What does a coalition government mean for transport? Letter to Local Transport Today

Lillian Burns, the Convenor of the North West Transport Roundtable, has had the following letter published in 'Local Transport Today' (LTT 545, 14 May - 27 May, 2010).

Dear Sir

During the run up to the General Election, many would-be members of parliament were behaving in the time-honoured fashion of agreeing to support calls from some potential voters for new roads and/or widened roads and bypasses with little consideration of what that might mean to the environment or to local communities they would not be representing and certainly without benefit of deep knowledge of all the arguments for and against. This was most obvious in constituencies where candidates were parachuted into areas of which they had limited local knowledge. Many of those candidates are now MPs and will no doubt be determined to press, with all the enthusiasm of newly elected politicians, for these new/ widened roads to be taken forward.

For those of us who worry about environmental limits and who are persuaded that mankind is having some impact on climate change, it would be tempting to assuage our concerns of the road-building lobby being allowed to run riot by hanging onto the thought that, because the country is in such a deep financial crisis, there is not going to be sufficient funding available for transport infrastructure projects. But such a thought does not give credence to the political realities of where we find ourselves.

The electorate failed to give sufficient support to any one political party and therefore to any one set of manifesto commitments. This could mean that all manifesto pledges, let alone 'green' ones, are now considered null and void. We effectively find ourselves in a 'clean slate' situation where, in order for support to be secured for major pieces of legislation, a coalition/ minority government may well be held to ransom by relatively small cabals of MPs pushing for their particular hobby horses.

I am reminded of an incident that occurred towards the end of the John Major government - at a time when the Conservatives had a parliamentary majority of just one. Nicholas Winterton (Conservative), who has just stood down as MP for Macclesfield, at first refused to vote for the Government's Finance Bill unless the government agreed to give the go-ahead to two road schemes in his constituency. If he had withheld his vote, the Finance Bill (which reflected the government's budget), would have fallen and so would the Government. A deal was struck and his vote for the Finance Bill secured with a government commitment to the cheaper of the two schemes - the A523 Poynton Bypass/ A555 Manchester Airport Link Road, which the then transport secretary, Robert Keys, rushed up to Manchester Airport to announce support for shortly before the 1997 General Election. The Conservatives, of course, lost that General Election and none of those roads are yet built, but the non-local newly-elected successor to Winterton was declaring his support for those schemes (having been invited to do so by some supporters) prior to Election Day.

Heaven help us all if the way described of doing transport policy business in the early part of 1997 becomes the norm during the present parliament! It would mean we had made no progress whatsoever in the last 13 years and the Integrated Transport White Paper of 1998 which promised that road-building would be seen as the last option and which held out so much hope for a more sustainable future, was definitively consigned to the waste bin. It would also leave the Climate Change Act in a very fragile state and susceptible to repeal. There could be dark days ahead if the voices of enlightened transport professionals and the environmental sector alike are drowned out by tawdry deals behind closed doors.

Lillian Burns