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Second Term, Last Chance

New Ground 61
Summer 2001

Many in New Labour fail to understand the green agenda. At best, they don't see it as central to 'the Project'. At worst, they see it as both "anti-poor" and "anti-business". I suspect the reason for this is that only a few people in New Labour were involved in the battles of the 1980s and '90s which saw such significant developments in green circles. The green movement was establishing a strong agenda linking sustainable and social issues. It was also winning political battles, most notably, in reversing the Tories' road building programme, thereby changing the direction of transport policy. During that time New Labour fought other battles: to make Labour acceptable to business and to overcome the Labour left. It was as if two movements were battling and changing in parallel, but separate, worlds.

By the summer of '97, both New Labour and the green movement were celebrating victories. New Labour had won an election. The environmentalists had not only helped to defeat the roads programme, but had 'greened' Tory ministers like John Gummer and Stephen Norris. Both groups were on a roll, but each had different expectations of the new government. New Labour valued above all its ability to govern with business support. Environmentalists wanted New Labour to push forward green ideas.

The Transport White Paper was welcomed by environmental groups. But New Labour came to feel it was too anti-business and began to block its progress. From that moment, Labour's transport policy never had any coherence. It is maybe not surprising then that The Times gave to the government's first-term transport performance 0 out of 10. That was not entirely fair! The government did make solid progress on road safety and it did boost spending on local transport plans. But the mark does reflect the inaction after John Prescott's impressive Transport White Paper in 1998.

In particular, it reflected the failings of the 10-Year Transport Plan. Hailed by its author, Lord Macdonald, as a sign of Labour's long-term commitment to improving transport, the plan began to fall apart within a year. The respected academic Professor Phil Goodwin, for many years a key adviser to Prescott, produced a report which showed that the £60 billion planned investment in the road system would only cut journey times by two seconds per mile over the next 10 years. It emerged that much of the £60 billion promised for railways was dependent on investment from the private sector (which is far from certain).

That Macdonald failed so spectacularly is perhaps not surprising. He was brought in to fill the vacuum left when New Labour ran scared from Prescott's White Paper. Macdonald gave policy a coherency of a sort. But it was the coherency of a short-term fixer. The much-vaunted 10-Year Plan has turned out to be a one year wonder. In its second term Labour will probably shred it. But, to make matters worse, Macdonald was a fixer from a bygone generation, unable to grasp the basic concepts of sustainability. He was as bemused by modern green thinking as John MacGregor, the Tory minister whose proposed roads programme led to a nationwide revolt against road building. Both men's ideas were stuck in the Clydeside of the 1950s where they grew up. No wonder the green movement so despised Macdonald: he was a carbon copy of their bete noir of the 1990s, the man they took on and defeated.

Transport presents New Labour with a major challenge in its second term. Not just because the transport system is in such an obvious mess, but because sorting it out will challenge New Labour's most basic ideas.

First and foremost, a Labour government will need to wrest control of the railways and buses back from the private sector. Without that, the sort of sustainable, equitable transport system advocated by the green movement is impossible. A sustainable transport system requires measures to persuade people to switch from cars and planes to trains and buses; an equitable one guarantees a basic level of travel to everybody. To achieve these goals, the government needs enough control over the private sector to ensure it gets the bus and rail routes, as well as the service frequency and fares, staffing and accessibility it requires. This may not require renationalisation of the bus or even rail industries, but it does mean that New Labour will need to ditch its 'third way' approach of relying on the private sector to deliver public good.

But New Labour needs to acquire a new boldness in other areas if a truly sustainable transport policy is to be put in place. Labour must reduce the need to travel, clamping down on out-of-town developments and taxing their parking spaces, however hard the supermarket giants may lobby. It needs to set tough traffic reduction targets, give full backing to Ken Livingstone's congestion charging plans and increase fuel prices, whatever the Sun, Mail or Telegraph may say. It needs to promote walking and cycling as integral to the creation of high-quality, livable, sustainable cities, however much the AA, RAC and Jeremy Clarkson may posture. It requires a tough Aviation White Paper, the rejection of Heathrow Terminal Five and fiscal measures that increase the price of flying, whatever BA, BAA and the other giants of the aviation industry may threaten. Moreover, the entire road building programme needs to be reassessed in the light of the academic reports, ignored by Macdonald, that new roads generate traffic but also, in an advanced economy, rarely lead to economic development.

Unless New Labour can deliver a socially inclusive, sustainable transport policy in its second term, it will leave itself open to the rumbustious challenges from the green movement that destroyed Tory transport policies in the 1990s. More than that, many environmentalists, and indeed many people looking for a more equitable approach to transport, will move away from Labour altogether. We are looking for concrete actions from day one of a second term to show that New Labour has at last grasped the relevance of the green agenda. Otherwise, disillusionment will set in long before New Labour has built the Hastings Bypass or Heathrow Terminal Five.