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Mr. Hilton Dawson (Lancaster and Wyre): How much correspondence does the right hon. Gentleman receive from constituents who are not members of pressure groups complaining about the impact of traffic congestion, noise, smell, vibration and pollution on their lives?
Mr. Forth: At a rough estimate--I should not like the hon. Gentleman to hold me to it too strictly--about one letter a month. My constituency is a busy and, happily, relatively affluent outer-London suburb that enjoys a lot of traffic. I should have thought that I would have received more of a response if the concern to which hon. Members have referred existed. To date, I have not had such a spontaneous response.
It is claimed that the genesis of such Bills reflects widespread public support, but I challenge that argument because I do not believe that they do. Politicians may be subjected to pressure through their postbag or through telephone calls, but it is our responsibility to make a judgment about the extent to which that reflects widespread genuine public concern.
Mr. Robathan:
Does my right hon. Friend agree that orchestrated letter-writing or telephone campaigns can lead one to adopt a more sceptical position? Although100 constituents out of 70,000 may have written, we should consider the other side of the issue more closely.
Mr. Forth:
My hon. Friend makes a valid point. Any group that puts pressure on Members of Parliament must make a careful judgment about the nature of that pressure and its likely effect.
In my discussions with constituents who made telephone calls at the prompting of the interest group behind the Bill, I took the trouble, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Teignbridge, to ask--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. I cannot allow the right hon. Gentleman to dwell on his constituency contacts or on a campaign, because, as I have said, we are past that stage. The House has decided on the Bill's earlier stages, and we are now on Third Reading.
Mr. Forth:
That allows me to go into the point that I was making. I asked my constituents how they thought that the Bill would lead to the reduction in traffic on which they were so keen. That was not an unreasonable question. I said, "You have taken the trouble to call me to say how much you support the Bill's aims as set out in its short title." It was not unreasonable to ask them, "What sort of reductions do you envisage as a result of the Bill?" We often got into interesting conversations about whether the traffic that is generated by parents who are taking their children to school would be reduced. My hon. Friend the Member for Worthing, West (Mr. Bottomley) mentioned that. Some people said yes, but others were not so keen.
We are familiar with the list of categories such as families going to the supermarket to do their weekly shopping, people visiting relatives and elderly people who feel more secure in their cars than they do on public transport or in walking. Many kinds of traffic arise from family and personal circumstances and one must ask, "Which type of journey do we envisage being reduced perhaps not as a result of the Bill, but to reach the targets that the Government will eventually set?"
My hon. Friend the Member for Teignbridge spoke about aspirations, a word that I have in my notes. My hon. Friend got there before me. The problem with Bills such as this one is that it is easy for them to result in aspirations or to exhort through legislation. However, if we have no clear idea of how to achieve results, we are being irresponsible. It is the duty of those who support such legislation to have a clear idea, even if it is not expressed, of exactly what traffic they envisage will be reduced, the effect on people's lives, and the cost implications. I hope that the Minister will deal with those matters in detail.
Mr. Dafis:
The report by John Whitelegg goes through the categories of traffic and describes by how much
Mr. Forth:
I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman has made that point because I am prepared to do a deal with him. If he is prepared to proceed with legislation on the basis of opinion polls and support, I shall trade my support for the Bill for his support for the restoration of capital punishment. As he knows, time and again people give their overwhelming support to proposals for the restoration of capital punishment. I am prepared to discuss with the hon. Gentleman the interesting notion of legislating by opinion poll, but, if we take that route, the hon. Gentleman must not be too selective.
I shall not pursue that line, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because you might not approve of it. Legislating by such means is rather dubious. To say that many organisations want such measures is not conclusive or definitive. We have a responsibility to think about what real people in their ordinary lives think. Organisations have agendas, to which they are legitimately entitled.
Mr. Peter Bottomley:
The Bill places on the Minister responsibilities and duties to set a strategy and road traffic reduction targets. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it would be fine if people chose to travel fewer miles because that made their lives better? Is it by choice that we have the lowest homicide rate in the European Union?
Mr. Forth:
Indeed. If we could find a way to combine freedom of choice with the Bill's aims, that would be ideal, but that is not the way that the case has been put. We are told that the Government will make a necessarily arbitrary decision about how much they think road traffic should be reduced and that, by some mysterious process which we do not yet fully understand, although the hon. Member for Ceredigion has an expert in whom he has touching faith, all the problems will be solved.
In his speech, to which we all listened carefully, the hon. Member for Ceredigion did not give an exhaustive list. That is a pity, because such a list would have been relevant. However, he mentioned parking, bus promotion, the use of bicycles, and traffic management. I agree that it is perfectly reasonable to charge for parking facilities. I belong to the school of thought that prefers the pricing approach. As my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing, West said, that would enable people to choose, which is what we expect them to do over cigarettes and car use. The Government continually increase the price of petrol.
People are given the message that the Government of the day think that consumers should base their judgments and priorities on cost. I have no difficulty with that concept, but it is not the same as bus promotion, which sounds good when it is said quickly, but I suspect means little.
Mr. Paterson:
On the issue of pricing, does my hon. Friend agree that sticking excess duty on fuel is a crude,
Mr. Forth:
In my haste to be brief, I am in danger of glossing over such matters. My hon. Friend rightly stops me on the point that, although I support a pricing approach, I agree that the universal imposition of tax on products such as petrol ignores the complexity of the market and of the structure of transport with which the Bill aspires to deal. For example, there are differences between my hon. Friend's constituency and mine. Mine is urban or suburban, while his is much more rural, and that gives rise to different traffic reduction requirements. In the context of the Bill's aspirations, how far do we think that the measures that are likely to flow from it, if any, will make the distinction that my hon. Friend reasonably seeks? Will there be a much more sophisticated approach, using the pricing mechanism, to acknowledge the difference in the type of traffic geographically and by social groups? I shall not labour the point, but I agree with my hon. Friend, and I am grateful to him for his intervention.
Bus promotion encounters the great difficulty that arises when people look to public transport, broadly and loosely defined, as the answer to most of the problems. The difference in nature between journeys that are undertaken in cars and those that people are able to undertake by public transport is so complete that the public transport solution probably has only limited applicability to reducing overall traffic.
Sir Nicholas Lyell:
When my right hon. Friend intervened during my speech, he rightly said that we in the Conservative party can think about more than one topic. Perhaps he would focus on clause 2(2), which states that the Secretary of State is not obliged to comply with certain requirements if he
"considers that other targets, or other measures, are more appropriate for the purpose of reducing the adverse impacts of road traffic".
Does that not encourage the Minister to do what I am sure my right hon. Friend would wish to be done when we wend our way through Chislehurst, and I would wish to be done when I see the increasing congestion and accidents in Great Barford and to the west of Bedford, and to build decent roads when they are needed as part of the response to the Bill?
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