Labour's shameful failure

Published on Thursday 19 June 2008 21:44

It was inevitable that this government's weak, cynical and inadequate approach to transport, environment and energy issues should come under harsh scrutiny from the Tory leader, David Cameron (Focus, 17 June).

New Labour's rudderless inability to promote a coherent and sustainable transport policy worth the name is dismally obvious, particularly its wilful abdication of responsibility to invest in an expanded passenger/freight system offering tangible benefits for sustainable transport in a post-oil society.

Rather than invest adequately in rail improvement, New Labour has sought to discourage rail usage by imposing punitive fare increases for the next three years – in a country already burdened with Europe's highest fares.

And, despite its understanding of how domestic airlines' climate-wrecking emissions could be radically cut by a fast, competitive TGV-style Scotland-London rail link, Gordon Brown's government won't even plan for this before 2012. Yet the increased tax "windfall" generated by rising oil prices represents a unique opportunity to inject major capital modernisation, improvement and expansion into a rail network that has been weakened by decades of investment denial and senseless closures.

Time is running out for this government to implement well-researched strategies embracing more focused taxation and meaningful incentives to reduce our spiralling oil thirst and climate degradation arising from Europe's highest levels of car dependence and over-reliance on heavy road haulage.

K A SUTHERLAND

Dirleton Gate

Glasgow