Examination of witness (Questions 1 -
19)
WEDNESDAY 19 JULY 2000
PROFESSOR DAVID
BEGG
Chairman
1. Good afternoon, may I say how welcome you
are this afternoon. Perhaps you would be kind enough, Professor,
although we might have a slight inkling, to tell us who you are?
(Professor Begg) I am Professor David Begg. I am Chairman
of the Commission for Integrated Transport.
2. Do you have anything you would like to say
or can we proceed to our questions? How would you like to go on?
(Professor Begg) I would just like to say, the last
time I was invited to attend this Select Committee the minutes
were a very accurate representation of what I said.
3. Could I ask, as a matter of interest, is
that praise or condemnation?
(Professor Begg) It depends on how you wish to interpret
it.
4. I have met your kind before. Professor, you
have had a whole year, what impact have you had on the Government's
policy?
(Professor Begg) In a lot of ways the answer to that
question will depend on the announcement that the Deputy Prime
Minister makes tomorrow in the ten year plan on transport. What
we have attempted to do over the last year is to advise Government
on a number of specific transport issues and to attempt to make
sure that they stick to the objectives that are laid out in the
1998 White Paper. I would not want to exaggerate the impact, but
in terms of the advice that we have given to the Government and
how that has impacted upon decisions that were made, the Government
have adopted the advice we have given them on national road traffic
reduction targets and on 44 tonne lorries, and the measures associated
with it. Probably the biggest impact we have had is on the advice
that we have given to the Government on the ten year transport
plan, which we have not published yet.
5. Are you going to publish that advice?
(Professor Begg) Yes, it is our intention to publish
it.
6. As soon as the plan is made public we will
be able to hear about what you have suggested?
(Professor Begg) We want to put it into the public
domain. Also, advising the Government on how they can try and
emulate the best transport practice in Europe.
7. In Europe? A small subject.
(Professor Begg) Yes.
8. Have you influenced the work of other Government
departments other than the monster DETR, otherwise known as deter?
(Professor Begg) We have tried to. We have tried to
influence decision making in the devolved areas, Scotland, Wales
and Northern Ireland. We have also tried to influence decisions
at the Home Office and Treasury.
9. How have you done that? Let us take the devolved
areas, do you have meetings with ministers with special responsibilities
for Northern Ireland?
(Professor Begg) I have met on a number of occasions
with the devolved ministers in Scotland, Wales and, to a lesser
extent, Northern Ireland.
10. Do you do that on a regular basis? Is it
structured? Is it initiated by you or is it initiated by them?
How do you do that?
(Professor Begg) It varies, really. Northern Ireland
and Wales are initiated by the civil servants and the ministers
there.
11. Coming to you?
(Professor Begg) Yes. In Scotland it is my own contacts
and personal relationships that I have.
12. I think we all understand the Scots are
a highly individualistic and unique nation. Would you regard that
as being the sort of programme that you would almost expect to
formalise? I do not mean in the sense that you have a meeting
every quarter. How often would you meet them?
(Professor Begg) I would have a meeting with the relevant
civil servants or whoever the Minster is in Northern Ireland (because
it changes frequently) twice a year, in Scotland, once a quarter,
and I have been to Wales twice in the last year.
13. Do you have a procedure by which the Government
respond to your reports on a formal basis?
(Professor Begg) No. The Government do not respond
on a formal basis to our Commission in the way that they do to
other Commissions or, indeed, to your own Select Committee. It
is a fairly ad hoc response that we get from Government.
Sometimes we get an oral response as to how they view a specific
report that we put in and other times we do not know, until there
is a press statement, what the Government are going to do.
14. That is decided by ministers' responses,
really, you do not have a formal procedure?
(Professor Begg) Yes, that is right.
Chairman: I think we have Miss McIntosh, Mr
Donaldson and Mr O'Brien all wanting to come in on this.
Miss McIntosh
15. The Commission was set up a year ago next
week and yet the rural transport route did not have its first
meeting until June of this year, is that correct?
(Professor Begg) Yes.
16. Is there any particular reason for that?
(Professor Begg) Only that our work programme is determined,
to a large extent, by the remit we were given in the 1998 White
Paper. There was a number of reports which we had to submit urgently
if we were going to meet the Government timetable. Our priority
earlier on had been to advise on national road traffic reduction
targets and 44 tonne lorries. It was our intention to start the
Rural Working Group earlier this year but that was overtaken by
events, especially the input that we were asked to give to the
ten-year transport plan.
17. If you are hoping to have any input into
the ten-year plan, if you are hoping to fulfil the Government's
ambition in road traffic reduction targets, surely you are only
going to improve rural transport and give an alternative to road
transport if you develop a public transport network? My own constituency
is, perhaps, more rural than many, certainly in England. I just
wonder, do you not feel my constituents would feel very poorly
done by that this alternative is not being considered and may
not be considered in the ten year transport plan?
(Professor Begg) Not if they were made aware that
we have considered rural issues and a number of other working
groups have been set up. What we have tried to ensure is that
issues, such as social exclusion and rural transport issues, are
picked up in some of the working parties. We have looked closely
at what to do in rural areas regarding the advice we are giving
to Government on how to get value-for-money from bus subsidies.
18. Can I ask, has the Commission reached a
view or is it likely to reach a view if, for example, you have
sparsely populated areas, like North Yorkshire, through which
most traffic is literally in transit, starting from outside the
county and ending up outside the county? There are particular
issues of road safety which need to be addressed. There is a particular
problem with poor road maintenance against the backdrop of that.
How would you see the ten year transport plan—against the
background of the fact that the Commission has not had a chance
to discuss this—meeting the road safety targets the Government
itself imposed, in rural areas? Also, just by recognising the
fact that you are hoping to meet the deadline set by the Government,
you are also hoping to get more freight off the road and on to
the rail at the same time, against the backdrop that there is
no public transport system at the moment.
(Professor Begg) The whole question about how we deal
with rural transport problems is fraught with difficulties. One
of the conclusions that we have drawn is that people often get
confused between encouraging mobility in rural areas and encouraging
accessibility. If I can just take one example. There is a view
that the high cost of motoring in Britain is particularly disadvantageous
to people in rural areas, to motorists in rural areas, and that
is true if you are focusing on mobility but if you are focusing
on accessibility it is the fact that motoring costs have fallen
in Britain over the last 20 years in line with income. That has
led to a big increase in the number of cars in rural areas and
in the distance travelled which means that more and more people
are driving past their local post office and local shops. There
is a real dilemma here as to what the Government does. Is it about
encouraging accessibility and, if that is the case, then the Government
would be better advised to put more money into ensuring local
facilities remain open. That is what the Scottish Executive have
done, for example, in Northern Scotland. If it is about trying
to provide mobility and attractive alternatives to the car then
it is the public transport solution or the community transport
solution that you go for. What we have identified in rural areas
is that Government needs to be absolutely clear about what the
objectives are.
19. Finally, if the Government proceeds with
its stated policy of detrunking more roads, would your advice
to the Government be that local authorities should be given more
funds to take over responsibility for those roads which have been
detrunked?
(Professor Begg) That is something that we have not
examined yet.
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