House of Commons Hansard Debates for 24 Apr 1998 (pt 3)

Mr. Damian Green (Ashford): Has my hon. Friend observed the fact that many schools--certainly those in

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my constituency--have special car parking areas for sixth formers because more pupils, as well as teachers, are driving to school?

Mr. Bottomley: It is not my intention to claim that a particular teacher or pupil should not drive to school. However, I believe that most teachers and many pupils and their parents should not become involved in regular driving runs. It is worth discussing how we can provide more people with better transport alternatives. In many cases, that will involve using two legs to walk or to cycle.

I refer to the issue of journeys to work. Not all people can change where they live, their jobs or their place of work--I shall not discuss teleworking in any detail. It is clear that people should consider their journey to work when deciding to live or work elsewhere. I have not the slightest idea why people are concerned about whether their new home is in council band C, D or E--which may make a difference of about £100 a year--when they are happy to spend £2,000 or £3,000 a year travelling to work by car or by public transport. That will have a far greater impact on their free time and their wallet or purse.

Mr. Forth: Perhaps such people have made their own judgment--which was freely taken--and are prepared to endure a lengthy journey to work, at the cost that my hon. Friend mentioned, so that their life style reflects their priorities. Do they not have that right?

Mr. Bottomley: I agree with my right hon. Friend completely, as I usually do. My point is that people may like to think about those issues. Before the Hayes bypass was built and the M25 was completed, I used to use the example of someone working at Heathrow who took40 minutes to travel four miles to Heathrow from Hayes. Now that better roads and routes have been opened, that person takes 40 minutes to drive 40 miles. I leave people with that choice, as my right hon. Friend suggests. I shall not take too many more interventions, but I must give way to one of the well-known bicyclists in the Chamber.

Mr. Robathan: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Of course individuals must choose, but does he agree that Governments have a part to play in influencing their choice? Is not that what we are talking about in the Bill?

Mr. Bottomley: Yes, but the Government's actions will be limited. The Bill does not urge people to change everything that they are doing: it simply tries to find a strategy that allows for some change. I shall make a comparison between road traffic reduction and road casualty reduction. It is worth remembering that the Government identified the issues and helped people to make decisions about matters that were causing them the greatest distress, handicap and disadvantage. The Government did not reduce drink driving by young men by two thirds in two years through the actions of policemen, prisons or courts: that result was achieved by allowing people to make their own decisions. That is the most important message that we can send.

Governments can make some difference. That point is made by the fact that visitors will be able to travel on the Jubilee line underground extension to the largest conference seen in this country, at the millennium exhibition site on the Greenwich peninsula. When the American Bar Association comes to this country in

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the summer of 2000, if its members decide that they want to go from central London to the millennium dome on the same morning, the Jubilee line extension will be able to cope with them all in an hour and a half. That would not be possible with a motorway. Some of what the Government engender will make a difference, but most of it will be through a slightly different pattern of decision making.

I do not want to put too much emphasis on reducing emissions. It is true that some of the things that have been put in hand, partly by regulation and partly by commercial self-interest, will lead quite quickly to a reduction in motor vehicle emissions--for example, fuel efficiency improvements.

I declare an interest as chairman of a medium-tech company that counts cars going into car parks. The changes to car parking enforcement in London and other cities mean that no longer are there people driving round Berkeley square for two or three hours trying to find a space on a yellow line. Without enforcement, all the yellow line spaces were taken up. When one enforces the yellow line rules, people start to look for parking meters. When one prices parking in such a way that there is always a space, people get to their space first time rather than having to drive round for 20 minutes or so. That is a minor example.

I hope that we shall not go for road pricing for urban congestion, or for motorways, although there are good arguments for both. If people want to see the reasons, they are in the Transport Select Committee's reports.

The most important issue is whether people can make choices that improve their lives. We should not go always for disincentives. We should look for incentives that contribute to a better life, not just for people in cities or towns but for those in rural areas.

Sir Nicholas Lyell (North-East Bedfordshire): I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is a distinguished former Minister responsible for roads. In the rural areas that I represent, and in the surrounding suburban areas--for example, Bedford--improving the roads so that people may gain access--I hope, by public transport--is important. I hope that he will agree that the Bill is not anti-roads. Good bypasses and good new roads are very much part of what he and I and the House are trying to achieve.

Mr. Bottomley: One of my brothers-in-law, who runs a railway, says that we have to change our approach to some of the railways. In the old days, when people did not have private transport and most of them lived in inner-city areas, getting to a central railway station was easy. Nowadays, most people do not live in inner-city areas. They have to get to the railway station by some form of road transport, whether that is bus, taxi or car, and we shall have to contemplate parkway stations, so that people with cars can reach a place where they can get on a train without causing chaos in the inner-city area. Those arguments can be developed in greater depth on another occasion.

I finish on what I call the Milton Keynes mistake, which was a Government mistake, but not one of this or the previous Government's making. Milton Keynes should have been built using the original proposal for a figure-of-eight railway line linking up the villages. One

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continuous railway line would have allowed everyone to get from the villages to the centre of Milton Keynes by public transport relatively simply.

Such a concept brings together public and private partnership in a way that provides advantages to all sorts of people. It allows the village to be the centre of a community, and the town centre to be the place of congregation and work, and of links to the rest of the world.

That was a planning issue spotted by the architect at the time, but it should have been carried through and duplicated--not imposed. Finding out the greatest advantage to the individual and the group, to my mind, sums up progressive conservatism.

10.13 am

Mr. Patrick Nicholls (Teignbridge): I received a larger postbag on this Bill than on many measures, and what was impressive was that many of the letters were individually written. Constituents sometimes feel that they have discharged their democratic responsibilities by scribbling an illegible signature at the bottom of a badly reproduced letter and sending it off to their Member of Parliament "demanding action", and think that it has made a valid contribution to the debate. I do not think that it does, and sometimes I have not endeared myself to my constituents by pointing that out. Whether that has anything to do with the fact that my majority is now 281 as opposed to 9,500 I do not know. Somebody once said that a coward dies a thousand deaths and a brave man dies but once. I have done it a few more times than that, but there we are.

There have been a great many letters. Some of them have obviously been orchestrated, but many have not, and that is quite impressive. The curious thing about it is that the letters that I have received quote the title of the Bill, but they are not talking about this Bill at all. What they are talking about is what they would like to see in a Bill called something like the Road Traffic Reduction (National Targets) Bill. Sometimes, I have had to write back and say, "You're making a splendid case for a Bill, but I have to tell you that it is not the Bill before the House of Commons."

Mr. Forth: I am not asking my hon. Friend to divulge too many of the secrets of his postbag, but perhaps he would say what proportion of his electorate has taken the initiative to write to him to express their interest in the Bill. So that we can get some idea of the true concern among his constituents, given that he said that it is a large response of an unusual kind, can he give us some idea of the scale?

Mr. Nicholls: When I said that it was a large response, I meant large compared with other people who write to me about other issues. I have not totalled it. I think that it is probably into three figures. It is probably about100 people. There is a school of thought--hon. Members sometimes take comfort from this if they have larger majorities than mine--that, if one gets 100 letters on an issue, it must mean that 74,900 people are not worried about it either way. Although that can be comforting, I am not so sure that it is true. Letter writing is a form of contribution to public life, if it is done well and is not just signing something that is pre-written.

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In the same way that local political parties and local charities are run by a tiny number of people in any constituency, there is usually a great groundswell behind a campaign. One often says that behind a Conservative poster there is one vote and behind a Liberal poster there are 10. Although there may not be many actual letters, the matter does interest people. What troubles me is that, when they have written to me about the Bill, they have said that it will do things that it simply will not. People say that the Bill must be passed because, when it is, there will be substantial road traffic reductions.

In some ways, that is quite chilling because, by and large, the people who have written live in the three main towns in my constituency. They are not writing from Dartmoor. They are not writing from a rural location where, if they were not able to drive, it would be quite impossible for them to get in and out of a town to buy things. In a stern and sometimes condescending attitude, people will write that others are making unnecessary journeys. We all know the definition of an unnecessary journey: a journey that somebody else makes that we would not need to make ourselves.

We also know that road traffic reduction targets are all very well but, as a perk of one's ministerial job--I do not criticise the Minister for this, as I thoroughly enjoyed it--one has a ministerial car. I suppose that some members of the present Government are so genuinely caught up on their own convictions that they are putting in applications for ministerial bicycles, with baskets in the front for their red boxes, but by and large they are going around in ministerial cars. I find it remarkable when people write to me to say, "It's got to be done, as people are making unnecessary journeys," and when people unrealistically think that the taxpayer could or should provide a system of public transport that is so comprehensive that it could replace the service that people have to provide for themselves in their own village.

At times, I write back and say, "Hang on a second"--because I will live dangerously--"I disagree with what you want. I think you are simply wrong. I have to tell you that this Bill is not it." I usually get letters back to tell me that I have not read the Bill properly. It does not take long to read this Bill, and I shall come back to that point in a moment. I sometimes write back and ask which part of the Bill will reduce road traffic. So far, I have not received a single reply to that, for two reasons. Either people simply do not know--that will be most--or some will have taken the trouble to go down to the public library and read the Bill, which will not take them long.

One of the refreshing features of the Bill is that it can probably be understood on first reading. It might be necessary, however, to read it twice, for a reason to which I shall refer. That having been done, the reader can understand it. Anyone who goes to a public library thinking, "I'm going to persuade my Member of Parliament to vote for the Bill on Second Reading because it will bring about major road traffic reductions in my area," will be disappointed when he comes to read it.

When the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Dafis) spoke in favour of the motion that the Bill be read the Third time--I hope that he will not mind me saying that I think he did it extremely well--he set out a case for a Bill that is not before the House. I jotted down some of the things that the hon. Gentleman said. If it was in order

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for him to make such remarks, even though they might not have related directly to the Bill, it must be in order for me to refer to them in passing.

The hon. Gentleman said that the Bill will save lives, improve health and reduce road traffic. I am sure that there is such a Bill out there somewhere, ready to be written. I could even have a go at preparing such a measure now. I could share with the House, if it were in order to do so--I accept that it would not--what that Bill might be. I can assure the House, however, that it would not be the Bill that is before us. This Bill will do none of the things that the hon. Gentleman claims it will, to which I have referred. Instead, the Bill is about aspirations. It is an attempt to refer obliquely to the Bill that might have been, but will not be.

I do not criticise the hon. Member for Ceredigion, because we have all in our time been in a position when we have believed passionately in something. For all I know--I do not know him particularly well--when the hon. Gentleman came into politics the one thing that he wanted to do was introduce and take through the House a Bill that would bring about a reduction in road traffic. I may think that that is unrealistic, but that objective may have mattered to him passionately.

As a result, the hon. Gentleman drafts the Bill. He starts the process with which we are all familiar when we initiate private Bills. He needs to know, of course, whether he will receive Government support, and finds that he will not. However, I have a rather high regard for the Under-Secretary. She has dealt with a number of my constituency cases extremely briskly instead of merely shuffling trays around. I have high hopes of her, in due course, when it comes to the Kingskerswell bypass. That means that I shall restrain myself and not go through in any detail--others may not have the same restraint--the hon. Lady's position on those matters before she became a Minister and her present position. However, I am not sure that the facts have changed. Perhaps it is simply that the style of motor transport has changed.