Examination of Witnesses (Questions 426-439)
MR JAMES
WALSH, MR
MICHAEL ROBERTS
AND MR
DAVID FROST
26 JANUARY 2005
Q426 Chairman: Good afternoon,
gentlemen. I am very grateful to you for coming this afternoon.
Could I ask you to identify yourselves for the record?
Mr Walsh: James
Walsh from the Institute of Directors. I am head of European and
regulatory affairs.
Mr Roberts: Michael Roberts, director
of business environment at the CBI.
Mr Frost: I am David Frost. I
am director general of the British Chambers of Commerce.
Q427 Chairman: Did anyone
have a little homily they wished to deliver or may we go straight
to questions?
Mr Roberts: I think straight to
questions.
Q428 Chairman: Do you
agree it is impossible to build our way out of congestion without
limiting traffic growth?
Mr Walsh: Yes, I do. We certainly
need extra capacity. That is very important indeed but we also
desperately need to introduce a measure of road pricing, preferably
with a national scheme. We need to tackle Britain's transport
malaise from both sides, from the demand side through a pricing
mechanism and the supply side through extra roads and public transport
capacity.
Mr Roberts: I would suggest that
in practical terms it would be impossible to provide sufficient
capacity as your only approach to addressing future demand, but
it does still need to be part of an overall transport policy to
improve the transport system in this country.
Q429 Chairman: Is congestion
the biggest problem we have to face in this country?
Mr Roberts: It is probably up
there as one of the top problems alongside the environmental challenges
posed by transport, particularly with regard to climate change.
From the business community's point of view on a daily basis,
congestion is the number one problem.
Q430 Chairman: What size
road building plan would the business sector like to see?
Mr Roberts: Something significantly
in excess of what is currently being taken forward.
Q431 Chairman: Could we
have a little more precision?
Mr Roberts: One of the ways forward
on this would be to look at some comparable, developed economies
to identify the extent to which they have provided roads to address
their transport needs. We had a look at other countries in Europe,
for example, two years ago and looking at the relative densities
of the road networks in Europe—
Q432 Chairman: "Europe"
is rather a wide term. Which European countries did you look at?
Mr Roberts: We looked specifically
at France, Germany and the Netherlands. In terms of overall road
network density compared with land area, we have something similar
to what you would find in other countries but where there is a
significant difference is in terms of what we would call premium
routes, motorways and trunk roads, where the UK has a lower level
of provision than you would find in, say, France or Germany.[3]
Q433 Chairman: By what
factor?
Mr Roberts: If I take the EU average,
we provide something less than half that average.
Q434 Chairman: What scale
of building is the business sector looking for?
Mr Frost: From the British Chambers
of Commerce point of view, we do not believe that you can build
your way out of this. We certainly do not want to concrete over
vast swathes of the countryside but it is absolutely clear there
are major, strategic highways within the UK that need a significant
amount of work. Whether that is Motorway widening or expressways
put on the side. We are looking at the M1, the M60, the M4, parts
of the M25 and the M62.
Q435 Chairman: Mr Roberts,
I should have asked you whether your figure took account of A
roads when you were talking about the European averages.
Mr Roberts: I believe it does.
Q436 Mr Stringer: Does
that imply that you would like us to have twice as many motorways?
Mr Roberts: No. There are differences
in geography between ourselves and some of the other countries
I have mentioned. I am not suggesting that there is an absolute
mirror image that we should be seeking to achieve when we look
at what happens elsewhere. I was suggesting that it provides an
indication of the scale of underprovision of that particular form
of road compared with other countries.
Q437 Mr Stringer: The
result is counter-intuitive, is it not? If you take a country
like France or Spain which are considerably larger than this country,
you would expect when you go on the motorway from Madrid to Seville
or Paris to Lyon for the density to be lower rather than a compact
island like us. I am surprised you are so modest in your objectives
for road building.
Mr Roberts: I suggested that the
overall road network density is similar between the different
countries.
Q438 Mr Stringer: I am
talking about the high quality motorway systems.
Mr Roberts: We have a lower level
of provision.
Q439 Mrs Ellman: Mr Roberts,
you said that congestion was a major problem for business. Does
that mean that business will be prepared to pay more and be charged
more for driving if that makes journeys more predictable?
Mr Roberts: Yes, but the caveat
to my answer is that currently road users of all forms, not just
business road users, contribute significantly in road tax revenues
to the government. I think they would want some comfort to paying
additionally that what they pay at the moment through taxation
would deliver improved quality of service.
3 The UK as a place to do business-Is Transport Holding
the UK Back-CBI October 2003. Back
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