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Government cannot continue to ignore. What is the Minister going to do about that? The cold weather hits those people particularly hard. When the weather is as cold as this, the homeless are not just sleeping rough : they are sleeping dangerously. They are threatened with frostbite, pneumonia and hypothermia. Will the Minister make emergency payments available for food? We understand from the charities that some youngsters have not eaten for two days. Will he make that emergency payment available immediately?Will the Minister also give rents to people for accommodation? People will need accommodation tonight. Will the Minister promise the House that he and his officials will personally accompany me and some of my colleagues around the streets to see the people sleeping rough tonight, so that we can find out what the problem is and what those people need?
Also, the Minister has not clearly explained what assistance he is giving to the charities and voluntary organisations to provide shelter for the homeless. Most of all--
Mrs. Clwyd : I am not taking too long. This is a very important problem.
Mr. Speaker : Order. This is a private notice question. It is not a statement.
Mrs. Clwyd : The Minister made several points, and he has not responded to the concerns expressed by my hon. Friends. It is right and proper that we should have full answers to all those questions. Unless that happens, many of the people about whom we are concerned today will die over the next few days.
Mr. Yeo : I apologise to those hon. Members who are hoping to take part in the debate in which the Under-Secretary of State for Employment, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Forth) will be speaking shortly. However, the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) clearly wrote out her question before she listened to my earlier reply. I dealt with nearly all the points about which she went on at excessive length.
I certainly will not, and neither will my officials, respond to the hon. Lady's invitation to accompany her around the streets of London on some kind of publicity stunt. We are out there, without television cameras, looking at the situation for ourselves. My hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning and I, as I did before Christmas, and my officials are involved in that. We will continue to work in the closest possible co- operation with the voluntary organisations, to which I pay a warm tribute for their excellent role in responding to the situation. We are very glad to have the services of Mr. Nick Hardwick on secondment from the voluntary organisations to my Department.
Clearly the hon. Member for Cynon Valley was not listening to me. I said that the figures I gave were the most recent estimate carried out by the voluntary organisations on the ground. They show the number of people sleeping rough in central London towards the end of January.
The hon. Member for Cynon Valley also raised one or two additional points, whose connection with the private notice question was somewhat obscure. However, I remind her that, in this country, every 16 and 17 year-old has a right to training. Any youngster who is not employed or in
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further education can take part in a training scheme. If the hon. Lady had any concern for the youngsters she claims to be worried about, she would be urging those who are not taking advantage of those training opportunities to go out and register for a training scheme right now.With regard to the severe hardship payments, I am advised that the local social security offices have some discretion to make severe hardship payments to those youngsters who have not yet registered for the youth training scheme.
In conclusion, I can assure the House that my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning and I are profoundly concerned about the problem. We are not in any way complacent about it. We are, with our officials, reviewing the situation not just from day to day, but from hour to hour, and we will continue to do that.
Several Hon. Members : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Several Hon. Members rose--
Mr. Speaker : Order. I am on my feet. We have an important private Members' day before us and it would be unfair to the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis), whose Bill is before the House, if he did not have adequate time. That would put his Bill in jeopardy. We should return to the Second Reading.
Mr. George Foulkes (Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley) rose--
Mr. Speaker : The hon. Gentleman is a Front-Bench spokesman. I will take his point of order, but it must be one that I can answer and not a point that he would have liked to raise on the private notice question.
Mr. Foulkes : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. You never fail to remind us every month at Scottish Question Time that this is a United Kingdom Parliament. I know from experience yesterday that many of the people sleeping rough--
Mr. Speaker : Order. I will stop the hon. Gentleman there. I have called an hon. Member representing a Glasgow seat ; I called an hon. Member from Wales ; and the Opposition Front-Bench spokesperson is also from Wales ; I called an hon. Lady who represents a midlands seat ; and I also called the chairman of the Back-Bench committee ; I have also called London Members. On a private notice question on a private Members' day, I cannot call everyone who wants to participate.
Mr. Alan Meale (Mansfield) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Perhaps you can give the House some guidance. I am seriously concerned that the Minister may have misled the House.
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Mr. Speaker : Order. The hon. Gentleman must find another opportunity to raise matters of that kind.
Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate that it is not easy on most Fridays to have a private notice question and to call everyone who wants to speak. I am not talking about myself--I am thinking about some of my colleagues.
Mr. Skinner : Let me finish the point of order.
Mr. Speaker : The hon. Gentleman always tries to be extremely helpful to me, but he would be the very first to complain if an hon Member on his side of the House or even he himself had been fortunate in the ballot for private Members' Bills--
Mr. Speaker : No, I do not need an explanation, because I think I know what the hon. Gentleman is going to say.
I granted the private notice question. If the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) raises points of order of this kind, naturally the Chair may become less disinclined to have business interrupted.
Mr. Skinner : The point that I want to make is that you have said several times that this is a private Members' day. It is, and that is important. However, I must tell you that you may not be aware of the fact that, later on today, the Government spokesman is going to block the Public Safety Information Bill, so this private Members' day will not be a private Members' day.
Mr. Speaker : Order. If the hon. Gentleman persists in making points of order, there will be no need to block anything.
Ms. Marjorie Mowlam (Redcar) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Have you heard anything from the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry about whether he intends to come to the House this morning to make a statement on a problem which does not have the immediacy of the crisis with which we have just dealt but which affects many of the small investors whom the Government have encouraged to invest? Part of the financial regulatory structure is about to crumble : the Financial Intermediaries, Managers and Brokers Regulatory Association is likely to become insolvent or go into liquidation. It is essential that we have a statement from the Secretary of State on the seriousness of the problem.
Mr. Speaker : I have had no indication that the Government want to make a statement about that matter. I must confess that I do not know anything about it myself. We should return to the Bill.
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Public Safety Information Bill
Question again proposed, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
11.39 am
Mr. Simon Hughes : Before the private notice question--which I am grateful to you for allowing, Mr. Speaker--we were debating the Public Safety Information Bill of the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis). I had completed the acknowledgement section of my speech ; I now want to come to the substance.
The most important philosophical and political issue raised by the Bill is the overriding and in some ways uniquely British attitude to safety. We have an almost pathological belief that matters should be kept secret. The number of matters that are still kept secret in Britain would surprise even the informed observer. Minute pieces of information held by Government Departments, of absolutely no security relevance, are still secret information.
It is a paradox that on transport matters, it is possible to learn more from abroad than at home about events that take place here. One can obtain more information about British Rail and reports compiled by it if they end up in the United States, because of the rights under the American constitution and legislation. That is unacceptable. The Bill seeks to make it obligatory that information about safety information produced by someone with authority, which comes into the hands of someone with authority, is put in the hands of the public. What the public do with it is a secondary issue. The hon. Member for Wanstead and Woodford (Mr. Arbuthnot) rightly said that there is not even parallel response or duty. I and, I expect, other London Members receive regular reports from the local fire and civil defence authority and London Underground when inspections are carried out on underground stations in our constituencies or those in which we have an interest. London Underground and other elements of London transport produce that safety information. British Rail does not, as the hon. Member for Wanstead and Woodford rightly said. There is not logical reason why the same standard of provision of information should not apply to public transport--whether underground, bus, railway, ferry or aeroplane--and public venues such as night clubs, football grounds, cricket grounds, sports stadiums or any other venue.
Mr. Forth : Will the hon. Gentleman bear in mind what the Bill says? I have followed his remarks closely, and I have a feeling that there is a danger that he might have misunderstood the Bill, at least as I understand it--my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis) may wish to correct me. The Bill refers to statutory authorities. In cases where such authorities have identified a substantial threat, the information must go through the process in the Bill. Some of the examples which the hon. Gentleman gave would not come into that category and would not be covered by the Bill.
Mr. Hughes : They would come into the category if the information relating to the football ground or bus came into the hands of the relevant statutory authority. The hon. Member for Battersea quoted the former leader of Bradford city council, who came by information about the ground which never came into the public domain.
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I accept that the Bill is limited. Many of us would have preferred it to go further. I expect that the hon. Gentleman would have preferred to make it go further. We all know that for private Members' Bills to have a chance of becoming law there must nearly always be a compromise. There is always a Government Department, like a black cloud, saying, "We shall allow only this much to go through. If you go any further, we will bring in our troops on a Friday afternoon." Whether the Government could have done so today in sufficient numbers, I do not know. The Bill has that limitation. It requires that the information percolate through to the relevant authority. It would then go on to be publicised. Even so, it is welcome that the Bill covers a whole range of activities. There is no logical reason for inconsistency.I wish to cite two examples in support of my case. I shall be explicit, critical and even rude about the Department of Transport and British Rail. My first example is inevitable. It is the case of the Marchioness, which sank, as the House will remember, on 20 August 1989 in the Thames.
After that incident, which caused the deaths of 51 people, a copy of the then draft report on the Marchioness compiled by the statutory body, the marine accident investigation bureau, came into my hands. For the first and so far only time in my life, I decided to leak parts of an unpublished report, because a substantial burden of the report was critical, not of individuals such as the skipper of the Marchioness or the Bowbelle or any other vessel on the river, but of the public authorities and in particular the Department of Transport, which failed to take heed of warnings which it had been given. In March 1990, almost a year ago, I released excerpts of that draft report. I did not release the whole report, because I was conscious as a lawyer of the duty not to prejudice individuals' rights and the right to defend of anyone who might be taken to court as an individual to defend himself. In the event, one person has been taken to court and the trial is pending. That matter is sub judice. The report was clear. Written by the proper investigative agency, it said, among other things, that poor visibility on passenger launches and the inadequacy of warning lights were recognised following a series of minor accidents between 1981 and 1983. The draft report went on :
"The general consensus of opinion, especially among those who operated the larger vessels, was that something had to be done quickly to prevent a major accident occurring between their craft and a passenger boat."
Those incidents
"were recognised at the time as providing a warning of the possibility of a major accident as time passed the perceived need for special caution gradually relaxed.
It is not considered that, in all respects, action taken by the Department in the last few years has gone as far as it should have." It is paradoxical that, as a result of some of the accidents in the 1980s--48 collision accidents were recorded by the Port of London authority on the Thames, and there were nine previous accidents involving the Bowbelle--Ready Mix Concrete, the owner of the Bowbelle, had written in 1983 to the Department of Transport about its worries on safety on the river. That information came into the hands of a public authority. The Department of Transport chose not to take action--or at least, not sufficient action. It is notable that once the Marchioness collision occurred and 51 people died, speedy action was taken--which I recognise and for which I was
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grateful--by the then Minister for Public Transport, the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Portillo) and the then Secretary of State for Transport, the right hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Parkinson) and others to implement measures, many of which could have been implemented earlier.I have absolutely no doubt that, for example, keeping passenger lists, controlling sound systems so that the people on the bridge could hear more clearly what was going on, displaying notices which make clear where the exits are on vessels and dealing with inadequacies of design--which still have not entirely been dealt with--would have increased the probability either that the collision would never have happened or that the number of dead would have been lower. You do not have to have been with me, Mr. Deputy Speaker, at the Southwark cathedral memorial service for the victims to know what grief, pain and anguish are caused to people, especially if they feel, with justification, that it need not have happened at all.
Mr. Spearing : I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman who knows of my interest in river matters and in this tragedy especially. Is he telling us that there was notification to the Department of Transport, or to a public body within it, that there had been as many as nine incidents relating to the Bowbelle and that that was recorded and known by the Department? Can he tell us, within the constraints of the sub judice rule, which he and I both respect, whether action was taken consequent on those nine incidents?
Mr. Hughes : The hon. Gentleman knows that I have to be careful. My understanding is that the PLA kept a record of the incidents, which was available on request. I requested it myself and was grateful to receive it. I understand that the Department of Transport would have known of those incidents and of the concern expressed by users of the river from 1981 to 1983. I understand that no specific action was taken on any of those matters from 1981 until the implementation of the regulations in the autumn of 1989, after the Marchioness sank. I must concede, as it is right to be correct, that some of the regulations passed in 1989 covered or overlapped with some of the concerns expressed in 1983 and were a result of general European initiatives. However, the regulations did not deal with the incidents explicitly, they did not appear to respond to the concerns of 1983 and they did not deal explicitly with the sequence of collisions, some of which involved these vessels, and some of which involved others. Collisions had been a persistent fact of river life. Some were serious, whereas others involved only glancing blows and were not of great importance. However, the collection of incidents should have given proper cause for concern about navigation on the Thames. My other target is British Rail. A constituent of mine, Paul Elvin, died in November two years ago having been electrocuted when working as a fitter at Euston station. I knew him and his family before he died. In 1989, Kevin Doherty, the brother of a friend of mine, died while working at Epsom station. Those two people died on British Rail property. In the first case, a prosecution was eventually taken out against the sub-contractors. I was grateful to the Attorney-General and his officers for investigating whether the Director of Public Prosecutions should take out a prosecution for corporate manslaughter
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against British Rail or others. In the event, the charge brought was a health and safety charge against the sub- contractors and a conviction was secured.Before the trial, the case was, quite properly, the subject of an investigation by British Rail. However, as in the case of the Marchioness, the report, which was produced a long time ago, is still not in the public domain. Even recently, the family of Paul Elvin have been told that they cannot now get the report, even though no criminal proceedings are pending and the case has been dealt with, unless they start civil proceedings. Only then, on discovery, will the report be released.
Mr. Forth : So that we are all on the same ground here and in the spirit of trying to be helpful, may I remind the hon. Gentleman again that the Bill deals with matters of public safety? I suspect that the hon. Gentleman is very much on the ground of the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974, which is concerned with health and safety in the place of work. I have ministerial responsibility for that. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be fair with the House and make it clear that the cases he is mentioning would not be covered by the Bill.
Mr. Hughes : The last two cases I have mentioned are, of course, health and safety at work examples. The hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Lloyd) and I have acknowledged the fact that private contractors on a private building site would not be covered by the Bill. However, someone on a public transport site such as Euston station, who may be going to use a train owned by British Rail, or someone who may be going to use a bus owned by London Regional Transport is in the domain of public safety because the public have access. The Minister seems to be nodding his head.
Mr. Hughes : The Bill would govern the publication of information. I hope that the Minister will bear with me for a second. The Bill would have had a material effect on the fate of my constituent and of others in the future. I want to tie the two points together. If the report on the Marchioness had been published immediately it had been finalised, the public at large would have been able to judge whether they felt that the safety of boats on the river was such that they could use them. The publicity about the report in the press, in the House and at places of embarkation would have made that information clear. Information would have been displayed for prospective users to see.
There is no excuse for the report still being secret. If the report is kept secret, things may not be done that should be done and the public will then be at greater risk. As representatives of the public, we have no assurance that public safety has been guaranteed. The Paul Elvin case gives a similar example. The British Rail report, of which I have not seen even a draft copy, may have identified a failure. It may have confirmed that there was no publicly available sign to show that the overhead wire was an electric cable and that people had to stay safely away from it. There was also no warning sign telling people to keep away from the building works, as I saw for myself.
I went to the station with Paul Elvin's cousin a couple of weeks after he died. We were able to go on to the site and there was no warning sign telling people to keep out.
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We were able to go on to the site, to climb on the scaffolding and to walk around the site without let or hindrance. If such incidents can be avoided by a Bill such as this, which will ensure that the risks are made clear and that what reports have said is made public, we shall have achieved our objectives.Mr. Bowis : I hope that we can clear up any misunderstanding between the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend the Minister. The Bill, as I understand it--I hope that I understand it--deals with areas to which the public are admitted. An employee who was injured in one such area, at Euston station or anywhere else, would be a beneficiary of the measure. However, if he was injured while working on the tracks, he would not be covered by the Bill, because the public are not legally entitled to walk along the tracks.
Mr. Hughes : Paul Elvin was electrocuted on the platform at Euston station. He died the following day in University College hospital. Kevin Doherty was killed as a result of having come in to contact with a live rail, in a slightly different case. In the second, it was in an area to which the public could have access, although they should not. At Euston, there is no doubt that it was a public platform.
We need the Bill. I hope that we shall then go on to make four other changes. First, the present law must be properly enforced. If there is meant to be a sign saying, "Danger--Keep out"--if there is meant to be a warning sign--whether it's at Euston station or elsewhere, it should be there. There is no excuse for it not being there. I believe that Paul Elvin would not have died if the proper precautions had been taken on Euston station.
Secondly, we must change the order in which events are investigated. Official reports should be published as soon as they are available. The argument against that is that they might prejudice a trial. Let the authors of the report be able to be called in the trial and to be cross-examined. Let us have the report first, so that we have all the information when we decide whether somebody should be prosecuted.
Thirdly, let us make it clear that the system of inquests will be changed, so that those who are bereaved or who represent the deceased have a full right to have any questions they want aired at the inquest. In that way, all the prospective evidence about the cause of death will be placed before the coroner.
Finally, it is a great grievance of people who are bereaved that, when a prosecution takes place or is considered in relation to anyone or any firm that might be guilty--for example, British Rail, the owners of the Marchioness, the owners of the Bowbelle, or Townsend Thoresen which is the owner of the Herald of Free Enterprise--the relatives should have a chance to have their say. They should have a right to at least an interview with the prosecuting authorities and to place the questions they want answered on the agenda. Therefore, when the trial took place they would feel satisfied that their interests were being looked after and could feel that the people who had died had not died in vain.
The people who know most about the circumstances of an accident that causes death are the families of those who died. They make it their business to find out. People are
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often interested only when motivated by tragedy or personal crisis. We should use that experience. Such people would say that the best way forward was for any available, authoritative information to go into the public domain, so that the public can make it clear that they will not accept the answer, "We should have known better-- we could have done it another way."12.3 pm
Mr. Neil Thorne (Ilford, South) : I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis) on doing so well in the ballot and on bringing before us the subject of public safety information. I am sure that all hon. Members agree that it is important to be properly informed in the interests of public safety.
The hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) spoke of finding out more about what happens in this country by listening to those from overseas. On defence, we can learn a lot more from the Americans about what is happening in this country than we know ourselves. As a nation, we have been inclined to be secretive about such matters. Perhaps politicians and those in authority thought that they knew best, but that is not always so. In this day and age, with universal education of a high standard, we should involve ourselves much more in the process.
I am concerned about one or two aspects of the Bill. I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea because I have to attend a constituency engagement--the same one that my hon. Friend the Member for Wanstead and Woodford (Mr. Arbuthnot) mentioned earlier. He has already departed and I shall have to chase after him to catch up. It is a local authority commitment and we both represent the same local authority district.
I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea will consider my worries and give them proper attention in Committee. I have two specific anxieties related to practicalities and my fear that there may be so many notices that their importance will be cheapened. In the King's Cross fire, the escalators were made of wood that was thought to be incombustible, although nothing, including steel, is absolutely incombustible. In that case, would we have to notify everyone that there was a problem at King's Cross because the escalators were made of wood? If polystyrene tiles were used on the ceiling and painted over--which many people acknowledge is a recipe for disaster--they would become a dangerous fire hazard, but apart from taking them down and starting again, there is not much that we can do about such a product. Would it mean that, at every station where anybody could join the network and finish up at King's Cross, it would be necessary to have a statement that it could be hazardous to alight at King's Cross? That could be a problem.
I am anxious about that, because many other such problems could be identified on different parts of the network and there could be many notices--all using metric units rather than imperial ones, about which I, too, am sorry. If there were too many notices, people would have to arrive at the station 10 or 15 minutes early for their journey to examine them, which could be a disadvantage. Familiarity would breed contempt and people would not bother to read the notices, so the whole point would be missed. That issue must be addressed. I am also worried about manpower. When a new process is introduced, although the general cost may not
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be high, the fact that people are involved in it means that other people have to be diverted from different tasks or more people have to be employed. If the job is to be done properly, we must address that problem. There should be sufficient manpower in local authorities. I am already worried that planning enforcement in my district is not carried out as well as I would wish.I have many constituents who say that their complaints are not dealt with quickly enough. When industrial sewing machines are used in a terrace of houses and disturb the immediate neighbours, investigations are carried out to establish whether there is a legitimate case for complaint--that involves manpower. The same is true with complaints about noise nuisance. People have to be sent from the local authority to check whether there is a noise nuisance. Other ways of dealing with such problems can be expensive in terms of time and employing professional advice. Therefore, the local authority is the natural authority on which people rely for help. We do not want people to be diverted to other jobs when we are already short of staff to deal with existing problems.
Mr. Bowis : I entirely accept that there is a specific problem in terms of the number of notices along the transport system and we must consider that problem in Committee. The report on King's Cross related specifically to risks due not merely to the materials in the lift, but to the gaps that led to the collecting of rubbish underneath.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Thorne) referred to local government manpower. No additional local government manpower will be used except where the local authority is the safety authority, which is not the case in transport facilities. They are linked to health and safety and the Department of Transport. London Underground Ltd. has set up its own authority. Therefore, the proposal should not involve manpower implications. My hon. Friend should compare the cost of checking that the report on King's Cross is effectively monitored with the cost incurred after the fire, the renovations and the new staffing arrangements that had to be made.
Mr. Thorne : Local authorities are responsible for issuing licences for a considerable number of sites, including places of entertainment and football grounds.
I accept that local authorities have no direct relationship with transport nationwide ; certainly some of them are involved with transport although not in London. However, they are engaged in licensing entertainment premises, for instance. A disco redecorated with oil-bound paint and polystyrene tiles would become a fire hazard, and that would be a matter for the local authority. Under the Bill, would that involve the authority in extra investigations and inquiries and in ensuring that it had enough staff to check every time premises were redecorated? I fear that local authority staff will be diverted to such tasks and away from dealing with other problems.
I do not say that this is not an important function : it is. I should like the responsibility for such matters to be vested in the people who take the action in the first place. Architects or owners of buildings who allow combustible materials to be used should be made responsible for any resulting hazards to life and limb--that is better than making the local authority check. Local authorities must not become more bogged down in the process.
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Mr. Bowis : I repeat that we are discussing only cases in which a substantial danger has been perceived by local authorities that are safety authorities. Under their present licensing and monitoring arrangements I assume that they do no less, and if they need more staff to carry out inquiries they should already arrange their financial affairs so as to be able to afford them.
Mr. Thorne : Is my hon. Friend saying that when a licence comes up for renewal a local authority will have to carry out a full inspection before it issues another licence
Mr. Bowis : I am saying that if that already happens and will continue to happen under the present law, the Bill will not affect the process. The Bill will be triggered only if, in the course of such an inspection, a substantial threat to the public is perceived. There should be no great manpower implications or shifting of resources beyond what a local authority should engage in anyway if it perceives a threat.
Mr. Thorne : So the legislation will be activated only if such a threat happens to come to a local authority's notice and no additional burden on it is implied?
Mr. Peter Bottomley : I have been following this discussion all morning. If a safety authority sees a danger that needs to be eliminated, such dangers are already prohibited and the Bill will not be triggered. But if a safety authority for any reason perceives a danger about which it believes people should know--a danger that is not the subject of prohibition but is not insignificant--notices should be displayed and the local authority should add the incident to its register. Is that correct?
Mr. Thorne : Indeed. So may I take it that there is no additional pressure on local authorities to discover such information? If dangers come to their notice they are required to notify the public under the Bill, which I hope will become an Act. But if dangers do not come to their notice they will not be infringing the law and everything will be the same as now- -
Mr. Bowis : The only person who would be infringing anything would be the occupier of the premises who permitted a risk to the public to continue, assuming that he knew about it. Once the matter had been drawn to the attention of the safety authority it would be expected to look into it and, if it considered that it constituted a substantial danger, that would trigger the mechanism of the Bill.
Mr. Thorne : I am grateful to hear that no extra burden will be placed on local authorities. They are very busy and carefully watching their community charge bills, and we do not want to add to their responsibilities.
The hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) said that removing guards from trains detracted from safety standards. I disagree. There are other ways in which to improve safety on the railways. Instead of employing additional staff, the railways would be better advised--the hon. Member for Newham, South, should support this idea--to move to the system being so effectively used on the docklands light railway, where electronic equipment takes over driving the train and opening the doors and the train captain can devote his or her attention to the safety and comfort of the passengers. We should explore that idea in the context of the underground and elsewhere.
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No less than £1 billion has been earmarked over the next 10 years for London Underground. The money will be used for leaflets, staff training, heat detectors, fireproofing and construction on the underground, much of which was built so many years ago.One of the good results of the sad events at King's Cross was the complete ban on smoking on the underground. That has considerably improved the safety, comfort and convenience of passengers. The hon. Member for Newham, South talked about Southern region disposing of guards on all lines. The region is extremely congested, having more junctions than any other comparable network in the world. We should spend the available money on sorting out those junctions and grading them to reduce the great number of potential causes of accidents, not on unnecessary guards. The hon. Gentleman suggested that passengers on Southern region write to Members of Parliament demanding that guards be reinstated throughout the network, but we should remember that when a crew member fails to turn up because he is ill, say, that can often mean that a train does not go out ; whereas with single-manning that does not happen, and it is hoped that there would be enough reserves to provide adequate services for the long-suffering commuters on Southern region.
When this matter is discussed in Committee I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea will tell us how his Bill would cover incidents such as the Zeebrugge disaster. Much of the information that came out of that was dealt with only within the company and never entered the public domain. If the Bill deals only with matters in the public domain, incidents such as Zeebrugge will not be covered by it, unless a mole in the system leaks the information to the public.
Mr. Bowis : Perhaps my hon. Friend did not hear my speech. I referred to the indirect benefits of the Bill in incidents such as Zeebrugge. It would not be a mole, but the captains of the vessels, who had warned the company about the need for lights on the bridge to show whether the bow doors were open. If they believed that they were getting no satisfaction from the company about putting it right, I have no doubt that, were such a channel available for information to reach the safety authority, which could investigate whether there was a substantial risk, it would be used.
Mr. Thorne : I assure my hon. Friend that I have been here throughout the debate. It was not clear from his speech whether he appreciated that it is not easy for staff to put private company matters into the public domain. Employers consider these matters to be private and if they are drawn to the attention of the public the employee will not attract the accolade of the employer, especially if a programme to put the matter right is expensive.
I am worried that such internal matters may never enter the public domain unless a captain or a steward, or a mole in the system, draws them to public attention. That frequently happens in Government Departments. Moles sometimes appear, but they are rarely from the civil service. It is disgraceful that it happens. If such matters reach the attention of the public I am sure that a reporter, if he felt the matter was of public interest, would make it an issue for debate.
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