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Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin): Many hon. Members want to speak, so it would help if speeches were briefer.
11.42 am
Mr. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North): I take note of what you said, Mr. Deputy Speaker, about being brief; it is a pleasure to see so many hon. Members trying to
contribute to the debate. Ten years ago, the Chamber would probably have been empty if this issue had been raised. The House should pay a big compliment to the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Dafis) for the work that he has put into this Bill and the Road Traffic Reduction Act 1997, and for his work as chair of the Globe group in this Parliament, which has been effective in raising many environmental issues. The Road Traffic Reduction Act was a turning point, and if this Bill gets through all its stages, I hope that it will be an even bigger step forward in the search for a solution to problems of the environment and transport planning.
I represent probably the most densely populated inner urban area in the country, with the least amount of open space. Interestingly, it has below-average car ownership, but faces huge problems of pollution and congestion. I am the chair of the local Agenda 21 forum in the borough, which has carefully examined ways of improving public transport and promoting debate about it. Recently, there was an interesting debate between Friends of the Earth and the manager of one of the local car showrooms about having a car-free borough. The debate collapsed when the manager claimed that it was impossible to travel from Orpington to Islington every day other than by private car. The credibility of the argument for the free use of cars in urban areas collapsed.
I am constantly aware of the pollution difficulties that people face in my area, and in London as a whole. I live slightly high up in the Archway area, and in the mornings I can look down into London and see the wretched Canary Wharf towering above a huge cloud of pollution. It is not as if any industry is left anywhere in London that produces substantial amounts of pollution. All that pollution is transport borne: it all comes from motor vehicles and the internal combustion engine.
I live near the part of the Archway road that is a four-lane highway, which someone cleverly built in the hope of getting a motorway that would extend southwards to the docks and northwards to the M1. I am glad to say that neither extension has been built, so we have this ridiculous, one-mile stretch of motorway-standard road. I did a quick survey this morning of car use on that road. For every 20 cars I counted, only five contained more than one person. Most of the other 15 were large cars: it is always the Ford Fiesta that has five people, and the Mercedes that has just a driver. We have all seen the beat-up Fiesta with people crawling out the windows, while someone else drives along using a mobile phone in his large Mercedes, probably with a "Use unleaded fuel only" sticker on the back. Such drivers ignore the fact that they are creating a vast amount of pollution and waste as they perambulate their way down to the City to park in a very expensive underground car park, financed by the rest of us, before they go back home again to Potters Bar in the evening. If they ever thought about it, they would actually be better off on the train: it would be quicker and there would be less hassle. The only irritation to the rest of the world would be their using the mobile phone on the train instead of in the car.
The back page of The Times this morning contains a photograph of the A30 bypass that is being built at Honiton. Swampy was there a year ago doing his best to try to save the environment: he is a splendid fellow. The picture shows the destruction of a beautiful part of
the countryside so as to remove the Honiton bottleneck on the holidaymakers' route to the west country. Once that bottleneck has been removed, another one further down the road will be removed, and so we go on and on pouring more and more cars into our cities, into the west country or wherever. At the same time, we have under-used railways and a complete lack of imagination in much of our transport planning. I hope that things will change, and I believe that they will.
If we do nothing about car usage, it will double in the next 20 years: car ownership will possibly increase at an even greater rate. The car creates an illusion of mobility, but it also creates many of the pollution, road safety and security problems. Many people tell me that they prefer to drive around the borough because they feel unsafe walking at night. There is some truth in that: there is an element of danger in walking around urban areas at night. But the more people drive and the less they walk, the more dangerous it becomes. It is a self-fulfilling prophesy. We must seriously consider methods of reducing car usage and car ownership, and the Bill goes some way towards that.
In the near future, the Government will be faced with a huge debate about whether to put money into the channel tunnel rail link. I do not want to prejudge that debate, but it seems to me that a phenomenal amount of time is spent discussing money being put into railway developments, whereas there is little discussion about the phenomenal amounts of money that are put into road developments. Road developments are the most expensive way of creating an inadequate transport infrastructure, and are the most wasteful use of energy possible.
In 1959 and 1960--in our own lifetime--the M1 was paraded as the solution to the country's transport problems between London, Birmingham, Manchester and Scotland. Already, it is over-used and totally inadequate. The M40 was constructed as a parallel motorway to the M1 on the run up to Birmingham. That, too, is reaching full capacity. The M25, which was projected to solve all of London's problems, is the world's largest car park. Proposing to widen it to six lanes will not solve the problem. We must be far more assertive in protecting our environment.
Public transport faces problems. The London underground, which many hon. Members must use all the time, is an excellent system, a brilliant innovation--but it is woefully underfunded and lacks investment. It needs a great deal of money, as does the bus network. Fortunately, London has never had the disaster of total deregulation of bus services that has been visited on the rest of the country. We have a regulated, moderately well-integrated bus service in London, which has meant a growth in bus traffic in every year for the past five or 10 years--unlike in other parts of the country. Ludicrous deregulation, high fares and the running of buses only at the busiest times of day must increase car usage, reduce mobility and make many people in rural areas who cannot afford a car feel totally alienated from society. Last year, when I visited the constituency of the hon. Member for Ceredigion, I was appalled at bus fares for short-hop journeys from the station. That is pretty common in many areas.
Throughout the south-east, we have quite a good commuter rail network, serving a ring of towns. Beyond those towns, however, in smaller towns and villages, bus services simply do not exist. They will not exist if we leave it to the free market to decide whether to invest
in what will be a fairly long haul in persuading people on to buses and out of cars. There must be proper regulation and--I believe--public ownership of the bus industry, in order to promote a serious environmental policy. Likewise, we should reopen a considerable number of under-used freight-only lines or partially closed railway lines. With imagination and investment, things can be done.
Mr. Reed:
Is my hon. Friend aware that the cost of rail privatisation has made the opening up of such railway lines in Leicestershire almost impossible? The cost to the county council of running the line between Loughborough and Leicester, which includes the station that I regularly use, doubled overnight as a result of rail privatisation. Until we bring back into line the cost of rolling stock and leasing of lines, and the price that a county council has to pay to use the stations that it built before rail privatisation, investment will not take place.
Mr. Corbyn:
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Indeed, I know quite well the line to which he referred. As an avid reader of the Railway Magazine and several other journals, I know of the problems. County councils and others have imaginative proposals to reopen lines and stations and develop better services. Indeed, over the years, they have put quite a lot of effort into that. They now cannot afford to carry on, and as a result, all the imaginative investment, which was often made in the teeth of opposition from the previous Tory Government, is being wasted. We must have more imagination. If we leave everything to the market, we shall not succeed in attracting more people on to railways.
Mr. Lawrie Quinn (Scarborough and Whitby):
In view of the large subsidies given to train operating companies, does my hon. Friend think that taxpayers are getting value for money? Does he agree that, with regard to local government schemes, there is a greater burden on council tax payers than there was before privatisation?
Mr. Corbyn:
Yes. My hon. Friend is right. Although we are increasing subsidies to rail operators, we are not necessarily getting a better service because of the loose guarantees that were extracted when the franchises were awarded. We look to the new Government to be much tougher with rail operating companies. I hope that, as the franchises come to an end, we can return to public ownership and running of the railways. That is the best way of guaranteeing a decent service and an integrated transport system. Such a move must be at the heart of the Bill.
The hon. Member for Ceredigion is talking about national targets--that is right. He is talking about all the criteria that Ministers will have to take into account in considering local plans--that is right. He is talking about the role of local government--that is right. We must also ensure sufficient investment in the public transport network. For too long, the Department of Transport has been obsessed with road building as a solution to all our problems, and thought that railways were a problem in themselves. We should consider the matter the other way around and increase the use of railways and rail freight, and the efficiency that goes with it.
We face serious environmental problems in urban as well as rural areas. It is shocking that there are so many ventilators for children who suffer from asthma,
in primary schools in London and other cities. Most of that asthma is caused by traffic pollution. Children's lives consist only of home, television, car, school, car, home, television. There is often nowhere for them to play outside, and it is unsafe for them to walk on the streets. We are bringing up a generation that knows nothing of the joy of running about, playing in the street, walking or cycling. Such social aspects are behind the Bill.
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