Examination of witness (Questions 100
- 119)
WEDNESDAY 19 JULY 2000
PROFESSOR DAVID
BEGG
100. You got into writing this report because
you were trying to take a strategic view of the issues you had
to cover. Then, having written the report and identified the solutions
were not solutions primarily for the DETR but were Treasury matters,
did you simply write your report and submit it to Government and
hope that the Treasury have seen it or have you actively attempted
then to follow up your report with lobbying or encouragement within
the Department?
(Professor Begg) Over the last year we have had at
least three meetings with Treasury civil servants and we have
also given a copy of the report to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
101. You have no reason to believe he has either
read it or accepted it or done anything about it?
(Professor Begg) I think that is a question for him.
Chairman
102. Has he not replied to you? Has he written
you a letter? Has he said "Dear Professor Begg, come in here
and tell me because I think this is an excellent report and I
want to discuss it with you"?
(Professor Begg) No, he has acknowledged the report.
103. He has acknowledged it. He has sent you
one of those cards we all send saying "Thank you so much,
Professor Begg, I have received your report".
(Professor Begg) Yes.
104. I want to ask you a series of questions
now, Professor, because I have been listening very carefully.
You have a membership consisting of a great many of the great
and good. Quite a lot of them are well known for very specific
views of their own. They are all quite strong characters. I want
to know from you, firstly, how structured is your work? You have
told us of the meetings you have had with large numbers of civil
servants, not only in your sponsoring ministry but also in the
Treasury, which is excellent, but how many reports have you published
throughout that year? Let us get that into the public domain.
(Professor Begg) We have published four reports.
105. You are gong to give us the benefit of
your advice publicly once the ten year transport report has been
made public?
(Professor Begg) Yes.
106. You have not in that time specifically
had any input not only into the railways but also, for example,
into investment priorities for railways?
(Professor Begg) Not directly, no.
107. That is no. You have not put in any written
evidence to the Department of the Environment, Transport and the
Regions on either the franchise process or the need for new investment
in the railway industry?
(Professor Begg) That is correct.
108. Were you asked to do so by the Deputy Prime
Minister?
(Professor Begg) No.
109. Has it been discussed with your members
as a suitable subject for a new report?
(Professor Begg) It has not been identified as something
which the members want us to discuss in the year two work programme.
110. Have you suggested any guidance to the
SSRA about a competing balance for railways, competing, for example,
between freight and passenger traffic which after all is a matter
of considerable concern to everybody at the moment?
(Professor Begg) No.
111. You have not done so. All of the members
of your particular Commission are very busy people and have very
busy lives and they are at the top of most of their respective
ladders, even if they are parallel rather than co-operative ladders.
Do they all turn up for all your meetings?
(Professor Begg) The attendance has been excellent
even from some of the people whom you rightly say are extremely
busy. It surprised me, not only the attendance but their input.
They attend very frequently the working groups. It is the contact
programme. We have people there whom you rightly identify as being
chief executives or equivalents of different companies and they
have actually been working really hard to keep up close contact
with outside organisations.
112. Individually?
(Professor Begg) Yes, because each member of the Commission
is asked to try and keep a regular dialogue going with at least
two outside organisations.
113. How do you take notice of that advice?
Is it recorded somewhere?
(Professor Begg) Yes.
114. Do they give you a written report?
(Professor Begg) We feed it into the Commission Secretariat
and it is documented what the views are of the outside organisations.
115. When we are talking about your views on
local transport plans we could not only know which local authorities
your members have talked to but we could know how many plans you
have looked at and what the contents are; all of that would be
available?
(Professor Begg) Yes.
116. You very specifically made a point about
European organisations being better integrated in terms of transport
planning. You mentioned Germany. Is that at the level of the Lander
or at the level of the German Federal Government?
(Professor Begg) Both. It is at both levels. One of
the conclusions we have drawn is that we are not convinced that
we have the strong enough regional structure in the United Kingdom
to deliver that type of integration between transport, planning
and land use.
117. Have you, therefore, put to the Department
a clear—because it must cut across the two halves of the
Department—indication of your feelings about this, that
you feel there is a gap in the organisation and it is something
that should be addressed, and some suggestions on how that should
be done?
(Professor Begg) It is something that we plan to pick
up in our year two work programme.
118. How much of your work has been determined
by the Department and not by yourselves?
(Professor Begg) Some of it. Our year one work programme,
in particular, has been largely determined by the Department,
as detailed in the White Paper. Our year two work programme has
been determined by CfIT and its members, in consultation with
the DETR and ministers.
119. Yes. Let me investigate that, what does
that mean? Have you learned from what you have done and have you
decided that there are targets that the Commission should meet?
Have you, as a Commission, decided which of those subjects to
do? Has a departmental minister then expressed his view of the
priority?
(Professor Begg) Yes to both points that you made.
The ministers have indicated what the key issues are that they
will be addressing in the coming year.
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