It is an extraordinarily thing to go across Switzerland on a Transalpino train based really largely on British engineering, on the ideas the British engineers came up with but finally abandoned because you realise how the very entrepreneurial skills, the very engineering skills for which we've been famous for so many years are those not still found within this country and the railway system is a very classic example of what we have to do. The government when it brings its strategic rail authority, an authority that it set up in shadow form is confronting precisely this question, not the lack of investment but the lack of coherence, the lack of proper planning and I believe that we shall see some very positive changes. It is not just those of us who suffer the joys of Virgin rail every week who know there are real difficulties within the rail system it is anyone who wants to see the next century not only capable of absorbing increasing numbers of passengers but not managing for decline but managing for expansion and that, of course, affects every level of our lives. And so the government, I believe, will begin increasingly to start the debate about not only congestion charging but also the use of some kind of restraint upon the movement of goods and chattels generally. We want to see much more back on the rail but inevitably even if we get the 16 per cent that we're aiming at that will still leave large amounts of goods travelling by roads and unless those roads are maintained and kept to the standard which will provide the kind of level of care we need then inevitably I think the public will have a right to complain about what is happening within the transport system.
Aviation again is a case in point.
The south east of England has at the present time, a rate of growth in aircraft movement that would be very welcome in almost any other industry in this country. It is very interesting that people, when they talk about aviation, don't look at it in the same way. If you say to them every hundred foot of runway translates into a thousand jobs they are quite stunned. For the first time we have in this government a secretary of state who not only has been committed to transport for well over twenty years but is someone who understands the problems. There were seventeen years in which we had seven ministers of Transport.