Channon under attack for Capital's traffic 'chaos'
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• London Labour MPs have launched a campaign aimed at persuading the Government to introduce emergency improvements to the capital's road system.
With politicians of all parties angered by growing delays to freight and passenger traffic, the London group of the Parliamentary Labour Party last week demanded the "red light on traffic chaos".
Only hours after Transport Secretary Paul Channon came under all-party fire for the traffic crisis, London group chairman Tony Banks (a former GLC member) said: "Anyone who travels in London knows the scale of chaos, yet the Government is taking no effective action to sort it out." 0 MPs have backed the Government's objection to extending EEC powers to spend cash no new transport projects.
The Commons has voted 218-144 against creating a spending programme for transport infrastructure under which the European Commission would be able to select projects from a general list and earmark cash from the European budget up until 1992. Also vetoed was a Brusselsbased scheme to prolong until 1992 existing arrangements empowering member states to grant subsidies for infrastructure investments on combined transport schemes — including operating costs associated with combined transport. Roads and Traffic Minister Peter Bottomley told MPs: "We are opposed because the community should not proliferate spending instruments. Transport infrastructure can be and is supported from the Community's existing structural funds, for example the European Regional Development Fund.
"Subsidies would distort competition, while freight transport should operate on an entirely commercial basis," he says. "If these types of operation or their infrastructure are in demand, there should be no problem about proving appropriate facilities on a commercial basis".
Bottomley told the House that the infrastructure schemes are also opposed by Germany, France, the Netherlands and Denmark — and the British Government does not expect the proposal to be adopted.