I joined the demonstration organised by STRiFE beforehand and then we all crowded into the council chamber to hear the opening submissions – so many of us that the council’s head of legal services joined other council staff in pulling out more chairs so everyone could sit.

In his opening remarks the Inspector, Mr Mead, specifically referred to a letter I had written to him at the end of last week.  In this letter I had asked him to consider an adjournment of the whole Inquiry.  I had not made an external song and dance about this request.  It was not a stunt.

But following Hertfordshire County Council’s recent abject decision not to oppose the Helioslough application on highway grounds, my old Liberal Democrat friend and colleague David Parry decided to review all the highways data.  He then phoned me up and asked me to come over to see if I agreed with his discovery of what looks to be very dodgy arithmetic in the calculations used by Helioslough’s “experts” to predict likely lorry movements in and out of the terminal.

This is of crucial importance since up until now all sides have accepted the Helioslough lorry movement forecast.  The discussion at the last Inquiry was simply whether the local road network could cope with this additional volume of traffic.  The Council, STRiFE and other objectors all argued it could not, the Inspector eventually ruled that the road network could cope.  But if the number of lorry movements has in fact been hugely under-predicted by Helioslough, then the Inspector was basing his decision on false data, all bets are off and the whole basis of the application should be re-reviewed.

When David says something about planning, it is always worth listening to what he has to say.  When he was a member of St Albans District Council, he was chairman of the planning committee (the then equivalent of Planning Portfolio Holder) and he led the successful campaign against the then Conservative government’s wish to see massive retail development on the “golden triangle” formed within the crossing of M1, M25 and A405.  David now runs a local design practice.  He knows his stuff.

So this is what I wrote to the Inspector once I was confident that Helioslough had a case to answer:

Dear Mr Mead
As Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for St Albans, I have registered my wish to speak during the days reserved for members of the public in order to express my reasoned opposition to the proposed freight terminal on the former Radlett Aerodrome.
In preparing my statement of evidence I have been reading the material submitted by others and particularly that from Mr David Parry, chairman of the St Stephens Liberal Democrats.  As a result of reading his statement, I am writing to you without delay formally to request an adjournment of proceedings since he would appear to have exposed a fundamental flaw in the calculation used to generate lorry movements into and out of the Radlett site.
He has noted that the likely traffic generation figures for Radlett have been generated by extrapolation from actual vehicle movements at Daventry International Railfreight Terminal (DIRFT) in 2005 and at Magna Park in an undated survey.  Indeed all the parties have accepted the calculation.
But if you examine the reasoning, it is the relative square footage of the warehousing at Daventry and Magna Park which is used to compare with the proposed square footage at Radlett in order to calculate vehicle movements from Radlett.
However the Radlett warehousing is proposed to be 20 metres tall with a likely internal storage height of 18 metres whereas DIRFT and Magna Park both consist of warehousing mostly of no more than 12 metre internal storage height.  So already we have fifty percent more storage volume for the same internal square footage.
18 metre high storage stacks require automated rail guided loading and unloading systems, which in fact mean that the stacks are much closer together than in conventional warehouses using standalone forklift trucks.  So not only will Radlett have higher stacks than at DIRFT, they will also be closer together.  On this basis Radlett could have double the volume of storage for the same floor area.
This makes all the predictions of lorry movements totally understated.  Assuming Radlett is in line with modern norms in terms of turnover, we have to presume up to twice the number of lorry movements as predicted in the Helioslough submission.
Since these were the figures used in the previous Inquiry – without argument I admit – this implies that the Inspector’s decision that the local road network could cope was based on false information.  The local roads will be overwhelmed and the balance of movement between road and rail will be radically altered making it far more obviously a road distribution site.
I agree it is extraordinary that nobody has noticed this before.  I am only a layman in these matters.  But I do note that all data about warehousing talks in square footage rather than volume – it just seems to be taken for granted.  The elephant has been in the corner and nobody has noticed it – until now.
Mr Parry will be talking to his evidence on Public Day.  I will also be referring to these matters.  But the flaw seems so profound that I am formally writing to ask for an adjournment to give all parties the opportunity to re-examine the data.
I look forward to your prompt response.

The Inquiry Programme Office had contacted me on Friday to say that the Inspector had asked that the letter be circulated to all the parties, that is Helioslough, St Albans District Council and STRiFE.  STRiFE certainly received it and they believe there is a real issue which Helioslough must address.

Martin Kingston QC, lead counsel for Helioslough, said he knew nothing of my letter and was clearly taken aback.  Well he knows now.

Today the Inspector told us that he was not going to adjourn the Inquiry at this stage but that my letter clearly raised issues which will need to be addressed.

There are of course many other reasons for opposing this awful proposal and I will be rehearsing many of them when I give evidence at the Public Day on December 3rd.  But we just could have dropped a depth charge into the whole process.  Lets hope so.

That’s why I was very pleased formally to pledge my support recently for the Royal British Legion’s military covenant campaign to get a better deal for the British Armed Forces family.

The Royal British Legion’s manifesto for the next general election sets out priorities for the next Government to improve conditions for the British Armed Forces past and present and their families. It encourages MPs and prospective parliamentary candidates to “do their bit” for Service Personnel and their families, the bereaved, veterans and dependants.

Actually it was a very easy ask of me by the British Legion.  I went to a school which had more old pupils killed in the First World War than any other school – nearly 700 and over 400 were killed in the Second World War.

Many of my family were in the armed forces.  My father was a regular soldier.  My grandfather went to France in 1914 with the British Expeditionary Force as a private soldier.  So he was an ‘old contemptible’.  He then joined the Royal Flying Corps, was a founder member of the RAF, later commanded RAF Hornchurch, and served through the Second World War as well.  Two of my uncles were killed in the Second World War and great uncles were killed in the First World War.

We demand a lot from our armed forces and we owe it to them to treat them and their families right – not just when they are serving but afterwards as well.  Shockingly poor pay for the lower ranked personnel, inadequate kit, terrible military housing, and too little care for ex-service people all leave a very bad taste in the mouth.  That is why we have to be firm about upholding the military covenant – we have a duty to stand by those who are serving and those who have served.

I am glad that the Liberal Democrats have taken this on fair and square – see here for Nick Clegg’s campaign on soldiers’ pay.

Back in the topsy turvy world of the First Capital Connect franchise serving St Albans City and the route from Bedford, drivers at the Bedford depot are refusing to work on their rest days.  This is causing real problems and it’s just been announced that today’s northbound trains out of  St Pancras are likely to be replaced by buses after 11 pm – on what is a major night out for many London commuters.

It’s not just a much longer and less pleasant journey, there must be real questions as to whether they can physically move all the passengers likely to affected.

And from reading the stream of comments from drivers on the RailUK Thameslink web forum, it seems as though drivers from the Brighton and Blackfriars FCC depots will be refusing to work on their rest days next week, so that it looks like more days of misery for St Albans commuters.

Clearly there is a dispute over pay, and the drivers are leveraging the fact that FCC don’t employ enough of them and so depend on their working on their rest days – which of course is voluntary.

But it’s the poor bloody infantry of the St Albans rail commuter who is left picking up the pieces.  It’s just not good enough. Both sides must settle their differences as soon as possible.

Significantly it was one of the very few non-residential projects highlighted in last night’s architectural slide-show compered by Roy Darby.  All the projects were completed in the 2008 calendar year.  Frankly not all were good, there is still too much pastiche, we seem sometimes paralysed by our history rather than developing organically with good modern architecture.

But I was pleased to see the restoration of our party headquarters at St Albans City Liberal Club highlighted (thank you Civic Society!).  And other star turns were a superb restoration of a significant house on London Road and the renovation of the old Town Hall.

The major part of the Town Hall is now occupied by STARTS, the acronym of St Albans Arts, a charity set up to promote excellence of the arts in St Albans.  It is an iconic building in a magnificent location – Nikolaus Pevsner memorably described it as “the visual urban charter of St Albans”.  It has all the potential to be a significant cultural hub at the heart of the city.

So I agree with the Civic Society that it is disappointing that the obvious main entrance under the portico is labelled as a coffee shop and leads to a Gaggia coffee machine rather than a route through to the grand staircase and hallway beyond.  I hope opportunities can be seized to make a more coherent whole of the interior of the most significant secular public building in St Albans – but at least it looks a million dollars from the outside!

I was calling for longer terms for rail franchises – subject to stringent periodic review – to encourage rail operators to invest for the long-term but with much tougher conditions on passenger experience and quality of service.  And following the disgraceful 8 percent increase in St Albans fares earlier this year, I was calling for rail fare rises to be kept to no more than inflation and where possible below.

There were far more people wanting to speak – all relaying their individual experiences with rail services – than there was time available.  Three members of the LibDem parliamentary team were called – Norman Baker MP, shadow Secretary of State for Transport, Mark Hunter from Cheadle, and Lembit Opik.

The motion was given overwhelming support by conference delegates.

I am sure that this is a story which will run and run.  I can promise to continue to stand up for local commuters.

The full text of my speech follows:

Rail privatisation – so many negatives about the way that our railways were first privatised.  The whole subsequent sorry history.

But it is history.  This motion is about the future.  Last year the Fast Track Britain policy paper was approved by this Conference.  It presented an integrated transport strategy.  This motion builds on that work, prompted by the arbitrary and unfair way this year’s fare rises were applied – and by the opportunities offered by the current shambles of the East Coast franchise.

It focuses on passengers – a word dropped from railwayspeak.

We are all “customers” now.

No distinction between someone who buys a pizza on a station concourse and someone who has bought a ticket to ride.

Being called a customer implies there’s a choice, yet for most rail passengers there is no choice.

Five hundred years ago Tudor and Stuart absolute kings and queens gave monopolies to their friends – soap for you, salt for you.

Now New Labour flogs off monopoly rail franchises.  There’s progress for you.

Take St Albans – I intend to.  London is our main employer.  People have to get there on trains run by First Capital Connect.  Over six million journeys a year.  And that doesn’t include the journeys from Kings Langley on the truly terrible London Midland service.

FCC bought the former Thameslink franchise by committing to pay the Treasury a “premium” of £808 million – a straight tax on the London commuter.

Public transport turned into private monopoly up for sale to the highest bidder.

It contributes to a culture of mean little grabs –  just at St Albans station, free ATM machines replaced by ones demanding fees, car park machines over-charging in off-peak hours, four-car trains running instead of eight-car units, changes to off-peak ticket rules – and most extraordinary of all in 2008 walk-up passengers being over-charged for fares because of sloppy annual fare rise re-coding of the tills at the station.

It’s a Ryanair approach to fare add-ons – except that’s being unfair to Ryanair.

Of course the real impact is on fares.  This motion cautiously states that UK rail fares are among the highest in Europe.  UBS Bank published a report this summer confirming them as the highest in the world.

Among the highest in Europe, the highest in the world?  You pays your money and you takes your choice – but rail travel in the UK is more about paying money and less about choice.

Even regulated fares must rise by more than inflation.  Yes, this coming January will see a small drop – but its still less than overall deflation, in relative terms they are still remorselessly climbing.

In January of this year RPI 0.1 percent – ticket prices for regulated fares on most franchises up by an average of six percent, sixty times higher.

St Albans commuters, already paying more than for any equivalent rail journey in the UK, saw our fares shoot up by eight percent.

Arbitrary – yes.  Unfair – yes.  Transparent – no.

And I haven’t even talked of the huge increases in unregulated fares.

I was at a meeting earlier this year with the then rail regulator.  I asked why he did not intervene. He metaphorically flapped his hands, muttered about government policy, and said he could only act if increases were wholly excessive.

What is the point of a regulator who won’t regulate?

Lord Adonis has now insisted that this year’s regulated fare changes are applied uniformly – Secretary of State steps in – hooray!

But it only freezes current disparities.  New Labour guarantees unfairness – well there’s a real surprise.

The current rail franchise regime doesn’t even work for operators.  National Express is the second operator to fail on the East Coast franchise after over-bidding.  When the going got tough, they just got going, they legged it.  Sell themselves to Stagecoach and they get to keep their other franchises.  It’s a disgrace.

This motion calls for the East Coast franchise to be kept in the public sector for the rest of the current term.  Let it be a comparator for other types of franchise in terms of financial viability and passenger service quality.  When a publicly run South Eastern took over the operations of the truly awful Connex, the improvements in service standards were so marked that the Department of Transport did its best to bury them.

We’ve had a decade of Labour worshipping at the altar of private enterprise, lets have a bit of “mixed economy” in the railway.

But it’s too simple to just return to a mythical sunlit upland of a recreated British Rail.  This Conference agreed only last year that further major restructuring of the railway was not the answer.  When there’s even less money in the kitty, how can we afford to divert money from real transport improvements to funding yet more reorganisation and disruption?

Frankly we can’t.

But we can mandate longer franchises with rolling reviews to encourage long-term investment decisions.

We can stop using franchise awards as an excuse to gouge money from the travelling public.

We can push for fare reductions wherever possible and a presumption that no fares rise by more than inflation.

And as we prepare for Copenhagen, we can stop penalising those who use our greenest mode of transport.

Most people don’t have an expense account, never have, never will.  Those relatively few that do are used to proper checking and monitoring as a matter of course.

I ran large teams at director level in both the public and private sectors,  I used to stress to my teams that every taxi journey, every fancy meal, every overnight was made on the back of some poor person up a telegraph pole or down a hole, driving a truck or sitting for hours at a cash desk. Having an expense account is a real privilege – in the public sector or in the private sector.

I also used to say to my staff that if I ever wanted to get rid of them, the first thing I would do would be to examine their expense claims.  I meant it.

We can now examine MP expense claims thank goodness.  This motion rightly demands that if they are found to have committed wrong, they should face the full rigour of the law.  But how can a law breaker be a law maker?  In any normal job, they’d be out on their ear.  Yet the only way to get rid of an MP is to wait for an election – one law for MPs, one for anyone else.  We have to have ways that a majority of voters – 51 percent – can recall their MP and force an immediate by-election.

No-one challenges that MPs from distant constituencies need a second home.  But it is different for outer London and commuter belt communities like St Albans.

For most of my working life I have commuted to London. I do not see that the Palace of Westminster is any more difficult to reach from Hertfordshire than the City, Victoria or Knightsbridge (all places to which I commuted on a daily basis). With the new more “family friendly” hours at Westminster, MPs often have shorter working hours than people who work in the City or have demanding managerial jobs.

Working in the private sector I would frequently come home after midnight – when I would simply charge my employers for taxis from the station to home! I might very occasionally claim for overnight hotel accommodation. That’s how people in the real world behave.

And I was quite clear and on the record long before this expense scandal broke that if I was elected as St Albans MP I would never dream of having a second home at taxpayer expense.  That just seemed blindingly obvious – as it clearly did to all the LibDem outer London MPs and to David Howarth in Cambridge too – thay are all “saints” on the Telegraph list and we should be really proud of that.  Some politicians can be different.

Others are all too predictable.  My Conservative opponent followed her Labour predecessor in having a second home – but she had it in St Albans so she could stay in her main home in Beaconsfield.

Various matters to do with her arrangements are currently being investigated by the Parliamentary Commissioner for standards – watch this space.

Her local party has tried to deselect her over the summer.  She refuses to see she has done anything wrong.  Beams and motes come to mind.  There will come a time of judgment at the ballot box.

But it’s not just the house at taxpayer’s expense, it’s the gravy train of the food allowance.  Mrs Main claimed £9,500 worth, three hundred pounds a month on average – at least until suddenly, miraculously the monthly claims stopped – that’s a crash diet if ever there was one.

You know, I know, normal people pay for their own meals at home and at least one at work unless they are travelling away from work on their business.

On the doorstep I have met so many people, often elderly and living in modest circumstances, who are simply enraged – it’s often more than they have to live on and yet it’s just supposed to be the extra cost of food from having a second home.

£9,500 worth of shopping trolleys – what an image.  Or try filling one with three hundred pounds worth of food, and then talk to shoppers at Sainsbury or Tesco about it.

It’s far more powerful than moat-cleaning or duck-houses.

It’s a picture of greed and filling of boots which will live with electors for a very long time.  The damage to politics is immense.  We are all caught up in the tsunami, innocent or guilty.

Greg Dyke yesterday described this as a Berlin Wall moment when a seemingly impregnable structure is shown to be rotten to the core and comes tumbling down

We cannot over-estimate the level of rage and disilluson among the public.
This motion is a necessary beginning but it is only the beginning and it will take years to put right.