My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is quite right to highlight the Government’s failure to carry out the systematic review of road projects recommended by the Climate Change Committee, and addressing the risk of insufficient environmental action by the Department for Transport that was highlighted. I just want to speak about the effect that has on the levelling-up agenda, which it links to. All these actions are interactions, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady Young of Old Scone, are quite right to highlight the environmental impacts of these decisions. However, there are even bigger and more important issues, which I will highlight to the House.
As an aside, my need to stay for two nights in London to take part in this debate tonight is also relevant, as well as the thousands of people who were going to come London today but who cannot do so because of a national rail strike. That is not directly connected to this but it is symptomatic of how the Government are dealing with the people who deal with that infrastructure. After two years, ASLEF has still not resolved a pay dispute, but it is not all its fault. This is on the record: I am not having a go at Avanti trains tonight. The infrastructure—Network Rail—is to blame along the way as well. Trains are blocked and lines are down and not working. I can tell you where they are; people need to know where they are. If you go to Milton Keynes or Watford, lines are down. It affects the travel anywhere around that area and affects everything coming into London, including people.
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It is the failure of joined-up thinking that is causing me angst and making me want to stand here tonight in this short debate and just try to explain why. The draft statement says:
“The government’s Levelling Up the United Kingdom White Paper recognises the role that transport can play in boosting productivity, by connecting people to jobs, and businesses to each other, and sets out an ambition to level up transport connectivity. It recognises the role that specific projects on national networks can play in improving connectivity between towns and cities”.
That is what we are trying to do. The difficulty with that well-intentioned statement is that it is not happening. They are not connecting up the towns and cities of the north, the Midlands or the far north, such as Newcastle. Someone seems unable to deliver these NNNPS policies.
On transport, the Government say:
“By 2030, local public transport connectivity across the country will be significantly closer to the standards of London, with improved services, simpler fares and integrated ticketing”.
If your Lordships know of a town or city in this country that has anything like the simplified ticketing system of London, please tell me about it. Greater Manchester is doing its best, with the mayor bringing the buses back into public ownership, and we are now going to try to get our own mini-Oyster scheme going, but to try to connect that with the trains is like pulling teeth. These people do not talk to each other. Although the national Government cannot be responsible for everything, surely they are responsible for connecting up people. They give devolved powers to regions and then they do not allow those regions to connect up the policies that enable the facilities to deliver, and that is all that we are looking for. We are looking for the Government to actually enact these great things. I have highlighted these statements, which are all very worthy, but there is nothing behind them.
If you compare our transport system and infrastructure with Europe, we are lamentable. We fall behind France, Germany and Italy and every other country, and you dare not go any further, to Japan, and get on that bullet train, or to China, where in the time we have been debating one more runway at Heathrow Airport, they have built 21 airports. The whole thing is holistic.
My question to the Minister is: will anybody grasp this situation and try to pull it together? Everybody knows what we need to do but nobody seems to want to do it. Paragraph 2.1 of the National Networks National Policy Statement says:
“As recognised through the government’s economic growth and levelling up agenda, improved connectivity and accessibility, both locally and inter-regionally, facilitates deeper labour markets giving individuals better access to jobs, and education, and businesses better access to skills. Improved connectivity can increase the economic density of an area, leading to increased productivity”.
That is surely what the Government want: fewer people claiming benefits and more people in work, paying taxes, contributing to society and being part of society. The metro mayors are getting it and are trying to do it. We have now seen the local elections and the mayoral elections. I just hope that the Government can step back and look again.
Finally, this is the most important part of what the Government themselves have said:
“By 2030, the number of people successfully completing high-quality skills training will have significantly increased in every area of the UK … this will lead to 200,000 more people successfully completing high-quality skills training annually, driven by 80,000 more people completing courses in the lowest skilled areas”.
That is what we need, and that is what is at risk. We need those 80,000 low-skilled workers and those 200,000 people getting high-quality jobs, because that in itself is what creates the wealth and prosperity of this country.
On projects, I will briefly touch on HS2—I was on the Select Committee for it. We have a saying up north: “A blind man on a galloping horse could see what was coming”. It was quite clear what was coming: the cost, the cost, the cost. As a principle, I get it; it is a statement of intent about connecting the north and
the south—I understand that—but nobody thought it through. If there is one thing this Government must be held accountable for, it is that they do not think it through. Come the next general election, whatever the result may be, it will be because they never thought it through.