation. Indeed, the Minister virtually said that we are to see London Regional Transport split up.

I asked a question not long ago about the proportion of bus routes that paid. At column 532 of Hansard on 18 January, the Minister replied that he did not know, that the information was not available. I find that very hard to believe. London Transport will not cough up the information either. No doubt it has been told not to by the Minister. But it is a sensible and fundamental matter in public transport to transfer surpluses.

There is every indication that 12 to 20 private firms—maybe about 15—will be operating commercially, and there will be the virtual break-up of London Transport as we know it today and as it was created in the 1930–32 Parliaments. The legislation went over two Parliaments, with two Select Committees. It was bipartisan; it was introduced by my former right hon. Friend Lord Morrison under a Labour regime and was completed by a Conservative Government in the early 1930s. We had a consensus, and we had a great civic organisation, which achieved worldwide renown, and which the Government are now about to break up, without being clear about it.

It is coming out bit by bit. When LRT sends us its literature now on organising transport for London we find that the familiar circle and bar symbol has gone. London Buses is to be split up, so London Transport as we know it will no longer exist. This is highly significant, particularly for those who voluntarily gave up publicly owned transport. In my constituency we have the West Ham corporation tram depot that was. There is a depot at East Ham as well, and there are depots at Croydon and Walthamstow. They ran their own trams as well. They gave them up to London Transport because they believed that they would be run in future by the public for the public. Now the Government are to change that. It is wrong in principle, and it should be stopped.

Repairs are being done at many of the garages. When I go around, people come up to me and say, "There is all this work being done at these garages — all these changes." Are they chickens being fattened for pirates who will come and take them in two or three years' time? That is what the operatives say, and it is clearly what the Government have in mind.

Talking about selling off, the Government do not even know what they are doing about that. The Victoria line has been mentioned. It has all the latest electronic equipment in it—it was built for that equipment—but it still cannot work properly. The Northern line is worse. When the extension to Morden in the south, built with public money in the 1920s, was opened the trains ran regularly every four minutes. They do not now. Things have got worse, and it is partly the Government's responsibility. Why have they got worse?

I asked London Transport about that, and it replied that there was a shortage of drivers because they were transferring to the Piccadilly line, which has gone to one-person operation, and it was having to recruit new ones. It had not foreseen the knock-on effect of that administrative change forced on it, required of it, by the Government. One-person operation on the deep tubes is in any case questionable, and that was the result.

I recently asked how many houses had been sold off by London Regional Transport since its creation in 1984. The answer, which appeared at column 532 of volume 125 of Hansard on 18 January, was that the figure was over 800 homes built by London Transport or its predecessors, probably near the depots to enable men and drivers to get there easily and enjoy good housing.

We know from answers that the cost of housing at Morden and on the Northern line is a problem. Those houses have been sold off on the Government's instructions. I do not say that they are all on the Northern line—probably only a few are—but that is an example of what is happening. Many things that are happening on that line are the Government's responsibility. They have brought it not on themselves, but unfortunately on the hapless travellers of London, whom they are asking to pay even more than before.

What about long-term strategy? The Government do not have much of a clue. I asked the Minister recently about the number of people travelling in London by different modes. On 19 January I received the answer, at columns 695–696 of volume 125 of Hansard, that on the underground the figure is now 4 billion passenger miles a year—an increase of 50 per cent. On the buses it is 2.6 billion, a level that has been kept up since 1980. They have done very well to keep that number. On British Rail, the figure is 8.3 billion, an increase of 2 per cent. I also asked how many passenger miles were travelled on the roads of Greater London, and was told that no figures were available. "But", said the Minister in effect, "we think that the number of people travelling on the roads is not much greater than it was in 1980." Tell that to the marines. Any person on London's roads will say that that is not correct.

The Government do not even know the figures, which are vital. If one is constructing a transport policy for a city—all three Ministers have read Select Committee reports and travelled around—one must balance the demand for travel by various modes and the public transport network which provides the basis for that. Give people the option of travelling by private car, facing congestion in certain areas and certain risks, but give them the choice of going by public transport.

The Government do not have a strategy. They are leaving it to chance. We can see that from an answer which I received today. In November 1980, the then chairman of British Rail, Mr. Peter Parker, presented for discussion an imaginative plan called CrossRail — building standard bore tunnels to connect some London terminals from north and south and east and west. The proposal was not put to the Government formally; it was probably done informally. I asked the Minister what consideration had been given to the plan. He said: The Department did not comment formally on the British Rail document in 1980. No proposals were submitted by the board and it was clear that considerably more work was required to establish the cost and benefits of this project. It would be for it to consider reviving this work in the first instance if it believed that it was a cost-effective way of relieving congestion on rail services. There is a clue — the concern is with "relieving congestion", not with providing the basic infrastructure of public transport for London which is required.

I do not believe that the Government are discharging their duties to London. The parliamentary answers show it. In breaking up London Regional Transport, which is not perfect — I have criticised it in many respects, whatever Administration were in charge — they are breaking up one of the pioneer public corporations, which had great success and was a world leader. The Government are doing that despite the needs of the London people and their complaints, whether about Dial-A-Ride, the Victoria line or the buses. Therefore, the Government are acting irresponsibly towards London. The most damaging thing that the Government can do is to break up the organisations and contributions made by public enterprise in the last century and throughout this century, particularly by corporations such as Croydon, East Ham, West Ham and Walthamstow that served the people. The Government are not serving the people.

11.17 pm

Mr. John Wheeler (Westminster, North)

It was not my intention to intervene in the debate, but I felt moved to do so having listened to the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) and earlier contributions. It is extraordinary that we should have this debate at all. The people least fitted to manage a business called London Regional Transport are politicians, and the sooner it is denationalised and sold into the private sector —whereby the people of London may, if they wish, own the shares of the business — the better. The last thing we should do is have this annual debate. We are not competent to decide how London Regional Transport as a business should be managed, what its levies should be, and where and how it should do its work.

Under its existing management, London Regional Transport is giving a first-class service to the people of London and the millions of people who work in it and come to see it as tourists. The business plan prepared by the chairman and managing directors of the business is ample evidence of that.

Earlier, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport referred to the disaster at King's Cross. We do not yet know the reason for the fire. An inquiry is being conducted. I for one would rather wait to hear what those who are conducting it say about the cause and aftermath of the fire. Meanwhile, I am confident, having a number of underground stations in my constituency, that LRT is concerned to the utmost degree with the safety of the passengers using the system. That must be said firmly if the debate is to have any value.

Let me also say a word in conclusion about the improving crime prevention record on the underground. Crime prevention is a matter with which I have concerned myself over the years. Technology, better management techniques, a better use of personnel and the co-ordination of the British Transport police have all reduced crime, and there is now only one assault for every 500,000 passenger journeys.

I welcome the work done to reduce crime on the underground, which I believe is, on the whole, a safe and effective system.

11.20 pm

Mr. Harry Cohen (Leyton)

The best thing that can be said of the speech by the hon. Member for Westminster, North (Mr. Wheeler) is that his first point was one of enormous cheek. Some of us sat on the Standing Committee on the London Regional Transport Bill of 1984 which set up LRT. We had arguments with the Minister, of course. His Government stole the democratic control of London Transport from the people of London, which they had held via their local authorities. The Government were forced to pledge a debate at least once a year in the House. This is it: a debate lasting an hour and a half, which is painfully inadequate. Now he wants to take LRT completely away from the people, and give them no say whatever in their own transport system for their own city. That can only be described as enormous cheek.

The order will mean a further decline in London's already severely hard-pressed public transport system. We know the slogan about letting the train take the strain. The Government's philosophy is "Let the passenger take the strain". Because of the pressure on the system, travel is now probably much more stressful for individual Londoners than a day's work. It is certainly more stressful for the housewife who relies absolutely on the system. That is because of the cutbacks that the order will continue.

Revenue support has been run down substantially. I have the figures, which were given to me in a written answer in December. In 1983, the revenue support per thousand passenger journeys at 1986–87 prices was £124.86. In 1986–87, it has been reduced to £34.75, a quarter of the level at which it was four years earlier. That has had a savage effect, with thousands of redundancies in the service. Waiting times have been made much longer, and the standard of cleanliness has fallen, as was pointed out by the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Summerson). The cutback in revenue support has reduced it to a level of squalor.

Fares have risen by much more than inflation. Moreover, safety standards have been enormously reduced. One of my constituents nearly fell out of a train at Stratford, because the doors opened during a rush-hour accident, and she was nearly killed. That is only one example of the increase in accidents.

Traffic income — fares — as a proportion of LRT's total income has increased from the 1983 level of 60.15 per cent. to 71.2 per cent. this year. Fare rises are well above inflation this year, with more to come. There is only one way to describe the position: Londoners are paying more for less.

The Government have got away with a trick in the Autumn Statement. They increased the capital for LRT by £500 million and that is very welcome. However, they cut the same amount off the revenue support. The trick is that the £500 million in capital was for one year only but the cut in revenue support is a permanent cut. That trick has been little noticed so far, but it is a scandal.

There has been insufficient investment in capital terms. I will not go through all the correspondence I have received because several of my colleagues wish to speak. However, I have received many letters about the state of the Central line. I sent some correspondence to the Minister about the terrible conditions on the Central line, which my constituents have to use. There is immense overcrowding at places such as Mile End. I wrote to Sir Keith Bright and asked him about the situation and he said that there would be 16 new trains, but that they will be for the Jubilee line. He said that a few may be released to the Central line. I wrote back and asked him how many were to be released to the Central line and he said one. That is one secondhand train. My constituents deserve better than secondhand trains and a second-hand service. I will be pursuing that with the Minister.

I should also like to raise the serious matter of concessionary fares for pensioners in London. The Secretary of State boasted that his plans for deregulation are quite well advanced. I asked him only this week about his plans for concessionary fares for pensioners after deregulation. He said that they had "not yet been made". He said that he would be paying close attention to concessionary fares, but he has not yet given a commitment that they will continue when deregulation comes into play. When he replies to the debate I urge him to give a guarantee to London pensioners that they will have concessionary fares.

This levy order is part of the process of selling London transport short and selling London short.

11.26 pm

Mr. Stuart Holland (Vauxhall)

It has been interesting to hear Conservative Members talking about the case for the privatisation of London transport and asking what we know about London transport and its needs. One thing we do know is what our constituents feel about it and what they wish us to say in this place. Secondly, at least some of us are aware that on the principle of private profit we simply would not have had parts of London transport in the first place. For example, in the 1960s, when working in the Cabinet Office, I was associated with the evaluation of the economic feasibility of the Victoria line. It was well appreciated that the Victoria line, on any discount rate whatsoever, would make no profit at any time. It was only by taking into account the external benefits imputed to the opening of the Victoria line, including the reduction in the cost of road traffic provisions and signalling, reducing congestion and deaths on the road, and so on, that the decision was taken to invest in the Victoria line.

If London transport is to be split up into lots of private segments, who will get the profit-making ones and who will get the loss-making ones? That point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing). It simply does not make sense, as has been illustrated by my hon. Friend on the surplus being generated during the day rather than at the end of the day and in central London rather than peripheral London, to go for a privatisation formula. I quote an authority as radical as Adam Smith who said that nothing is more certain when two or three producers are gathered together even for merriment and diversion than that they will seek to conspire against the public interest by contrivance to raise prices. That is what we will see. Prices will be raised in order to pay profits to shareholders, many of whom will not be using the service. It is a disgrace that the Government are even considering it.

Mr. Spearing

Does my hon. Friend realise that the bus services that are let out to the private sector may pay a modest, or even a big, profit to those who run them now, but only because they are paid a subsidy by LRT for the unsocial routes?

Mr. Holland

My hon. Friend has raised an important point.

The hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Adley) fluently described the consequences of private bus operators in central London. I raised this matter in connection with Channel tunnel traffic coming out of Waterloo station. Where is the integrated planning by British Rail and London Underground in relation to traffic use there? There will probably be an additional 4 million vehicles a year. I do not know how many of my hon. Friends have recently tried to take a quick cut on the other side of the river between the roundabout at the far end of Westminster bridge and Waterloo at peak passenger times. What provision is to be made for private tour operators? There has been no forward planning for additional traffic from the Channel tunnel outlet because it is assumed that there is sufficient spare capacity to accommodate it. Tell that to my constituents; they will not believe it. That is why we need these debates and why Ministers must address these issues much more seriously than they do now. We need integrated road-rail planning, not the disintegration of road-rail transport that would flow from private ownership.

Mr. Nicholas Bennett (Pembroke)

What happened in the 1960s?

Mr. Holland

The hon. Gentleman intervenes from a sedentary position. In the 1960s forward planning led to considerable success—for example, the Victoria line—[Interruption.] Would the hon. Gentleman like to get to his feet and tell me whether he would have preferred the Victoria line not to be built? The hon. Gentleman does not take up my invitation; that is very interesting. I am sure that those who use the Victoria line will note that point.

On the question of the OPOs, London Transport told us this morning that access to those vehicles is easier for certain categories of person, but the point that was stressed to me by the Lambeth public transport group is that many categories of persons will be unable to use those vehicles because they are less secure for them, or they feel less secure on them. The estimate is that householders would prefer not to use them. The Government say in other contexts that they are concerned about the interests of the consumers. If they are concerned about these consumers, they ought to be listening to their voices rather than simply supporting LRT by pushing through OPOs.

11.32 pm

Mr. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North)

This debate is a travesty. Very few hon. Members are present for this debate, which is being held late at night. That is what passes for democracy for the people of London. As my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen) explained, London Regional Transport was taken away from any form of democratic control.

I am very worried about this order. It demonstrates exactly the direction in which the Government wish to go with London Regional Transport. The levy order includes an estimated grant of £190 million for LRT—the lowest public transport subsidy of any capital city in western Europe and of many cities in the United States. That is why there is to be a 10 per cent. fare rise, why trains and buses are dangerously overcrowded and why safety has been reduced.

We should be discussing the travel needs and priorities of the people of London. Last year was horrendous for many people in London. The King's Cross fire was a disaster. It was, by any stretch of the imagination, terrible, but it was not an isolated incident. Many other accidents and incidents occurred on the London underground network last year. If one cuts back on staff to the extent that London Transport has done, at some point safety must obviously be put seriously at risk.

The Government have not heaped all the horrors of bus deregulation on London, although I understand that many Conservative Members want that to happen. They want us to return to the dangers of the 1930s and before, when there were races between buses in an effort to get to the bus stop first. The hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Adley) outlined what is happening in Dorset. There can be no doubt that what is happening there will happen in London if bus deregulation is introduced here.

I ask the Minister to look seriously at what the traffic commissioners and others are doing to check the safety of buses on the routes that are being sold off, the training that is being given to the drivers and the medical condition of some of those bus drivers. I say that as one who is genuinely concerned about the safety of passengers and not by way of criticism of the drivers.

The Government's record is one of producing unremitting disaster for those who have worked for and given their lives to LRT. The morale of the staff is extremely low, and that is hardly surprising when 5,000 underground workers have lost their jobs, along with 3,000 bus workers and many members of the ancillary grades. Many of those who have not lost their jobs have been told that they will face the rigours of private competition. Against that background, it is hardly surprising that lifts and escalators are out of action for so long. The organisation involved is a private company that is not even based in London. A perfectly adequate maintenance service was provided by London Transport before the advent of this form of privatisation.

We are spending nationally £190 million on LRT, and 65 per cent. of that sum is provided by London ratepayers. The comparative benefits of spending another £200 million on London Transport would be marvellous. There would be cheaper fares, better services, better buses and less congestion on the roads. A better public transport system would take many private motorists off the roads. Unfortunately, a Government who are obsessed with providing tax concessions for company cars and spending money on road building will not contemplate that approach. London Regional Transport has been provided with a subsidy of £190 million while the cost of two and a half miles of road to Canary Wharf will be over £200 million.

I ask the Government to observe a sense of priorities. Let them cut major road building in London and invest the moneys thereby saved in public transport. That is the way to reduce congestion — improve safety and improve services for the travelling public.

We want to see the restoration of planning in London. We are suffering the reality of a nightmare — the implementation of privatisation, speculation and the destruction of all that is good about London. This is the consequence of the destruction of the Greater London council and the curtailment of planning powers within the boroughs. I want to see a democratically controlled public transport system in London, including the British Rail network within the Greater London area. We must have the sensible, planned public transport network that the capital so desperately needs.

11.37 pm

Mr. Channon

I have listened to the debate with close attention and I shall try to answer as many questions as I can in the brief period that is left for me. If I fail to answer any questions now, I shall write to hon. Members or ensure that London Regional Transport responds directly.

First, I make clear to the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) that I intend to improve both the road and rail systems in London. It is not a matter of either/or. I intend to have a large road improvement programme in London and a considerable investment in LRT. I am sure that that is what the majority of citizens in London wish to see.

It cannot be said that LRT is perfect or that it cannot be improved. No one is complacent. Having heard some of the comments made this evening, no one would think that I have announced a large reduction in what the ratepayers of London have to spend on LRT. There will be a reduction of 20 per cent. on last year's spending by the ratepayer, and that will be accompanied by a large increase in investment in LRT.

My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster, North (Mr. Wheeler) rightly drew attention to the problem of crime, and I acknowledge that there is still far too much crime on the underground. However, there is only one assault for every 500,000 passenger journeys. Of course, any crime within the underground system is unacceptable, but the rate here is better than in many other countries. About £15 million has been made available over three years to follow up reported crime on the underground.

The hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) talked about one-person operated buses. Accidents are extremely rare and records show that door-buses are four times safer than open-platform buses. There are fewer instances of crime within door-buses, and the drivers are twice to four times safer than the conductors on open-platform buses. There has been a 25 per cent. reduction in assaults.

Mr. Holland

What about accidents to children?

Mr. Channon

Of course, any accident is one too many. But the figures show that there are fewer accidents on those buses than on the ones to which hon. Members wish to return. There is no proposal to go for 100 per cent. one-person-operated buses in London. Someone said that we were rushing to increase the number, but there will be only a modest increase next year.

I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Summerson) made a somewhat understated speech. We shall invest a great deal in the London underground to resolve some of the problems about which he and his constituents are worried. He drew attention to the Angel, Islington, which is a very overcrowded station. That is why vast sums of public money—about £20 million—will be spent to improve conditions there. Similar sums will be spent at other underground stations.

Several hon. Members mentioned fares. Despite the 1988 increase, fares on London Regional Transport are lower in real terms today than they were eight years ago, at a time when London wages have increased by 35 or 40 per cent. As a proportion of earnings, LRT fares are much lower than they were a few years ago. Some hon. Members have given a false impression of fares.

I was astonished that the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Lloyd) mentioned investment. Next year, we shall invest £365 million in London Regional Transport, compared with £193 million in 1984. In real terms, the figure is up by well over 50 per cent. Indeed, investment in real terms has increased every year since the Government took over responsibility from the GLC. So much for the nonsense talked by some hon. Members about the golden days of the GLC before my hon. Friend the Minister of State and I—whom the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing), colourfully but inaccurately, called the dictators of London Regional Transport—took over. Investment is one third higher in real terms since 1984–85, and we have planned a further increase of 19 per cent. in real terms for next year. The elimination of the need for revenue support has released funds for capital investment, enabling investment to be increased while the burden on taxpayers and ratepayers is reduced.

If we are to achieve a better service for Londoners, we must invest in the capital expenditure on London underground, which has been necessitated by the massive increase in passengers during the past few years. Under the policies pursued in the past, public money was spent on keeping down fares and very little capital was spent on improving services.

Mr. Holland

It was generating revenue.

Mr. Channon

The hon. Gentleman knows — I am amazed that he challenges me on it — that this Government's record on investment in London Regional Transport is the best ever. We inherited a system starved of investment, and we have increased it enormously.

The 1988–89 figures for Dial-a-Ride are £6.25 million, not £5 million, as the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey said. That is an inflation-matching increase over the current year and a 40 per cent. real increase over the last GLC year. I know of no threat to Dial-a-Ride, which is an extremely important service.

I reassure the hon. Member for Newham, South that there is no reason why Travelcards should not be retained after deregulation. There is no reason why prepaid tickets, including multi-operator cards organised by LRT, should not continue. Hon. Members need have no worry about concessionary fares, as I shall make clear when I make a full statement about our proposals for deregulation.

The hon. Member for Stretford said that it was nonsense to fund capital from revenue. No business man would agree with that. After depreciation and renewals expenditure, LRT is a long way from making a surplus. London Regional Transport is short by some £175 million. Indeed, the hon. Member for Stretford stated that the Paris Metro carried more people than the underground system in London. Yes, that is true. However, the Paris Metro carries more people but for far shorter distances. The average passenger miles per year are higher in London than in Paris. The analogy drawn by the hon. Member for Stretford is wholly incorrect.

I will study the points that have been made in the debate. We are setting LRT on course so that it will have more investment. Over the next few years we shall be able to provide a better service for Londoners and for hon. Members' constituents, whether they travel by bus or underground. We will do that at a time when fares are lower than they were eight years ago. I ask the House to approve the order.

It being one and a half hours after the commencement of proceedings on the Motion. MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER put the Question, pursuant to Standing Order No. 14 (Exempted Business).

Question agreed to.

Resolved, That the draft London Regional Transport (Levy) Order 1988, which was laid before this House on 11th January, be approved.