DAN Hodges puts an earnest case for the people of Greater Manchester to vote Yes to a public transport revolution and a congestion charge.

And he bristles at the mention of the man-sized shark used by the No campaign.

"We can all have a laugh, but we are talking here about tens of thousands of people's jobs and the future of the region," says Hodges, director of the Yes Campaign. "During what everyone agrees are going to be some serious, difficult times, you've got to conduct the debate at a better level than a man running around dressed as a fish."

Hodges lightens, though, as he recalls that one environmental group supporting the Yes Campaign is making its case with a burly squirrel. The thought occurs fleetingly, that the biggest exercise in local democracy could be replaced by a Harry Hill-style fight between two men dressed as a shark and a squirrel.

Hodges is, one national newspaper political editor once said, "the most proactive press officer in the business". He is also the son of Oscar-winning actor and Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate, Glenda Jackson. The 39-year-old Londoner went to college in Ormskirk and worked for his Birkenhead-born mother in the House of Commons for five years until the Labour landslide of 1997 made her a junior minister in charge of London transport.

Hodges then applied for a job at the Road Haulage Association under Steven Norris, the former Tory transport minister his mother had so frequently bumped up against in the Commons.

"I sent my CV with a covering letter saying: `If nothing else, I hope you're impressed with the irony'," says Hodges. He got the job. From the RHA, he went to the GMB union, ran his own PR business for a time, but after his wife had their son Jack, now aged two, he went to work for Transport for London. So Hodges is well used to defending a congestion charge.

"The significant difference between the London congestion charge and the charge here is that it is a targeted charge that deals with congestion at peak times," says Hodges. "Anybody who drives outside those peak times, or in peak times in the opposite direction, will not have to pay."

And it is those who will not pay who feature in the Yes Campaign's big poster campaign - the off-peak traveller, the bus and train commuter - with the message "9 out of 10 people won't pay". The campaign attempts to convince people that the charge is the fairest way to pay for public transport improvements.

Improvements

"The key difference between ourselves and other congestion charge schemes is we are striking a deal with the public, saying we are going to give you the public transport improvements before the charge comes in."

As the campaign goes on, Hodges will spread the message that pensioners at the bus stop at dusk can expect a CCTV camera to be watching over their safety, and the train commuters now in sardine conditions will have seats for their journey into work. Even drivers will benefit, the argument goes, because they will see their journey times reduced.

The bid would see more than £2.75bn ploughed into transport schemes, including £318m to set up a peak hour, weekday-only congestion charge. Some £1.2bn of the total would be in the form of a loan, paid back over 30 years out of profits from the charge.

Behind the Yes campaign stands a coalition of businesses, trade unions, environmental bodies, voluntary associations, pensioners' groups, students and low pay campaigners.

United City, the business division of the Yes Campaign, has 161 members, including property companies Bruntwood, Ask Developments and Urban Splash, architects such as Ian Simpson of Urbis and Beetham Tower renown, lawyers, hoteliers and a host of others. Seventy of those members have made donations to the campaign ranging from £2,000 to £10,000.

"Where else would you have an environmental campaigner sitting next to a businessman, or a pensioners' group sitting next to a student group?" says Hodges.

The campaign is not, he stresses, funded from public money and is independent of Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Authority and the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities. The total budget for the campaign is simply unknown, Hodges says, as it depends how much comes in through donations. The Yes campaign argues that there is no Plan B. No congestion charge, no public transport improvements.

"I'm convinced that, whatever happens, in 15 years time, Manchester will have a congestion charge, like every major world city," he says. "Trouble is, that in 15 years time, if a congestion charge is introduced, Manchester won't get £1.5bn of government investment to public transport.

"This is not a referendum on `Do you want a congestion charge?'. It is a referendum on `Do you want better buses, better trains and a Metrolink that goes where you want?'."

But is a recession the right time to clobber people with another form of tax?

"Set aside the number of jobs we lose if congestion is allowed to go on," says Hodges. "You are talking about 10,000 direct jobs created on the back of this package.

"There will be jobs in construction, building stations and new buses, building the new Metrolink, new drivers and new administrative staff. If people vote yes in December, by next March, 500 new jobs will have been created in Manchester doing preparatory work for the project."

Yes Campaign: wevoteyes.co.uk

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