HC Deb 11 July 1991 vol 194 cc1191-202

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

10.26 pm
Mr. Nigel Spearing (Newham, South)

In the past few hours the House has enjoyed a wide-ranging debate on part of our national heritage—our railways. I am pleased to see the Secretary of State and even more pleased to see the Minister for Public Transport who has been present for nearly all the proceedings and who, characteristically, always gives a good parliamentary reply.

Britain's railways are owned by the public and, in the end, accountability for their operation and investment in their infrastructure and equipment finishes here. In that cause, we are being asked considerably to increase British Rail's borrowing limits. It is no secret that the Bill has come as something of a surprise to the Government and to the public.

There has been much controversy about British Rail's funding and the extent to which it has so far relied on the sale of real estate. I understand that the crisis has come about not because of a reduction in traffic or in estimated revenue from the rail business, but as a result of a turn down in the income from real estate, something which it shares, alas, with the health service.

We can hardly oppose the investment which will arise from the clause—at least I cannot—but there are many questions to be asked about the quality of management and, in particular, the structure that the Government place around the management.

I am sorry to see the Secretary of State leaving, because I particularly want to refer to his recent speech. But if he is not able to be present perhaps we can pursue the matter in correspondence.

It is essential that the House has confidence in the investment. We are now authorising money as if we were shareholders of a firm. I want to put before the House some reasons why we should not invest that money without asking some severe questions.

Some of those questions relate to management and some to the Government. I must confess that it is sometimes difficult to establish where the boundary between them lies. Even the Minister may not know, because such decisions have taken place over several years, long before he took up his present office.

The first matter that I wish to raise—this is why the Secretary of State's departure is unfortunate—is the claim that the Government are now changing direction and emphasising and looking to freight. I did not get that message from the Secretary of State's speech today. I understood the Secretary of State's speech to be about the British Rail monopoly, as he called it, and the means of breaking a monopoly, which I do not believe exists. Nowhere, except in London for commuters and for specialised traffic such as post—that is not a monopoly —does British Rail have a monopoly. The Secretary of State talked, as far as I understood it, about permitting different types of operator to operate trains or services over British Rail track in a way not carried out before. I see the Minister nodding. Has he not heard of Foster Yeoman? Its operation is well known and may be controversial. I see no distinction between what Foster Yeoman is doing and what the Secretary of State purported to want.

10.30 pm

My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) asked the Secretary of State about the fate of Speedlink. The Minister of State said, using British Rail statistics which may be right—let us hope that they are better than British Rail's timekeeping—that 70 per cent. of Speedlink is retained. He said that the system had been changed to whole trains. Axing Speedlink, which was as easy to remember as a label as InterCity, sends out the wrong signal. At the very time at which the Secretary of State says, "Let us transfer freight to the railways", Speedlink is axed.

If 70 per cent. of Speedlink is being retained—I hope that it is—surely there should be an announcement that from now on, Speedlink will be confined to full trainloads, which may come under a different business division, but which will keep the same brand names although wagons will no longer be collected from private sidings. There would have been relatively little fuss. Either the Government or the management have kicked themselves in the teeth.

Mr. Cryer

The Minister talked about 70 per cent. of Speedlink being retained in full trainloads. He did not say what was happening in rural areas, such as Cornwall or in Scotland. He did not say how many extra wagonloads will be put on to the roads in the areas in which trainloads are most likely to be rare—that is, in the very rural areas in which the roads are too narrow and restricted adequately to carry any increase in lorryloads.

Mr. Spearing

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The estimated cost of collecting wagons and taking them into marshalling yards or into full trains may not be the real cost. The Minister is an accountant and he knows that one can do all sorts of things with figures and produce all sorts of results which are difficult to challenge, but not difficult to create.

As the Minister says, we are investing in freight. The history of cross-channel freight is extraordinary. We have known that there will be a channel link, whatever its merits, for the five or six years since the direct decision was taken in Canterbury. Even today, as was instanced by the exchange between my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South and the Minister, British Rail has not designated the locations of its freight depots or villages, although it may have suggested broadly the areas in which the depots will be. My information is that British Rail is conducting a Dutch auction. It is trying to get various public and private bodies to put up money for the investment required. As usual, British Rail wants to carry out the work with the lowest amount possible from the public purse, which has meant a delay in the timetable.

Boardrooms are deciding now what to do about transport. Every hon. Member has received a glossy publication advocating the great cross-channel freightway. British Rail has not said where the freight collection centres will be. I do not know whether that is the responsibility of the Government or of the management. However, it must be a combination of both, or one or the other. Is that the sort of management in which we can have confidence? I suggest that a big question mark lies over both intranational and international freight.

Only today, I heard a report that a plant supplying BR with some 700 tonnes of liquid a week in seven bogey wagons—I will not name the plant, because I must check the facts—can no longer send it by rail. BR says that that the cost of sending the locomotive to take the train out of the depot, no doubt paid by the public, is too great, and that the cargo must be sent by road in future. As I have said, I will not name the plant, but I shall talk to the Minister about it.

The circumstances are not even the same as those applying to Speedlink. Although seven wagons may not sound very many, 700 tonnes of liquid is about double the weight carried by a typical InterCity passenger train. If the report is true, the management must give some reason for the decision. It may be said that this is an extraordinary development, given that Government policy is moving in the opposite direction, but I have enough experience of British Rail management to know that such extraordinary things do happen.

I am not a wholehearted admirer of traditional British Rail management; there is always room for improvement. Management has not been adventurous enough in certain respects, and has been illogical in others. That does not mean, however, that the current changes are necessarily right.

Last week, Sir Bob Reid—as distinct from Sir Robert Reid—was examined by the Select Committee on Transport. He admitted that the day trains north of London would not be ready in time for the opening of the channel tunnel. Let me give a cricket commentator's welcome to the arrival of the Secretary of State, who has just returned to the Chamber. That admission needs some explanation: it is down to either the Government or BR's management, and at some stage the Committee will need to know the details. The time flow—as it is called in business—for creating the tunnel is far longer than that for creating rolling stock.

What is even worse is that Sir Bob had to admit—I was sitting at the back, but I believe that I heard him correctly —that the sleeper trains north of London, and those operating from London, would not be ready in time either. He also said—an extraordinary statement, coming from a railwayman—that the bulk of the sleeper traffic would come from north of London anyway. I find that hard to credit: London and the south-east have a huge market for sleeper trains to Rome, the alps and the French riviera, not to mention Brussels. I should have thought that the London area would provide a very good ready market for sleeper trains travelling all over the Continent. That, too, does not fill me with confidence in the management.

The Minister mentioned Heathrow. Anyone who has attended railway debates here will be astonished at the amount of time devoted to the Heathrow Express Railway (No. 2) Bill. What was the objection? There was not enough railway. Proper junctions with Southern and Western region, enabling InterCity to run trains from all parts of Britain—or allowing a fast inter-urban Network South East service to operate—are not being provided. The line is being installed not as a proper railway to serve Heathrow, but as a rail shuttle for central London. This is not a railway plan in the classical sense of the term. Mr Hudson, or whatever his name was, would have done better in York 150 years ago: he had more vision then than the Government have today. The Government do not appear to have much vision in that respect.

The Minister referred to crossrail, which we all welcome. However, it only duplicates what the Metropolitan railway did over 100 years ago. A little-known fact is that Liverpool Street was linked to the Metropolitan. The services stopped around 1890. The traffic went all the way through to Paddington, so it is not a new concept. So far, the plan is not to use the continental gauge, despite the great open spaces of Brunet's Great Western Railway main line that could be linked to it, were it to be built to that gauge.

I turn to our Adjournment debate on 7 June last, concerning reorganisation. The investment of money in stock and people depends on the efficiency of British Rail's organisation. I shall not rehearse that debate in full. The courteous Minister said that the Opposition are wedded to the idea that what is good for British Rail is good for everybody but that the Government believe in reorganising British Rail to serve the needs of the traveller. On the face of it, that appears to have merit. I am not convinced, however, that traditionally, British Rail's management has served the needs of the traveller.

Tonight the Minister for Public Transport said that the separation of the business into separate businesses has been under consideration for about 10 years and that Sir Robert Reid, mark 1, began to introduce it. If the so-called organisation for quality programme had been known in 1981 or 1982, I do not think that it would have got very far. It contains very good elements, but it ought not to be taken too far. If one travels from King's Cross to Doncaster or from St. Pancras to Kettering, one wants certain facilities to be provided. InterCity Ltd., as it used to be, from Cardiff to Paddington, was taken over and became a brand image—rather like Pulman. People knew what they were getting. If a train is on time and properly rostered, there is nothing wrong with that. It is a good marketing technique. But to take a much bigger step is something which I question.

I hope that Sir Bob Reid will find my oil industry example to be appropriate in this context. Oil business money comes mainly from bulk users of fuel in factories, garages and industry. That does not mean, however, that one puts skilled marketing men in charge of an oil refinery. Petrochemical engineers are the people who have to work it. One has to blend the experience of the technicians who run the refinery with the marketing skills of those who have to sell the fuel. Up to a point, that is what InterCity and the suburban railways did.

For Sir Bob Reid to tell the Select Committee last week that British Rail intended to have seven distinct businesses that would make a nonsense of the old geographical distribution of the railway network and that it would create within those seven businesses 30 profit centres is going far too far and is creating tensions and difficulties that otherwise would not exist. That was all aired in the debate on 7 June and was put to Sir Bob mark II in the hearing before the Select Committee last week. "Ah" said Sir Bob, "Now we will have single responsibility instead of the matrix." That matrix is the double layer of management that has caused some difficulty. It has caused difficulty because it has been taken too far. Now, it is being taken to extraordinary lengths. Again, I dealt with that in the debate on 7 June and I shall not enlarge upon it now.

10.45 pm

The railway is now having its coherent operation disrupted. A railway consists of the skills of civil engineers, telecom and signal men, the design and supply of mechanical engineering stock, the maintenance of that stock and the running of the stock by crews. It is a complex operation, usually spread over many hundreds of miles and running 24 hours a day among a shifting group of people. To smash up the historic organisation of our mainlines and pretend that one can share King's Cross between two different businesses—or, as I explained in the Adjournment debate, in the case of Stratford, two railway divisions and six profit centres—is asking for trouble. We have trouble. Experienced railway men who will not be brow beaten by the dangling of promotion prospects—we all know how important promotion prospects are in public life—have created internal problems in the management of British Rail. Those problems have been well ventilated in the Sunday press and were covered in an article in The Independent on Sunday last week.

I ask myself what analogues there are in the world for the investment that we are about to approve and for such a novel means of railway operation. I have scanned all the railway literature from Mr. Welsby and Sir Robert Reid and I find no voluntary announcement of any analogue to this remarkable managerial revolution. The only one that I can think of, in a semi-amateur way, is the United States. In the United States railway investment is in the hands of private enterprise, but it is co-ordinated by the inter-state commerce commission. That has always been the case because the federal Government believe that proper investment in the railways and federal supervision are necessary for the nation's economy.

There are many different railways and different users hiring trains or using railways over enormous distances. They probably run a train a day or perhaps two a week. I suppose that Amtrak is something like InterCity, perhaps running one or two trains a day or two trains a week over different tracks. That is a distinct business, although it is heavily subsidised by the federal Government.

If that is the only example that anyone can dredge up, it is not an analogue at all because of the intense operation of British Rail over a small area relative to the United States. We do not know whether the Government will proceed to privatisation, because it depends on the outcome of the next general election. However, if they do and if the new reorganisation in which we are putting money tonight is in place and is not working well—let us hope that my fears are wrong—we will have scrambled the eggs. It will be difficult to alter the proposals that will result in changes in the coming months. It is no use the Minister thinking that that can be stopped, because it has been prepacked, people are in place, equipment has been bought and offices and posts have been offered and accepted.

I have grave doubts about the receptacles into which we are pouring investment. We all want that investment, but the Government's track record on the railways does not inspire confidence. BR's management structure, as approved by the Government and defended by Sir Bob and his friends, is market oriented. Markets are important, but should they overcome the technical and logical necessities of a complex operation such as a railway? I would say not. The optimum combination of both is important, but alas, we do not have that.

Mr. Gregory

In speaking to this crucial clause, I should like to comment on how property will be affected.

The Bill raises the ceiling of the borrowing ability of the British Railways Board. It is interesting to explore whether the Bill's provisions on property sales are necessary. Last year, property sales and lettings amounted to £223 million, which, sadly, was down from £412 million. Revenue from property sales and development premiums fell a staggering 60 per cent. to £121 million.

I find it strange that only one new office project—in St. Albans—was started last year. One wonders what British Rail's property board was up to and whether it was gainfully employed. Station trading, which it organised, rose only 6 per cent. to £31.1 million, which was pretty pathetic compared with the good results of other parts of the high street network. If the Committee agrees to increase the board's borrowing ability, will station trading, improve?

I am pleased that traders invested £3.5 million in modernising station retail and catering outlets last year. That is the right approach—a joint partnership. I should have liked the clause to provide for greater participation, but, as no amendment was tabled, it would be inappropriate to suggest such a change. It is unfortunate that we have not had such an opportunity. It is right to mention that and I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will respond to it.

More property developments and joint participation will lead to an improvement in British Rail because it will become more customer-oriented and because there will be less pressure on the public purse.

Mr. Malcolm Bruce (Gordon)

We are being asked to sanction a significant increase in expenditure on British Rail, but will extra investment be made in areas that have not received it in recent years or in areas where it has been inadequate?

I make no apology for the fact that I shall plead for Scotland and especially for the north of Scotland where we are extremely worried about whether the rail network will survive at all in view of the way in which it has been treated by British Rail in the past few years. I have listened to many debates on railways and I have heard some hon. Members bleat and complain about the poverty of their service, but they do not know how lucky they are. In terms of quality, speed and efficiency the service to the north of Scotland was substantially better 120 years ago than it is today. The same could be said for the volume of the service, although the reason for that is more understandable. However, that is not proof of a commitment to quality or investment.

One relevant factor that I have tried to persuade Sir Bob Reid that he should be more apprised of than most people is the fact that it has traditionally been accepted from the day the line was laid that the east coast main line ran from London to Aberdeen. It no longer does so; it effectively terminates at Edinburgh where the electrification of the line finishes. I have had some extraordinary exchanges with British Rail about the implications of that fact. I have been told, for example, that the electrification of the line between Edinburgh and Aberdeen would make no noticeable difference to the service. If that were true, why have we spent so much money on electrifying the line between London and Edinburgh? It is a preposterous proposition. It is true that the speed of the journey was significantly less a hundred years ago than it is today and that electrification will add to the journey time from Aberdeen to London.

There is now one sleeper from Aberdeen to London and, in my view, it starts in the middle of the afternoon. How many people want to take a sleeper at 9.20 pm? The last sleeper to the north leaves at 10.5 pm. I cannot believe that it is impossible to provide a sleeper that meets the public's needs. The timing is, of course, deliberate. It is timed to leave when no one wants to use it; British Rail say that there is no demand and so it is cancelled.

We are told that it is a matter for British Rail—if it can establish a scheme that brings a return of 8 per cent. on investment, all to the good. That is a matter of opinion. Independent, non-railway people have shown a better rate of return than British Rail, but the question is whether we provide a service to main centres. If the returns had been the only criteria, one wonders whether the lines to the north of Scotland would have been built. People had more vision in earlier times than they do today.

Such investment as has been made in Scotland has been a considerable embarrassment to British Rail. It has introduced super new sprinter trains and express trains. They are wonderful when the doors stay shut and when the carriages stay coupled, but it is a lottery to drive such a train, because one is never sure what will go wrong. We were told that the great thing about the new sprinter trains was that they had a compartment for two bicycles. Unfortunately, the European Community introduced hygiene regulations which meant that it was no longer possible to serve sandwiches in the existing conditions. British Rail decided that the way to solve the problem was to prohibit bicycles and to install extra refrigeration facilities for sandwiches. I am pleased to say that a sustained campaign by the cycling community in Scotland has forced British Rail to reverse that policy, although, presumably, there will now be no sandwiches. It would be hilarious if it were not a serious indictment of the quality of service that is supposed to be provided.

Mr. Cryer

It is the EEC.

Mr. Bruce

The hon. Gentleman, from his known anti-European position—

Mr. Cryer

Anti-EEC.

Mr. Bruce

Oh, anti-EEC. Never mind; from his anti-Labour party policy—currently, at the moment, position—

Mr. Cryer

The leadership has changed; I have not.

Mr. Bruce

That is true; I give the hon. Gentleman credit for that.

One would have assumed that British Rail might have had some idea of the forthcoming regulations when it ordered the trains.

1l pm

Mr. Spearing

Has the hon. Gentleman heard the accusation by Mr. Peter Rayner that, alas—contrary to what had happened with previous sorts of stock—there was not sufficient testing, and that the design of the train that the hon. Gentleman mentioned, and other trains, was forced on British Rail, via the engineers, by people who perhaps did not have the right sort of experience? Is not that a possible reason for the problem?

Mr. Bruce

It is a possible reason for the problem, but the thrust of my argument is that I suspect that it was budgetary constraints that forced British Rail to design the trains to a budget specification that did not really meet the operating requirements. Basically, we have rolling stock on the cheap which, ultimately, may cost us very much more than it would have cost to design rolling stock equipped to do the job. That is the fundamental point which I am anxious to convey to the Minister.

We seek a commitment from British Rail and the Government. The argument between the two is not an edifying spectacle, and it is certainly not one which makes Conservative candidates in the north of Scotland comfortable. I do not really care whether British Rail can find an 8 per cent. rate of return, or whether the Government come up with a direct grant to make that happen. What I do care about is that given the contribution that the north of Scotland makes to exports in the United Kingdom, and from the United Kingdom, it deserves a decent rail service and it is not getting one. There is no evidence whatever that the extra money that is to be voted through tonight is likely to make the slightest bit of difference. That is my fundamental concern.

I make no apology for saying that Scotland has a unique export record. The north of Scotland in particular has an export-led economy. A substantial proportion of the output of our industries in the north of Scotland goes direct to the European Community markets. I believe that people who serve those markets are entitled to be connected properly to the European rail network. They are not being given that opportunity at present, and they are well aware of that fact. I can assure the Minister that the campaign will not abate or go away.

I have in my constituency the line from Aberdeen to Inverness, which I accept, in the simple narrow determinants of British Rail policy, is not a profitable line. But I must tell the Minister that it is an absolutely essential line, and I am absolutely sure that any economist would be able to prove conclusively that, in terms of the broad benefit to the community, that line is an economic asset. After all, we also have a road network in the north of Scotland which does not benefit from the investment offered elsewhere in the United Kingdom. As statistics that I managed to squeeze out of the Scottish Office proved, the A96 between Aberdeen and Inverness has the worst accident record per vehicle mile of any road in Scotland, and an investment commitment that is not comparable. This is not a debate about roads, but my point is that the competition between road and rail has to be seen in the light of where the investment is going. In our area, it is not going into either sector to any significant extent.

Under pressure, the director of ScotRail admitted to me that, in terms of demand, he could operate more trains between Aberdeen and Inverness. The trouble is that putting on an extra train costs money, and that is an investment which the director is not prepared to make because it is a step: he has to guarantee a full train. Suppose that he has one and half train loads of people. If he decides to put an extra train on and gets only 1.6 train loads, he may not make enough money to justify the investment. The fact that he is leaving 60 per cent. of the people at the station, or driving on the roads, may not be a matter of concern to him, but it is a matter of concern to the local community.

People in my constituency have informed me of instances of British Rail staff going along the platform at certain stations at certain times, saying, "We advise you not to board this train as we do not consider the load is safe." Whether or not the staff had the power to do that, they were obviously genuinely concerned about the level of overcrowding.

I raised that matter with the junior Minister some time ago and his written answer was breathtaking. II boiled down to the fact that there was no evidence. The Clapham junction crash was cited in support of the argument that one was less likely to suffer serious injury when a train crashed if one was standing than if one was sitting. That is impossible to believe. We have only this month introduced the compulsory wearing of seat belts in cars. If it is not safe to sit in the rear of a car without a seat belt, how can it be safe to stand in an overcrowded train? That kind of argument does not stand up to analysis.

Far from getting extra trains, BR has decided I hat the way to get out of the bind is to increase fares to deter people from using its trains so that overcrowding can be reduced. Instead of adding to the service, BR has decided to deter passengers in an attempt to eliminate the overcrowding problem. There is no evidence that the Government are addressing that problem.

This is the Government's responsibility. It is no good the Minister saying that management is a matter for BR. The evidence that I have quoted shows that BR's management may be perfectly reasonable in terms of BR's objectives of solving a problem or reducing liability, but the Government must determine whether the service is being provided, whether the demand is being met and whether the wider community needs have been considered.

I regret to say that all the correspondence and contacts that I have had with Ministers show that they have 'washed their hands of the matter and passed the buck straight back to BR which effectively passed it back to the Government, saying that the level of support that it receives does not allow it to deal with the problem and that the criteria and operating circumstances are such that it cannot provide a viable service.

The hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) referred to the Speedlink service. The implications of that closure are particularly critical for areas like the north of Scotland. I accept what the Minister says about a service with a turnover of £45 million that is losing at least £30 million or £40 million. That is an unconscionable amount of money in proportion to the total turnover. Clearly such losses cannot be sustained indefinitely. I do not have a problem with that. However, as the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) said, simply to terminate the service gives the wrong signals, but it does more than that in areas like the north of Scotland. The opportunities for securing train loads is somewhat limited. It is not impossible and some operators are trying to put train loads together. However, they are being quoted prices that in some cases are 110 or 115 per cent. more than they were before. That is a substantial additional charge to absorb.

An operator in my part of the world said that the consequence of being kicked off Speedlink would be an extra 20,000 lorries a year on the road between Durham and Aberdeen. That is not BR's responsibility, but it is a matter of considerable concern in terms of safety and efficiency of transport and travel to those who will be stuck behind those lorries.

There are some meetings of minds with the Government about whether there should he a role for the private sector. My party and I have no difficulty in being prepared to discuss with Ministers how we might expand that role to improve the service and increase efficiency. I would go further: it takes an unconscionable talent to lose the amount of money to which I have referred on that degree of turnover. No one could do worse. However, we must explore ways of attracting traffic back on to the railways instead of giving it up. Clearly, that course is not being pursued.

I am somewhat sceptical about supporting clause I. If I can be literally boorish and speak in terms of pigs and troughs, we in the north of Scotland are pretty fed up with not getting the degree of investment that is in accordance with the economic contribution that we make to the United Kingdom economy, to our exports, and to the importance of the industries that we sustain, among which are the oil and gas industries, and the paper and whisky industries. Both the Government and British Rail have shown an utter inflexibility in accepting that we are entitled to a constructive response. People in the north of Scotland are looking, first, for the continuation of the existing rail network; secondly, for an investment in rolling stock, in terms of both quality and quantity, that will meet the genuine demand and, thirdly, for full integrated access to the European rail network that will be opened up by the channel tunnel. We are not getting any of those things. My regret is that tonight we shall be supporting a clause that substantially increases British Rail's borrowing, but which leaves our part of Scotland continuing to be deprived of anything like the investment that we need if we are to make the contribution that we can make and are making to the national economy.

Mr. Cryer

On Second Reading, I asked the Minister whether the expenditure that is listed in clause 1 contains sufficient provision for the amount of money that British Rail will need to contribute to the Bradford electrification scheme. I am not asking, "How much?" because that has not yet been negotiated, but I should like the confirmation that the Minister probably forgot to give when he replied earlier.

I am extremely disappointed that we have to wait until the November Treasury round. As lawyers say, that shows "beyond peradventure" that the Department of Transport is tied hand and foot by the Treasury. The scheme is all ready to go; £200,000 has been spent on the design work, but nothing can happen because of the Treasury restrictions that it must be included in the general round of expenditure. Given the proximity of a general election, the Government will be more likely to approve than to reject it.

I hope that the Minister will answer my next points because I should like them to be on the record. I refer first to his closing comments on Second Reading when he said that Speedlink divides the Conservative and Labour parties, as though he were proud of closing Speedlink. I shall remind him what that means. First, it means that some freight that is now carried by rail will have to be carried by road on lorries. The claim that the Conservative Government are seeking to move freight from road to rail is belied by the closure of Speedlink. Secondly, the Minister said that single wagon loads would be moving along the railways, through marshalling yards on to sidings. That is absolutely right. With the closure of Speedlink, that infrastructure will almost certainly go too. Although points, signalling equipment and rails seem perfunctory items, they have a value and, because of the financial pressures on British Rail, it will rip them out and realise their scrap value or perhaps even their transfer value for other sections of track. That will mean more costs in the future when whichever party is in government will have to come here to obtain a similar authorisation in its determination to move freight from road to rail. Single wagon traffic cannot be eliminated from British Rail, even if we have to accept that there is a cost in that over and above the bare minimum cost of transferring freight to rail.

But what about the people who live in hamlets and who want to stop the 38-tonne gross vehicle weight lorries thundering through their narrow lanes? What about the children who, to get to school, have to cross the roads down which those lorries thunder? What about the town or village traffic lights where the lorries bunch up? What about the people who are trying to sleep early in the morning as the lorries start off in first gear and rev up through the gear box, with their great weights or, if they are empty, with banging rear axles that produce a cacophony? What about the growl of the diesels, the dirt, the noise and the intrusion? Everyone realises that under the Conservatives there has been an increase in heavy lorry traffic on the roads to an unconscionable and, in many places, unacceptable degree.

In some, but not all, areas, we could reduce the amount of lorry traffic by pushing that traffic from the road on to rail. The ending of Speedlink is a move away from that desirable aim. As I said, if Speedlink is removed it will become more costly and difficult to restore the service. Many of the facilities will be sold off, again under financial pressure. British Rail will be under pressure to sell the land on which the sidings stand.

11.15 pm

It is almost certain that to close down Speedlink will be a waste of public expenditure. Grants have been provided by the Government for private sidings. They were introduced by Labour, of course, because we were genuinely committed to moving freight from the road on to rail. Those grants are now wasted. The sidings will be pulled out because there will be no traffic. In some cases, the sidings will not take whole train loads because they will not be long enough to accommodate them.

If the Minister wants to go into the next general election on a transport policy of standing by the closure of Speedlink, we shall be happy to fight on it. We are committed genuinely to move freight from road to rail and to make it succeed.

Mr. Freeman

I know that the House will want me to answer hon. Members' points extremely briefly.

The hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) referred to Speedlink, as did the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer). British Rail expects half a million tonnes of freight to move from rail to the roads. That is equivalent to only 80 heavy lorries a day. The hon. Gentlemen can do the maths. I calculate that, at £30 million, that is a subsidy of £1,000 per lorry journey. That is not sensible. I am sure that the hon. Gentlemen would join me in wanting that money to be spent on moving the traffic that should not be thundering down the Ml, M25 and M20 to the channel tunnel and, through proper investment, moving more freight via combined transport terminals.

Mr. Malcolm Bruce

This is a serious point. The transport users in my area have complained, first, that their costs have been increased by over 100 per cent. and, secondly, that the transitional arrangements are offered only for a year. Can the Minister assure us that the figures that he quoted will still be applicable at the end of that year? Or will a lot more traffic go in after a year when no one is looking?

Mr. Freeman

If the hon. Gentleman will write to me about a specific customer or issue, I shall look into it. I am glad that Tigerail is now shipping for west country customers. I gather that there is good news in prospect for the grain merchants and the whisky distillers in Scotland. If the hon. Gentleman will write to me with a specific example of traffic that is not being taken up by either British Rail or the private sector running freight trains on British Rail track, I shall certainly pursue it.

My hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Gregory) referred to property receipts. It is true that they have fallen. That is one reason why we increased the external financing limit by £400 million. We certainly want more property receipts in future years when the property market recovers.

The hon. Member for Gordon (Mr. Bruce) talked about Edinburgh-Aberdeen electrification. We are well aware of the arguments. For InterCity we have an investment appraisal test of 8 per cent. He is right in saying that it is the same for the TGV investment in France. Exactly the same financial rate of return is required, so I am not ashamed of 8 per cent. However, for the supporting railways—I am not familiar with the line between Aberdeen and Inverness, but I imagine that it is a regional railway—as the hon. Gentleman will know, appraisal of new investment is on a cost-benefit basis. If there are non-user benefits, we shall take them into account when approving new investment.

I apologise to the hon. Member for Bradford, South for not answering his point about British Rail's contribution to West Yorkshire's electrification. I can confirm that there are unlikely to be problems. It is a relatively small direct contribution for track and vehicles, and I see no reason why British Rail would not be able to honour its commitment to a scheme which I hope will proceed in the next financial year.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

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