Barbara Keeley (PPS (Rt Hon Harriet Harman QC (Minister for Women)), Leader of the House of Commons; Worsley, Labour)

I am pleased to open this debate on the consultation process for the Greater Manchester bid for funding from the transport innovation fund under your chairmanship, Mrs. Humble.

The bid and the linked proposals for a congestion charge are key concerns for my constituency of Worsley. From the outset, I have said that I want my constituents to have their say on the proposals, and I shall describe why I think that that is important. The aim of the TIF bid and the congestion charge proposals is to cut the levels of congestion in and out of Manchester at peak times. In 2005, the Department for Transport said that it was seeking proposals that combined some form of demand management such as road pricing with better public transport, including the better use of buses, trams and light rail schemes, provided they offered good value for money.

From the outset, my concern about Greater Manchester's bid was that my constituents would not benefit from better public transport yet would end up paying congestion charges on journeys into Manchester and on local journeys to Salford and surrounding areas such as Trafford and Bolton. Many of my constituents commute to work in central Salford or Manchester, and the poor state of the public transport run by privatised service providers means that many have no option but to travel by car. The congestion charging proposals will mean that they will have to pay from £500 to £1,200 annually just to get to work.

Many other Worsley constituents face charges when they cross charging zones on more local journeys. Examples include parents taking their children to school or teachers travelling to work at schools such as Bridgewater school, which is inside the zone. Salford council has a plan to merge St. George's high school in Walkden, which is outside the charging zone, with another school at a location inside the charging zone. Congestion charges would make the merger proposal very unpopular with staff and parents alike.

Patients attending appointments at Salford Royal or Christie hospitals, and family carers attending with, or visiting, them would also be charged. I have already received expressions of concern from constituents about that. Staff at the hospitals will be affected, as will businesses delivering to the hospitals. Students and staff at Salford, Pendleton and Eccles colleges and Salford university will also be affected.

Shopping facilities in Walkden, Little Hulton and Worsley do not cater sufficiently for local people. Most local people travel to other nearby locations such as Eccles, Swinton and the Trafford centre. All three locations are across the congestion charge boundary, so charges would be incurred by constituents who want to shop in those areas at certain times. People working at, or visiting, the town hall in Salford such as councillors, those attending meetings or even people just paying bills will be affected, as will local business people who cross the zones during peak times with deliveries. Worsley ward and neighbouring areas such as Swinton, Barton, Eccles and Winton all fall within the proposed outer charging zone. Paying to travel to those local areas will have a significant impact on my constituents.

The improvements to Greater Manchester public transport that will be funded by the TIF bid seem to be geared towards city centre improvements, with much of the investment intended for the expansion of Metrolink. Only a small number of my constituents use that facility. The main method of travel into Manchester for Worsley constituents is by car or, to a much lesser extent, by heavy rail. There is only limited use of rail networks through Atherton and Walkden for commuting into Manchester, because the services are overcrowded and subject to other problems, too. Express trains from Atherton do not stop at Walkden, because of the limited length of the platform. The two-carriage trains that do stop there tend to be full, and 30, 40 or more people are regularly left there in the morning peak hour, because they cannot get on the overcrowded trains.

Access to Walkden station is poor. There are two flights of stairs and no lift. The facilities are outdated and the station infrastructure is in urgent need of renewal. There are no car-parking facilities at the station apart from parking in nearby residential streets. An issue that we might draw out in this debate is the impact of informal park and ride arrangements on many parts of the Greater Manchester conurbation if the proposals go ahead. The proposed improvements in the TIF bid which would benefit Worsley are limited, and include things such as investment in improved real-time passenger information, CCTV and signage at Walkden station; extra carriages on rail lines via Atherton and Eccles, from which, incidentally, we will not benefit unless the problems at Walkden are fixed; and a share of Salford's 10 new school buses, which would mean possibly two or three of the yellow school buses.

Further improvements have been discussed, and much of the press coverage tends to focus on things such as the guided busway running from Leigh through Worsley and Salford to Manchester. However, the service is not funded in the TIF bid, and when I speak to constituents about transport matters, the Leigh guided busway is not a popular solution. At the Leigh end of Worsley constituency, the construction of the bus route would bring noise and constant disturbance to people living near the former railway line, which has become a peaceful backwater. In Walkden and Worsley, the guided busway would take up one lane of the two-lane East Lancashire road, and there are fears that it would serve to intensify congestion at peak times.

The bus services serving Worsley constituency are poor. Over the past two years, the privatised bus services provided by First in Manchester have been cut across Worsley constituency and Salford more generally. I have campaigned for improved services for my constituents but First has not listened to its customers or to me. Services that were vital to commuters and important to other bus users were cut. There are too many examples to detail, but I shall provide a few. The No. 35 service used by commuters to Manchester from Leigh via Atherton, Tyldesley, Mosley Common, Boothstown and Worsley—all key commuting destinations into Manchester—was withdrawn in 2006. The No. 553 service from Bolton to Boothstown and the No. 552 service from Bolton to Leigh were withdrawn, leaving no direct links from Tyldesley or Boothstown to Bolton.

Routes have also been changed. The bus service that linked Boothstown and Manchester, which was important to commuters, was cut back to one bus an hour. A vital bus service to the Trafford centre from Bolton via Little Hulton, Walkden and Worsley no longer stops at Little Hulton. I have received complaints from constituents, as I am sure many Members in the Chamber have, about the level of service on the buses. They range from complaints about frequency and lack of capacity during peak periods to examples of poor standards of service such as drivers refusing parents with a buggy access to the bus. Services need to improve dramatically before my constituents would use them instead of a car, but I cannot see any dramatic improvements on the horizon. In fact, when her local bus service was withdrawn, one of my constituents said:

"I find it difficult to understand how we are being urged to forego cars in preference of a public transport system which at times is poor or is non-existent."

Over the past two years, such issues have caused many of my constituents to switch to the car.

Given the situation with public transport, it is my firm view that the consultation proposed by the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities and the passenger transport executive is not up to the task. What has been proposed is a consultation brochure with a response form for each household; an exhibition bus with three roving exhibitions per local authority; some public meetings, and a website. Those of us who have tried to organise campaigns would not organise one around a single thing being delivered to each household, or depend on public meetings and websites. None of us would think that that was much of a campaign. The planned costs of the consultation are about £3 million, of which just under half is to be spent on advertising and opinion polling. After the first advertisements were aired this weekend, other MPs and I received angry e-mails about perceived bias in the advertising campaign and requests for the adverts to put both sides of the argument.

Some compelling points need to be aired during the debate. First, the charging zone in Greater Manchester is considerably larger than for any other existing scheme. It will cover 76 square miles, or 15 per cent., of Greater Manchester, compared with 8 square miles covered by the original London charging cordon and 11 square miles in Stockholm. The charging cordon for Greater Rome covers an area of just 2 square miles, or 3 per cent. of the city. The economic base of the Greater Manchester zone is fundamentally different from other charging locations. Charging schemes have been introduced in high-density employment areas such as city centres, which have an established public transport infrastructure. I have made it clear that no such infrastructure exists, certainly not in my constituency, whereas in London, 80 per cent. of workers in the zone already travelled to work by public transport before the charge was introduced. As I have mentioned, Worsley and other parts of the proposed Greater Manchester charging zone do not have effective public transport alternatives.

The other key difference is that, in London, public transport is controlled by Transport for London and the Mayor of London, who was able to invest the congestion charge funds in a fleet of new buses, for example, which improved public transport. In Greater Manchester, much of the TIF funding will be spent on the expansion of Metrolink, which will benefit only certain areas, and I have to say that my constituency is not one of them.

Another key issue that needs to be aired is the question of whether Manchester is so congested that the changes are justified and whether the proposed changes and charges will make enough of a difference. One of the main traffic bottlenecks in my constituency is at junctions 12 and 13 on the M60 motorway, and it is almost entirely due to poor junction design. For a number of years, the Highways Agency proposed a scheme to improve those junctions, because there was such a traffic bottleneck. Traffic filters on and off the M62 and M602 motorways across a very tight area. However, this problem—our worst problem—would not be tackled or improved by the TIF proposals. Other parts of Greater Manchester also have traffic bottlenecks that need to be tackled by the Highways Agency.

I travel around my constituency, both during peak hours and outside those hours. Compared with the situation in London before the congestion charge was introduced, we have a traffic peak at the start of the day and in the afternoon/early evening. I used to work in London a couple of days a month before congestion charging was introduced, and there is no comparison between the scale of the gridlock in London and the situation in Greater Manchester. It would be difficult for many of my constituents to pay congestion charges just to get to work in Manchester or central Salford. It would lead to staff making demands on employers to take on some or all of the cost of congestion charging, which might be a big factor in respect of Manchester and Salford becoming employment destinations. Businesses are fearful about that and the consequent impact it would have on them.

Towns such as Eccles and Swinton struggle to survive against competition from retail and business centres elsewhere. It would be tempting for businesses to relocate from those places and for staff to change jobs to locations outside the charging zone. Similarly, schools, colleges and Salford university might find it harder to attract staff and students if those people could switch to similar establishments outside the charging zones. Many of my constituents work and shop at the Trafford centre, but there would be an incentive for them to travel instead to other out-of-town shopping centres. Many unintended consequences would have an adverse impact on life for all the businesses and organisations within the charging zone.

I am pleased to have opened this debate today. When the Transport Act 2000, which provided for the introduction of road charging outside London, was introduced the then Deputy Prime Minister said that if congestion charging schemes were to be introduced and approved, certain changes must be met, including the condition that public transport should be improved before charging schemes began to offer motorists a proper choice. A further condition was that local people must be consulted. As I have made clear, I do not believe that public transport can be improved enough in my constituency to offer motorists a proper choice. My constituents should be properly consulted, and I will work to make sure that they get as much information as possible and have a chance to have their say.