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House of Commons

Friday 23 March 1990

The House met at half-past Nine o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. Speaker-- in the Chair ]

Mid-Staffordshire By-election

9.34 am

Mr. Win Griffiths (Bridgend) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Would it be in order for you, on this historic morning, to send a congratulatory telegram to the winner of the Mid-Staffordshire by-election, who will shortly be gracing the Labour Benches?

Mr. Speaker : I do not think that we have had that precedent in the House--

Mr. Donald Anderson (Swansea, East) rose --

Mr. Speaker : Order. I shall have the opportunity of welcoming the hon. Lady some time next week.

Mr. Anderson : Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Will it be within the terms of the first motion to be discussed today for us to refer specifically to transport journey times to Mid-Staffordshire and other areas, or would you rule that inappropriate and perhaps intruding on the grief of the Government?

Mr. Speaker : I do not know about the grief of the Government, but I should have thought that the motion is wide enough to deal with journey times to Mid-Staffordshire or anywhere else.

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Public Transport

9.36 am

Mr. Robert Adley (Christchurch) : I beg to move,

That this House welcomes the Government's statement in their objectives set to British Rail, that projects not meeting the required rate of financial return but having social, environmental or other external benefits, should be assessed by cost-benefit analysis ; further welcomes the Government's commitment to maintain the existing railway network, and to continue to pay the Public Service Obligation grant, whilst noting the report of the Central Transport Consultative Committee on British Rail ; notes both the investment regime and subsidy policy pursued by the French and West German governments ; calls on Her Majesty's Government to assess road and rail projects on an equal basis in the light of the congestion, pollution and aggravation caused by the proliferation of the internal combustion engine ; welcomes the Government's important decision to refuse closure of the Settle and Carlisle railway line as a significant change to policies pursued by previous governments ; and requests British Rail to end the policy of selling off railway trackbed from which services have been discontinued.

Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) last week, I have waited almost 20 years to win the ballot to debate a motion of my choice. I hope that after the House has heard me it will not wish to wait another 20 years before having an opportunity to hear me again.

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister for Public Transport, because I know that he has had severely to reorganise his timetable, which I believe included a meeting with a Community transport Minister. I understand that he was able to hold that meeting yesterday, and I am grateful to him for being present today. I anticipated that Labour Members would comment on the by-election result. It would be churlish not to congratulate the victor, but the fact that it has been described as the Labour party's best result for 60 years says rather more about the Labour party than the state of politics. I enjoyed the results from places such as Ashfield, Birmingham, Stechford and Workington under a Labour Government and endured the results from Ryedale, Crosby and Croydon, North-West. I recall visiting the constituency of the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnor (Mr. Livsey), who is in his place, during his by-election victory. I think that on that occasion the Conservative party, which had held the seat, came third.

Mr. Anderson : The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnor (Mr. Livsey) is still here.

Mr. Adley : He is still here, and his party is still in Opposition. The point has been well made, so I shall move on to debate transport matters.

I ask the House to try to debate public transport policy without too much party-political dogma. Public transport policy and party-political dogma make uneasy bedfellows. I should be delighted if we could use this opportunity to take a long, cool look at how successive Governments have organised transport policy.

We must consider the true position facing this congested and crowded island and try to debate the motion in the way that we have just prayed. We prayed to forgo our private interests, prejudices and partial affections and it would be good if we could stick to that. Perhaps on that basis I should declare an interest as a member of the Select Committee on Members' Interests.

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For many years, I have received assistance and hospitality from British Rail. I am an author of railway books, and my next book, entitled "Out of Steam", which is to be published by Patrick Stephens Ltd. in August, is priced at £17.50 and will be available from all good bookshops.

Mr. Donald Anderson (Swansea, East) : On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I know that we are on television, but are we on commercial television?

Madam Deputy Speaker (Miss Betty Boothroyd) : That seems to be the case.

Mr. Adley : The hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson) makes an interesting point.

Mr. Steve Norris (Epping Forest) : I was interested in my hon. Friend's assessment that being given tea by British Rail was considered to be a commercial advantage.

Mr. Adley : Lobbying crossed my mind as one subject for debate. The hon. Member for Swansea, East made the point that, if one is not careful, a declaration of interest can be turned into an advertisement.

The motion emerged after fevered discussion with a number of my colleagues. As one of those who voted consistently against the community charge, I thought that we might have a debate on local government finance, but that idea was not entirely popular with some of my colleagues. I then invited my hon. Friend the Minister to consider the possibility of a debate on public transport policy. He was very courteous and said that the first draft of the motion that I showed him probably would have required the Government to impose a three-line Whip. We managed to reach an agreeable compromise, resulting in the motion on the Order Paper.

My proposition is simple. In the past 10 years, there has been considerable economic success, resulting in the enormous proliferation of motor cars and other vehicles on our roads. Simultaneously, we have seen the growth of environmental concern and recognition across the party divide that the internal combustion engine, which is a major source of pollution, congestion and aggravation, cannot be the only solution not only to the individual's problems but to the country's transport policy needs. The internal combustion engine, which once appeared likely to sound the death knell of the railway system is, by its proliferation, the source of railway renaissance. The policy and the procedures by which those policies are framed and which have been pursued by this and previous Governments do not take account of the relative merits of road and rail investment. The criteria used by the Department of Transport have become bogged down in ancient prejudices, presumptions and propaganda. I shall address most of my remarks to those procedures. The wording in relation to road versus rail criteria was one matter that my hon. Friend the Minister and I discussed. I am sure that my hon. Friend will say that, in his view, the criteria used by the Department of Transport are fair to road and rail, but I do not believe that they are. I invite the House to take a fundamental look at the purpose of taxation. A dictionary provides a definition, but if the House thinks about taxation for a moment, it will see that we provide, for example, taxation for the Ministry of Defence, the Departments of Health, Education and Science and Transport and the Foreign and

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Commonwealth Office. What is the relationship between the provision of public funding through taxation and the expectation of obtaining a commercial return through the provision of funds to the areas of Government activity receiving those funds? Do we expect the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Department of Education and Science and the Department of Health to show a profit? Of course we do not. Do we expect the Department of Transport to show a profit? No. Do we expect the roads to show a profit? No. The Government and their predecessors expect British Rail, almost alone among Government activities, to operate as if it were a commercial organisation. That proposition is fundamentally flawed.

The criteria employed by the Department of Transport in assessing road versus rail investment proposals should surely deal with the real costs to the nation of everything that can directly be attributable to rail or road usage. I could spend two hours discussing that simple point, but I shall not. I shall take the police as an example. A few days ago, I asked my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary about the police time spent on all activities relating to traffic management. On Monday, he replied : "In 1987, 1988 and 1989, approximately 8 per cent. of the total police strength in England and Wales was deployed on specialist traffic duties."

My right hon. and learned Friend went on to say, significantly : "The proportion of non-specialist officers' time spent on traffic matters is not recorded. The total costs could not be reliably estimated."

It is clear to anyone who thinks for a moment about the time of the police and other related activities, such as attendance in court--involving the Crown prosecution service, lawyers and clerks--that an untold and unknown sum of money is devoted to dealing with problems directly related to road transport. How can the Department of Transport genuinely be expected to undertake a proper assessment of the costs of road versus rail if my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary openly admits that no such information is available?

Each year we kill 2,500 people and maim 250,000 on our roads, and untold others are injured less seriously. The cost must be astronomic. This week, I asked my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Health

"if he will estimate the cost to the National Health Service, for the latest year for which figures are available, of all road accidents."

I received this simple answer :

"Data on the actual cost to the National Health Service in England of Road accidents are not collected by the Department."--[ Official Report, 19 March 1990 ; Vol. 169, c.454-73. ]

How can the Department of Transport be entirely confident that the information on which it bases its investment criteria is based on facts, when those facts are unknown?

Many of the people who are involved in accidents spend weeks or months in hospital before they die, as do those who are maimed. Goodness only knows the extent of the hospital costs and Department of Health costs that are incurred. Many thousands of people will be on social security benefit when they leave hospital, and those costs are unknown. We expect the Department of Transport to carry out an analysis in the absence of the facts that would make it meaningful. In response to my probing questions about the activities of staff in the Department of Transport, my hon. Friend

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the Minister for Roads and Traffic told me that, rounded to the nearest 500, 16,500 people in his Department were directly engaged in transport and planning matters. I do not know whether any of my hon. Friends or other hon. Members would care to guess how many out of those 16,500 civil servants were involved with the railways. Any guesses forthcoming? It may interest the House to know that of those 16,500 civil servants in the Department of Transport, a grand total of 200 were involved with railways and that figure includes the entire railways inspectorate.

Mr. Anderson : I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. Perhaps I should call him my hon. Friend in this case as he has a distinguished record of supporting the railways. Given those comparisons of the personnel in roads and railways in the Department of Transport, is not it the more puzzling that the Government have a propensity to take people from senior positions in the Department of Transport for senior positions in British Rail?

Mr. Adley : That is a fair and reasonable point. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will take part in the debate so that he can expand on that point. He has raised a serious problem. I hope that he will allow me to continue to provide the House with a little more information so that we can see what all the people in the Department of Transport do.

There are 200 civil servants dealing with railways including those in the railway inspectorate. For highways, including bus and taxi policy, there are 550. There are 100 in road safety. There are 1,000 traffic area staff excluding those currently elsewhere such as driving examiners. Six hundred are employed at the transport and road research laboratory. The driving standards agency employs 2,000 and the vehicle inspection agency employs 1,600. The driver and vehicle licensing agency employs 5,500. Aviation employs 350, which is almost twice the number in railways, and there are 950 in shipping, almost five times as many as those in railway activity in the Department of Transport. I do not know whether the salaries of all those people in the Department who are allocated to what one might generally call roads activities are included by the Department in "load" costs. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister will elucidate on that later. We need to debate whether there is a fair assessment between road and rail. My hon. Friend the Minister claims that there is, but the Confederation of British Industry clearly agrees with me. In a parliamentary briefing sent out a couple of days ago, the CBI said that it

"would welcome the assessment of rail investment on an equal basis with road projects."

I should welcome that, too. I telephoned the CBI yesterday and confirmed that its understanding of the position was the same as mine--that there is at present an unequal assessment of rail as opposed to road investment within the Department of Transport. One could show endlessly that that is the case. To take one example, we are at present contemplating the construction of a rail link from the Great Western main line to Heathrow. For years, I have advocated that if that link is built, in addition to there being an eastbound rail link into Paddington, there should be a little link of 200 or 300 yd westbound so that all potential travellers to Heathrow from south Wales, the west country, the south-west and the south of England could catch trains going directly into Heathrow--but no. That 200 or 300 yd

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track will not be built. Can anyone imagine that if a road was being built, the same strict financial criteria would apply? One has only to ask the question to know the answer.

Investment criteria must, of course, be related to commercial reality, but they must also be more closely related to environmental and social needs. We need only look at the commuter problem to understand what we are talking about. British Rail did not invent the rush hour. Without a railway system in our major cities, life would be intolerable. Every day, British Rail carries 500,000 passengers into London during the morning peak. The House should contemplate that the more people British Rail succeeds in attracting on to its commuter peak-hour services, the more it is required to generate its own capital investment in capital equipment which is used for only four out of 24 hours every day. No normal business could operate by acquiring expensive equipment and leaving it idle for 20 out of 24 hours. That is as good an example as one needs to illustrate that it is fundamentally wrong to equate investment in our railways with normal commercial investment in business and industry. The railways are a vital part of the nation's infrastructure, and should be seen and dealt with as such.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will excuse me if I talk briefly about the public service obligation grant. To some of my hon. Friends, the word "subsidy" is a dirty word. I suppose that they would like to see the armed forces privatised, so that we could then test our weapons in private enterprise battles between the armies of Wessex and the armies of Mercia. That proposition does not especially attract me.

To suggest, as my hon. Friend does, that there is merely a coincidence of timing between the reduction of the PSO grant and the increasing incidence of late arrivals, shorter trains, service reductions, staff shortages, and unmanned stations is to stretch credulity to breaking point. Most hon. Members and most members of the travelling public would regard that as an unreal proposition. Given the commuter problem, simplistic commercial considerations are not in the interests of the nation when assessing the value of the rail network to the people of this country.

I am sorry to say to my hon. Friend the Minister that I shall quote briefly from the Central Transport Consultative Committee report which came out a few days ago. I do not think that my hon. Friend liked what it said. The CTCC is not exactly an organisation manned by members of the Militant Tendency. It is funded by the Department of Trade and Industry. Its members are appointed by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. The present chairman, Major-General Lennox Napier was first appointed in 1985 when my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) was Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and his position was confirmed and his appointment renewed last year by my right hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley). Times change, and both my right hon. Friends may be changing their political stance, but if they are, it is news to me. Someone appointed by them is likely to be considered reasonably independent minded on matters such as railway investment. Among the other members of the CTCC are our former colleague, John Corrie in Scotland, Angela Hooper in southern England, who is known to many of us, and Sir Robert Wall in the west of England, a long-time leading

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Conservative member of Bristol city council. we are not dealing here with a rabble-rousing, Left-wing organisation.

I want to read a few quotations from the CTCC report which came out a few days ago. It says :

"The new objectives"--

the objectives laid by the Government on British Rail--

"demand that B.R. reduce its requirement for grant to support socially unnecessary but unprofitable passenger services"-- the PSO grant--

"by roughly 30 per cent. between 1989-90 and 1992-93. This comes on top of a cut of over 50 per cent. which B.R. has already achieved since 1983. At the same time, capital investment for B.R. is set to rise, totalling £4.9 billion during the five years of the Plan. But whereas the grant which B.R. is losing comes from Central Government, the new investment is coming almost entirely from higher fares and traffic growth, together with property sales and loans from Government which have to be repaid with interest the Committee believes Government should be providing more of it through grants rather than loans in recognition of the railways' role in relieving traffic congestion and improving the quality of life. Also, the C.T.C.C. has long been critical of the severe reductions in the level of P.S.O. Grant over the years. There have been many instances where services have been pruned or much-needed service improvements have not been made because of a lack of cash."

Those are the comments of a Government-appointed body.

Finally, on Network SouthEast, the CTCC says :

"Because of N.S.E.'s cash crisis, things are now going to get even worse."

That is not something which my hon. Friend the Minister or his constituents in London will regard with equanimity. The CTCC continues :

"In an attempt to meet its financial targets, N.S.E. is preparing to breach its quality objectives by introducing cuts in peak train services from May. This will mean fewer or shorter trains." At the risk of offending BR, I have to say that I find its response to the CTCC somewhat economical with the truth. For example, it says :

"Electrification in South Hampshire and between Kings Lynn and Cambridge is not affected by the need for short term economies." The reality is that, as from May, through trains from King's Lynn to London are to be discontinued and all passengers will have to change at Cambridge. That will not be regarded with equanimity by those travelling from Norfolk. British Rail also refers to "changes in demand patterns that we address twice a year with timetable changes."

I shall resist the temptation to weary the House with endless quotations. But I wonder how travellers from Eastbourne to London will feel when they find that the 7.42 am train to London Bridge is to be discontinued. That is the last through train of the morning from Eastbourne to London Bridge. The next through train from Eastbourne is the 8.37 am to Victoria. I imagine that plenty of people who will be affected by the results of changes in the PSO grant will find it hard to accept British Rail's proposition that everything has to do with changing service demand.

Mr. Nigel Spearing (Newham, South) : Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there are also extraordinary anomalies in the much-vaunted capital investment about which the Government are always telling us? The hon. Gentleman mentioned the electrification of the line from

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Cambridge to King's Lynn, which few would oppose. But is not it strange that there is to be one train an hour from Ely northwards, in remarkably sparsely populated country, while the Government refuse to consider the electrification of the line from Manchester to Blackpool--a relatively short route in a densely populated urban area with a great deal of traffic? Are not there anomalies in investment as well as in running?

Mr. Adley : The hon. Gentleman is quite right. The Manchester to Blackpool line is a classic example of shortsightedness in planning. I think that I am entitled to say on behalf of the Government that, as a result of their successful economic policy and the revenue that BR is attracting, a major investment programme is taking place on the railways. In Manchester, the construction of the Windsor link is the realisation of a dream that many people in that part of the world have nurtured for over a century. But to go ahead with the Windsor link, with all the new opportunities that that will create for rail travel in and through the city of Manchester and then not to sanction the electrification of the line from Manchester to Blackpool shows an inconsistency that is also evident in the Heathrow example that I gave a moment ago. Both are illustrations of shortsighted planning and the superimposition of unreal financial criteria on a transport problem. I believe that to be unjustifiable and unsatisfactory. In a debate the other day, I referred to the fact that the Government and Conservative central office are happily proclaiming the amount of investment that is going to BR. Many of my hon. Friends who do not perhaps study these matters as closely as I do, because they have different primary political interests, will say, "Ah yes, surely we are right in saying that the Government are investing huge sums in BR." But that is not so. In 1982, 1983, 1985, 1986 and 1987, British Rail had no recourse whatever to borrowing from the national loans fund, and in 1984 and 1988 it had only limited recourse to the fund. Almost all the new investment is coming straight out of the pockets of Britsh Rail's customers. A brief from the Conservative research department the other day made some rather bland comments about the levels of railway investment. It would have been more straightforward had the brief simply said, "Her Majesty's Government are allowing British Rail to spend its own earnings." That is what is happening. The Government spend taxpayers' money on the road ; British Rail spends its own earnings on its own investment programme.

Mr. Hugh Dykes (Harrow, East) : I am loth to interrupt my hon. Friend's extremely skilful and persuasive speech, which is most welcome. In a debate on 14 February he dealt with similar matters. Has he been able to solve a puzzle that came to light then concerning the German system? Apparently, the premier capitalist economy in Europe--far more successful than we are, unfortunately--offers far more financial support through the investment programme and for other aspects of its railway system, which is already ahead of ours. Yet we are given to understand by the Secretary of State for Transport that German transport Ministers regard the subsidy and the granting of further amounts as an outrage. Has my hon. Friend been able to clarify that misunderstanding?

Mr. Adley : The answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow, East (Mr. Dykes) is yes. Yesterday afternoon I spent some time with Herr Rudolf Richter, the director

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in the United Kingdom and Ireland of the Deutsche Bundesbahn. In view of my hon. Friend's intervention, I shall deal with the question now. The current BR five-year investment programme entails an investment of £4.9 billion.

Mr. Roger King (Birmingham, Northfield) : I must apologise to my hon. Friend for having missed the first part of his speech. I was half an hour late because BR took two hours, rather than the usual one and a half, to get me from Birmingham to London. I shall let that pass, however.

A few moments ago, my hon. Friend said that taxpayers paid for roads and that railways financed their own investment. That is not correct. Road users pay for road development. They contribute about £16 billion to the Exchequer each year and of that, only about £3.5 billion--rising to £5.7 billion in the next year or so--is paid back into roads. It is road users, not taxpayers, who pay for investment in roads.

Mr. Adley : My hon. Friend, who is a skilful and determined exponent of the road lobby, makes a foolish point which does not bear examination. It has never been the policy of any Government to indulge in taxation hypothecation. If we pursued his proposal to its logical conclusion, the Governmnt would spend all the money that they took in gambling taxes on building new casinos. He does not bother to ask himself--

Mr. Geoffrey Dickens (Littleborough and Saddleworth) : That is silly.

Mr. Adley : My hon. Friend says that it is silly ; perhaps he would like to intervene.

Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West) : He is a specialist.

Mr. Dickens : I am not a specialist but there is a lot of truth in what my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. King) says about road users. Commercial and domestic road users pay a devil of a lot of money into the Treasury, through vehicle and excise licences and taxes on petrol. It is foolish to argue that road users do not pay for the roads, but that users of the railway have to pay for investment in railways.

Mr. Adley : Without being too rude to my hon. Friend, I must say that I would rather he called me foolish than sensible. I do not know where he supposes the Minister of Defence, the Department of Health or the Department of Education and Science would get their funds. Perhaps he believes in the hypothecation of taxation. That would be the ultimate extremity of Right-wing politics and not something that I should find remotely attractive. One has only to contemplate that proposition to see how foolish it is.

Let me return to the pertinent question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East. British Rail's investment programme for the current five years is £4.9 billion. The Deutsche Bundesbahn's current five-year investment programme is 40 billion deutschmarks which at the current exchange rate is about £14 billion. That is the position on investment. What about operating deficit? In 1990 the Deutsche Bundesbahn's operating deficit, set by the West German Government is 4 billion deutschmarks, which is about £1.5 billion. That is the planned operating deficit, over and above the investment level. I am afraid

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that my hon. Friend the Minister will have to take this like a man. My hon. Friend planted a question for answer on Tuesday night--the night of the Budget statement--concerning British Rail's grant for 1989-1990. It was an extremely skilful and largely successful operation that managed to hide from the public almost completely what the Government's proposals were.

If my hon. Friend the Minister was proud of the cut in the PSO grant which is the much-vaunted policy of the Department of Transport he would not have sought to have a written question on the Order Paper on Budget day. He would have ensured that the Government's great achievement in cutting the PSO grant was trumpeted from the heights. However he, I and the House know that the constant attempt to cut the PSO grant and BR's operating subsidy-- which was once the totem of Government monetarist policy--is increasingly a matter of shame. People know that a cut in the PSO grant is directly related to a cut in the quality of service.

The Minister for Public Transport (Mr. Michael Portillo) : I actually announced an increase in the PSO cash ceiling. I am not sure whether my hon. Friend is saying that I was so ashamed about increasing the PSO cash ceiling that I tried to slip it out or whether possibly he misunderstood my parliamentary reply. If the latter is the case, I would be happy to explain the answer in a moment.

Mr. Adley : My hon. Friend the Minister announced in his written answer that BR's grant for 1989-90 was £488 million. I understand that that is £30 million or £35 million less than the PSO grant for the current year. If I am wrong, my hon. Friend the Minister will have to correct me. However, his written answer states :

"£8 million will be available only to accommodate the grant-aided sectors' share of additional safety-related expenditure, particularly that arising from Sir Anthony Hidden's report on the Clapham Junction rail accident."--[ Official Report, 20 March 1990 ; Vol. 169, c. 534. ]

I thoroughly enjoyed and wholly approved of the Budget presented by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. However, one item in the Budget that caused me considerable concern was the money that the Government are making available to finance safety at football grounds. Lord Justice Taylor's report on the Hillsborough accident was not too far removed in time from Sir Anthony Hidden's report on the Clapham rail disaster.

The Government's priority in the Budget on safety funding is to provide taxpayers' money for the pursuit of leisure--watching a bunch of thugs kick a football around on a Saturday afternoon. However, the Government will provide only £8 million of the estimated £500 million that BR will have to find to carry out the safety requirements in the Hidden report. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister will tell us today that the Government will announce that they will fund entirely the safety costs proposed by Sir Anthony Hidden in the same way that they have announced funding in relation to Lord Justice Taylor's proposals for football grounds.

I hope that my next comments will not be indecent. I want to share with the House a thought that has occurred to me. There is a certain irony about the Hillsborough tragedy which was caused by the late arrival of a large number of coaches at the football ground as a result of congestion on the M62 from Liverpool. The motorways on which those coaches travelled were provided by the

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taxpayer. Twenty or 30 years ago most of those football supporters would have travelled by rail. However, the coach is one of the most heavily subsidised forms of public transport in the country and British Rail has lost passengers to coach competition running on motorways that are funded 100 per cent. from taxpayers' money. Many British Rail regional managers have given up trying to attract the football thug traffic because most of their trains were vandalised. We could almost say that we are busily subsidising vandalism while we do nothing to subsidise safety on BR.

I want to consider track costs in relation to road versus rail. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East asked me about West Germany. Yesterday I asked Herr Richter, the director of Deutsche Bundesbahn, how he viewed the attitude of the West German Government towards the West German railways in relation to the British Government's attitude towards British Rail.

Mr. Dykes : They are both Conservative Governments.

Mr. Adley : Yes, indeed they are. Naturally, being a foreigner in Britain, Herr Richter did not want to make aggravating comments about Her Majesty's Government.

Mr. Dickens : They are both successful Governments.

Mr. Adley : Yes, they are. However, if I were to ask, "Hands up. Who would swap the current economic circumstances in West Germany for those in Britain?", I suspect that some people would consider the West German example to be attractive. However, I do not want to be diverted on to that.

Herr Richter told me :

"Our Government has started to understand that a railway infrastructure and a railway system is more than just a business, it is part of the health of the people."

I believe that that proposition has not yet permeated through the inner portals of the Department of Transport or into the Government's thought processes.

My hon. Friend the Minister will understand me when I say that there is no shortage of lobbyists for the road transport industry in this country. The Department of Transport admits to having regular meetings with the Bus and Coach Council, the Freight Transport Association, the Road Haulage Association, the motor manufacturers, motor retailers, the Automobile Association, the RAC and the road building contractors--I was also going to say from Marples to McAlpine, but perhaps I should not say that.

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody (Crewe and Nantwich) : Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the Department of Transport makes it clear that about 80 per cent. of its priorities lie with roads and very few staff of the Department are involved in railways?

Mr. Adley : The hon. Lady may have missed the beginning of my speech in which I quoted the precise number of people involved. She is right, but I think that she overestimated the number of people in the Department involved in railways.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. King) should be aware that I am a member of the AA and the RAC. However, I am a member of those organisations to get help in the event of a breakdown. I did not join those organisations to have

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them lobby for me on political matters. The proposition that all their funds from membership fees should be available to them to promote roads, is something which I regard as abuse of my membership fee.

What is the position on lobbying in West Germany? I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East is in the Chamber because he will doubtless know all about the Verkehrsforum Bahn. That professional lobby was not established by one of those nefarious lobbying organisations, the inexorable growth of which we have witnessed in this country over the past few years. That organisation has sprung up and now includes 160 companies, banks, commerce and industry whose sole ambition is to lobby the German Government and West German public opinion on behalf of more investment in West German railways. We do not have such a body in this country. British Rail management is part of the rail lobby in this country. However, the relationship between a nationalised industry and the Government of the day is so close and obvious that BR management cannot be considered as part of the rail lobby. If the management speaks out of turn, it is slapped down. Similarly, the trade unions could be construed to be a particular interest and cannot be considered an independent and powerful lobby. Then there is me, and I am just a lone voice. The rail lobby in this country is non- existent and it is a great shame that we cannot find a body like the Verkehrsforum Bahn which could lobby public opinion and the Government for more funding for the railway system.

The supervisory board of the Deutsche Bundesbahn has a particularly interesting line of activity between the Government and the railways, although the supervisory board is not really a lobbying organisation. It is an independent regulator. We in this country need an independent regulator between the Government and British Rail to check on British Rail's performance, fares and so on. Again, that would help to concentrate the minds of the warring parties. Nothing better illustrates hon. Members' attitudes to safety matters than the way in which we deal in the House with transport accidents. There has only to be the slightest railway accident-- even if one person is killed--for an hon. Member with a constituency interest to ask for a private notice question, and very often the request will be granted. Day in and day out our constituents are killed and maimed in road accidents--if one is dead, one is dead, and if one's family is bereaved, one's family is bereaved. It is every bit as tragic, whether it is a road or a rail accident. However, hon. Members do not make demands for private notice questions after road accidents, and we certainly do not see the headlines that we are accustomed to seeing whenever there is a rail problem.

I can illustrate another difference between road and rail. On the railways there is signalling to separate fast moving vehicles travelling in the same direction. Of course, we have no such signalling on our roads. There is a conflict between life and death on the one hand and personal convenience on the other. We put warnings on our cigarette packets, but we do not put warnings on our motor cars. The value of human life is high and, on the railways, is regulated by Parliament. The value of human life and limb on the roads is something which we are prepared to cast aside in the interests of personal convenience. If we were to put railway signalling systems

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