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Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is humorously discussing interesting matters. I am not so interested in what the Minister could do as in what the hon. Gentleman can do, and that is to keep within the terms of a Third Reading debate. What is done is done, and what is won is won. The Bill's Third Reading is before us. What the Minister did or failed to do has nothing to do with me.
Mr. Nicholls: I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. You enable me to move straight into the Bill and to say what the Minister did. It is obvious that she will not oppose the Bill today in the light of what happened at an earlier stage.
Perhaps the best bit of the Bill reads:
Mr. Nicholls:
It is not even Machiavellian. It is absolutely Ghengis Khan. The clause does not state that
The Bill continues and mentions one or two other things. It comes to a brief end after about another half a page. That is it: there is no obligation on the Minister to comply with the requirements of the Bill. To describe the Bill as flaccid would suggest a degree of rigidity that would be completely inappropriate. The one tiny and pathetic subsection that might conceivably do some good--it certainly could not do any harm--is neutered in the next subsection by allowing all discretion to rest with the Minister.
I came along to the House today notwithstanding the fact that my constituents' concerns are not reflected in the Bill. I have been in politics long enough to know that, if I write to people to the effect, "This Bill is not what you think it is and therefore it should be opposed," they will not understand.
Sir Nicholas Lyell (North-East Bedfordshire):
I shall speak briefly and a little more enthusiastically about the Bill than my hon. Friend the Member for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls). I think that, strangely enough, there is in politics a place for exhortation, and that what the Bill does is exhort. I see my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) shaking his head.I think that there is some value in the exhortation is that is contained in the Bill and I therefore give it a gentle welcome.
I am pleased to see the qualifications in clause 2(3) that require the Secretary of State, before targets are published for road traffic reduction, to have regard to matters such as "congestion",
The Minister knows that I have spent a great deal of time banging on about the Great Barford bypass and the need for the Bedford western relief road, which are highly relevant to the Bill. The position would be eased if there were a 10 per cent. reduction in traffic, but even if theBill
achieved that objective, there would still be a need for the bypasses for exactly the reasons that the Minister is rightly enjoined to consider "congestion",
Mr. Dafis:
Although I do not want to assist in spinning the debate out, I am grateful for the right hon. and learned Gentleman's gentle support for the Bill, but he should not get away with claiming that it is only about exhortation. Clause 2(1) states:
Sir Nicholas Lyell:
I do not want to take away the hon. Gentleman's achievement, but he undervalues exhortation, which is a crucial part of politics. It is an aspect of leadership and gives people direction. He is perhaps closer to my point than he thinks. What would it be the Secretary of State's duty to do? There is a duty
Mr. Forth:
My right hon. and learned Friend rightly says that there is an important role in politics for exhortation and that politicians should give a lead where they think it appropriate. My difference with him is that I have grave doubts about whether legislation and law making form an appropriate vehicle through which to exhort or to give leadership. I am asking for his advice and will obviously defer to his judgment ultimately, but should not the role of the law be much more specific and much more firmly based for it to be effective? I have difficulty with legislating to exhort, not with the concept of exhortation.
Sir Nicholas Lyell:
I understand, and to a considerable extent sympathise with, my right hon. Friend's point, but, in a democratic country, messages need to be put across and we need to set a sense of direction. We should not be so grand and so restrictive about the purposes of legislation that we do not occasionally use it to exhort and to push Governments of all flavours in a particular direction, especially through private Members' Bills.
Mr. Eric Forth (Bromley and Chislehurst):
It pains me to disagree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Sir N. Lyell), but the pain is offset by the pleasure of admitting that my hon. Friend the Member for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls) said most of what I had intended to say. However, that will not stop me saying a little more to give him my complete support.
In making my notes about the Bill and when listening to the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Dafis), I picked out the headings that my hon. Friend the Member for Teignbridge pursued, but I shall put a slightly different emphasis on them. A number of my reservations about the Bill are similar to his. One is that it is driven by a single-interest group. Such Bills are becoming more common. There is a burgeoning--some say that that is healthy in a democracy--of well-funded and well-organised interest groups, but they do not always represent a majority or a widely-based view.
I intervened on my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire to press him on how widespread the response to the Bill has been, generated as it has been by a single-interest group. Politicians should, as I did, measure the response by counting the number of spontaneous letters that they received fromthe electorate on the matter before the Bill arrived on the scene and before the single-interest group got to work. That is the acid test of how much the public are concerned.
"Be it enacted by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty".
That is rather a nice phrase. The reader then thinks that he will move on to something rather better. There is the obligation in the Bill that is to be found in clause 2, which reads:
"It shall be the duty of the Secretary of State, subject to subsection (2) and with the aim of reducing the adverse environmental"
the Unready was a deeply misunderstood social democrat of his day. The clause is much worse than my right hon. and learned Friend suggests. It states that the Secretary of State does not have to do anything if he considers that other targets or other measures are more appropriate--
"he shall publish a report explaining his reasoning and including an assessment of the impact of the other targets or other measures on road traffic reduction."
That is it.
"danger to other road users",
"social impacts", "effects on air quality" and "effects on health". Those considerations are of crucial importance to roads issues in my constituency.
"danger to other road users"
and "social impacts". The exhortation to consider the road traffic position in the round and in the context of an integrated transport policy, which is a grand way of saying that people should be able to find a bus or a train to get on after parking their cars, is valuable.
"It shall be the duty of the Secretary of State",
which is a little more than exhortation. The duty can be suspended only in certain circumstances--I have mentioned clause 2(2)--but the fundamental is that a requirement would be placed on the Secretary of State, so the Bill is not only about exhortation.
"to set and publish in a report targets for road traffic reduction in England, Wales and Scotland."
The duty is not to reduce road traffic, but to set targets. People aim to achieve targets, and when we exhort people to do something, we suggest a direction in which they should go.
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