Examination of witnesses (Questions 40
- 59)
WEDNESDAY 19 APRIL 2000
THE LORD
WHITTY, MR
JOHN PLOWMAN
and MR JOHN
KERMAN
40. How many lives would be lost in that period
amongst the children that we are concerned about if local authorities
were not taking specific action?
(Lord Whitty) I think that is an impossible question,
if I may say so.
41. True; so I ask you again. If, within six
months of offering them all this extra money, which is very sensible,
it becomes clear to you that local authorities are not carrying
out the audit, because the information is not coming to the Department
and you are not getting the response, will you undertake to look
at this again, urgently?
(Lord Whitty) Yes, indeed. The Local Transport Plans
have to be approved by the Department, in the first place, and
the outturn on them, including the provision of the audit, has
to be monitored by the Department.
42. But your exact phrase, forgive me, was,
with "a strong gearing towards," which I think is a
modern way of saying you would like them to think about it, "but
we're not going to insist"?
(Lord Whitty) No, that is not what it means.
43. Oh, well, do please tell me what "a
strong gearing" means; if it is not a direction, and it is
not a direction because you just told us that, if it is not an
indication, if it is not a requirement—forgive me, I only
went to a council school—what is it?
(Lord Whitty) The overall aims of the Local Transport
Plans are set out in this guidance, one of which is an improvement
of road safety, having a bearing on the 40 per cent target; there
are others in there, in terms of traffic management and public
transport, and so forth, but road safety is one of the objectives
of that Local Transport Plan. If some local authority came up
with a Local Transport Plan which had minimal recognition of the
road safety dimension—
44. You would send it back?
(Lord Whitty) We would send it back, yes.
45. So you are targeting very specifically road
safety, and you would say that it is not in this Plan, because
very obviously it is not in this Plan; so we do not have to wait
six months, you could say, "As soon as we get these Road
Transport Plans they will go back"?
(Lord Whitty) The Local Transport Plan, of course,
is about policies. I thought, on the six months, you were talking
about outturn. In terms of outturn, clearly, there is a delay
in that—
46. I know we can kill a lot of people in a
short time, but I am trying to work out how much impact your policies
will have on the local authorities, if you are not specifically
saying to them "Target this"?
(Lord Whitty) I think the fact that otherwise we reject
their Plans, and everything they are looking for, is a pretty
strong deterrent for any authority. I do not believe there are
any authorities which completely—
Chairman: Do not worry. I will ask you in six
months' time, in a Written Question, how many Local Transport
Plans you have rejected. I am sorry, I am cheating.
Dr Ladyman
47. With Mrs Dunwoody's indulgence, I would
like to pursue a hobby-horse of my own, for a minute or two. How
close to achieving these targets would we get if, by some miracle,
everybody were to start sticking to speed limits?
(Lord Whitty) We reckon that, in terms of serious
accidents, speed is a significant contributor to about a third
of them; of that, we are talking at least a third of those are
in situations which exceed the speed limits. Of course, speed
can be a factor within the speed limit, in particular conditions
or the particular state of the vehicle, so you would have probably
something between a 5 and 10 per cent improvement. That is a very
rough calculation, Madam Chairman. I hope you do not keep me to
that arithmetic; broadly it is that.
Chairman: Do not worry, I am noting it all down,
in order to wrap it round your neck in due course.
Dr Ladyman
48. Based on that, would something like a thousand
lives and 8,000 to 10,000 serious injuries be about the mark for
what might be achieved, if everybody stuck to speed limits?
(Lord Whitty) No; in terms of deaths, it would be
less than that, 10 per cent of deaths is about 350.
49. Alright; a substantial number of deaths
and a significant number of serious injuries. If that is the case,
why do we not go down the route that other countries have gone,
in insisting that transponders are fitted to all new cars, and
to old cars within a few years? Based on the same sorts of technologies
that they are using in places like Singapore, you could monitor
speeds at any moment, and absolutely enforce speed limits everywhere
in the country, and all speed limits; you would save the police
a headache, because you would be able to track stolen cars, you
would make a substantial contribution to meeting the Government's
Kyoto targets, by solving the congestion problem, by introducing
road charging, and you would save all these lives and injuries
immediately. It would take a large one-off cost to implement the
system, but after that there would be a huge annual saving to
the nation's welfare bill. Why do we not go down that route, or
at least start talking seriously about mechanisation and technological
enforcement, as the future?
(Lord Whitty) I am very attracted by a lot of the
possibilities of this technology now, both in terms of traffic
management and in terms of potential road user charging and control
of access, and indeed the crime measures you refer to. As far
as speed limiting is concerned, of course, the system only works
if everybody has got it, and the speed limiters have quite a long
way to go, in terms of technology, before they could make a significant
contribution—the crude speed limiters of the kind that are
in lorries and coaches already actually have quite a detrimental
effect on the engineering, and therefore on the environment.
Dr Ladyman: I am not talking about speed limiters,
I am asking you about transponder technology which could assess
the speed of the car whenever you passed a base station; instead
of fitting cameras, that require the film that always runs out,
as Mrs Dunwoody has said, half of them are never working, whenever
you passed a certain point the transponder would register the
speed you are doing, you would immediately find yourself being
fined, or given points on your licence, if you were exceeding
the speed limit. Technologically, it is all there; it would not
have any effect on the car, the car, in practice, could speed,
but legally would never be able to get away with it again.
Chairman
50. Do you see yourself as Senior Citizen Whitty,
instead of Senior Citizen Lee?
(Lord Whitty) I was going to say that there are not
many places like Singapore, and clearly this requires a slightly
different general mode of behaviour than perhaps we have on our
roads at present. That is not to say that, in the longer term,
this technology could not play a role. I would say, at the earliest,
it would be the back end of this ten-year period, however.
Dr Ladyman
51. But is not the reality of the situation,
it comes back to a question that Mrs Dunwoody was asking you earlier,
are we really serious about getting rid of road deaths? Given
the numbers of people who die every year on the road, and the
fact that, by and large, the public ignore it, is not the reality
of the situation that the Government has to start providing leadership
by making people react to car-related deaths in the same way as
they relate to train-related deaths? Because if the Government
provided that leadership is it not true that people would start
demanding the sort of technological controls I have talked about,
and instead of them being politically unpopular they would become
politically popular?
(Lord Whitty) I have my doubts about that. I think
you have to take this quite steadily, and if you are not careful
you can get a negative reaction which actually stops you doing
some things which actually are not being objected to now. As I
say, I do believe, in the long run, that the way our roads are
managed by technology, including possibly the application you
are referring to, will play a part, and the roads, maybe 20 years
ahead, do begin to look like a much more controlled system, where
you identify cars, you can limit cars, you can charge cars, but,
in terms of the priorities for this Strategy and what is possible
technologically now, and given the turnover of cars in the ten-year
period, I think it will not play a major role. As far as the Government
leading is concerned, I think, by committing ourselves to all
the policies that are in here, we are giving a pretty clear lead,
and we hope local authorities, the police and everybody else will
follow that through. There is a danger, in this area, and one
cannot deny it, that some of the measures, even in here, let alone
what Dr Ladyman is proposing, could lead to some opposition which
would be counterproductive in some of the other things, and we
do always have to bear that balance in mind, albeit that I agree
with your objective here.
Chairman
52. The difficulty about it is, you see, the
morning after the legislation came into operation that forced
people to wear seat-belts the work in the A&E departments
across the United Kingdom shot down like that, it was absolutely
dramatic, and any A&E consultant can tell you that it totally
revolutionised the work in their departments, just overnight.
So that we do still come back to the fact that if the Government
is not thinking long term, if the Government is not trying to
relate both the developments in all sorts of things, transponders
are a clear indication, but there are a number of mechanical changes,
then who is doing this long-term thinking?
(Lord Whitty) We are doing the long-term thinking,
Madam Chairman, we have got a number of research projects and
we are in contact with the manufacturers both of the equipment
and of the vehicles. There is, of course, an additional complication
in this area, in that the vehicle standards, which would require
adjusting, are required to be developed with the EU.
53. Do not tell me, do not tell me; our colleagues
across the Channel would have to have a say?
(Lord Whitty) We would have to persuade them, yes.
Chairman: Yes. I can tell you what I think of
that in Flemish, but it is not Parliamentary.
Mr O'Brien
54. If we follow the trend of this discussion
through, and road safety does come about, and accidents are reduced,
the Government would benefit most; what about local government,
we talked about this earlier, about local government playing a
big part in reducing accidents, would there be additional monies
to sustain traffic calming and road safety issues with local authorities,
would there be additional funds available?
(Lord Whitty) As I have said, there are additional
funds available through the Local Transport Plans, and the local
authorities, in terms of enforcement, would be one of the beneficiaries
from the kind of camera regime which we hope to roll out across
the whole country; their administration and road safety improvements
could be funded out of that money.
55. Some local authorities now, it is true that
there is money allocated for road safety, but there is so much
to be done, to try to improve congestion, to try to improve the
road safety issues in local areas, but particularly urban and
city areas; would there be any additional monies available, do
you think, if the Government saved money on road safety?
(Lord Whitty) Clearly, in terms of the public purse
as a whole, were traffic problems and accidents from road safety
reduced then there would be additional public money available.
56. Let me put it another way then, Minister.
Were you satisfied with the road safety application by local authorities
in the provisional Local Transport Plans? Local authorities have
their Local Transport Plans; are you satisfied with the application
by local authorities?
(Lord Whitty) I am not satisfied with the past application,
no. I am satisfied that we have now set a new framework for those
Local Transport Plans which will give greater emphasis to road
safety, and I believe local authorities will follow that through;
but we will have to monitor that situation, as I was saying earlier.
57. In your Strategy, and in advice to local
authorities, is there any further advice given on pedestrianisation
in cities and town centres?
(Lord Whitty) Yes, there is advice on that, both in
the safety context and in the traffic management context.
58. Do you ever receive anything from local
authorities where they are wanting to put traffic back into pedestrianised
areas?
(Lord Whitty) Normally, a specific road does not necessarily
require the Government to approve it, but there are instances
of that I am aware of.
59. What is your attitude then? If an area had
been pedestrianised and then suddenly they wanted to bring back
transport into that, cars, vans, lorries, buses, what would be
your attitude to that, from a road safety point of view?
(Lord Whitty) It would depend on why they were doing
it. My instinct would be to say that was the wrong way to go,
but there may be situations where they have actually created a
traffic problem elsewhere in the town, or county, as a result
of their pedestrianisation of the centre of a particular town,
that has created traffic problems and safety problems of itself;
so you have to look at the net safety and the net congestion effect
of it. But, in general, I would have thought that was the wrong
way to go, if there were local authorities in that situation.
But we do have to leave some decisions to local authorities.
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