Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160
- 171)
Witnesses: Mr Richard
Tarboton, Head of Business Unit, Transport
and Mr Alex Veitch, Transport Strategy Manager, Energy
Saving Trust, gave evidence.
Q160 Mr Caton: Clearly you think
the suspension is having a negative impact.
Mr Tarboton: Clearly it is.
Q161 Mr Caton: You mentioned it in
answer to a question. Can you quantify that at all?
Mr Tarboton: It is very difficult
to predict take-off of some of these markets because you are talking
about 6,000 vehicles in a market selling two and a half million
vehicles a year. Depending on whether the grants have been there
or not those new products coming to market are very difficult
to predict the volumes and it is for that reason that grant systems
sometimes fall into difficulty because they have a fixed budget
that you have to use over a period of one year and at the beginning
of the year you have to predict exactly how many vehicles will
sell. What we have done in the past is that we have gone out to
the manufacturer and asked how many vehicles will sell and get
grants and normally by about month one into the year those projections
have changed. If you get to the end of the year and more vehicles
are sold you run out of grant monies and we have been in those
problems before. It is difficult for us to give a straight answer
to what the impact has been. There have been some new products
come to market; there have been some products which have been
severely hurt. We heard from Honda earlier how the Honda Civic
sales dropped by half as a result of grants dropping off. We have
heard from manufacturers that the LPG sales of vehicles have stopped
completely; most of the new LPG suppliers have stopped producing
LPG vehicles as a result. There are some serious issues there
in terms of new vehicles coming to market which have been affected
by the drop but it is very hard to put numbers on it.
Q162 Dr Turner: You put to the Department
of Transport a set of proposals for developing public understanding
of how to reduce CO2 emissions from transport use.
Could you explain something about your proposals, what effects
you think they might have had and why did the Department turn
them down?
Mr Tarboton: Is this the proposals
around consumer information and public information?
Q163 Dr Turner: Yes.
Mr Tarboton: Incorporated into
those proposals was the idea of a Cleaner Vehicle League Table,
so that was a core component of it, and really what we were proposing
was an initial pilot study in some regions of the UK where we
have pilots running for both the DTI and for Defra at the moment
around the concept of a sustainable energy centre of advice where
consumers can phone into a centre or get information sent to them
from a centre on making various purchases. We incorporated that
element of local advice with national elements of things like
a league table and promotional campaigns into that whole package
and it is really that whole package which was not approved as
something to go ahead. In terms of its impact, I do not have the
exact the figures here as to its carbon impact but it was certainly
a lot more carbon effective than grant systems.
Q164 Dr Turner: We did a report recently
on the Treasury's Pre-Budget Report and we commented on the apparent
lack of any communication strategy on the part of the Treasury
to educate people about the reasons behind some of the environmental
tax measures like fuel duty and VED and changes therein. Have
you talked to the Treasury or to DfT about this and do you have
any evidence of other countries where they are more successful
at getting these messages across?
Mr Veitch: There is a good example
in Holland. There is a case study where they decided to incorporate
safety and environment in big public campaigns on driving. Instead
of having just a safety campaign they call it a new driving campaign
because most of the things you can do to drive safely are also
things that you can do to drive efficiently. DfT does do a fair
amount of public explaining about policies and measures, a lot
of road safety work which is excellent work and should continue.
I think we should be trying to make a case that climate change
is so important that they should start thinking in their strategic
communications about this issue as well, or looking at other countries
in trying to incorporate some of these other messages. I do not
quite see the Treasury getting involved in that kind of communication
activity; it seems to me to be more of a Defra and DfT.
Q165 Dr Turner: The Treasury uses
fiscal instruments quite consciously to try to affect behaviour,
but if people do not realise why they are doing it they are going
to be less effective surely.
Mr Veitch: Yes. The good thing
about the car label is that it is linked to car tax and one thing
we have found in the work that we have done is that people have
no idea what they are paying in VED. The point of the label really
is that it is positive reinforcement. It is: "How much are
you paying in car tax?" "Oh right, I could pay a bit
less if I got a cleaner car." One of the things we presented
to the DfT was to build on the fact that there is a label there,
it shows you your car tax; if we can communicate that to people
in a sensible way that may actually help the tax measure work
better. I definitely agree with your point.
Q166 Ms Barlow: There are several
key bodies involved in reducing carbon emissions from road transport.
There is the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership, CENEX, Foresight
Vehicle and, not least, the Energy Saving Trust. Do you think
there are too many? Would it be more effective if they were more
streamlined?
Mr Tarboton: I think each organisation
needs to be able to clarify what its role is in the market. I
think if the stakeholders who operate in the market place and,
indeed, the general public who need to interact with some of these
organisations clearly understood the role then I do not think
there is an issue. Where it becomes an issue is where there is
a blurring of roles and responsibilities and I think in some of
those areas we need to be a bit clearer as to what the particular
roles will be. In areas such as procurement, for example, we provide
advice to about 2,000 to 3,000 companies a year on how they can
improve the operation and purchase of the fleets of vehicles which
they have in their operation. It is important that anything we
provide in advice is also linked with the other organisations
which are approaching companies with messages about this. Indeed,
it is not only those organisations, there is also the Carbon Trust
to think about who do not deal with transport but they deal with
carbon and they approach businesses with similar measures and
advice about energy efficiency. We have been talking to the Carbon
Trust about making sure that when we approach businesses they
understand that the role of the Carbon Trust is about how you
change the energy usage of the company in conserving carbon and
the role of us in coming to talk to them as the Energy Saving
Trust is that we have the remit for transport and we will be helping
you to reduce your carbon emissions in transport. It is more about
the roles being clear than about just rationalising it all into
one organisation.
Q167 Ms Barlow: Do you feel the roles
are clear and that is working?
Mr Tarboton: I think with the
Partnership there is a clear role in that that is about bringing
together all the different stakeholders to bring solutions and
provide recommendations, whereas the Energy Saving Trust is about
delivering and having relationships with the market place, with
businesses and consumers. That is clear; we could communicate
that a bit more possibly. CENEX is a new organisation coming into
the forum and we need to work with them. We have started having
meetings with them just to make sure we are clear on the role
of R&D and we have an R&D programme that we run and their
role is a lot more working with industry to look at collaborative
approaches of industry and to look at the early stage R&D
and then we look at demonstration vehicles. Those are some of
the ideas we are discussing with them and we just need to be able
to solidify that into a clear strategy that can be presented to
the market.
Q168 Ms Barlow: You mentioned demarcation
between different government departments, how effective is the
working together of the Department of Transport plus the DTI,
the Treasury, Defra? Does that work?
Mr Tarboton: It is interesting
to note some of the comments made earlier about the targets for
CO2 where, as has been said, there is a shared PSA
target across DTI, Defra and DfT. What is lacking is a clear carbon
target for the Department for Transport and I think if there was
that clear target there would be better integration of activity
in that each area would then be clear on what they had to achieve
and what it had to bring to the table, and then be able to focus
their activity together.
Q169 Ms Barlow: What do you think
that target should be?
Mr Tarboton: In terms of CO2
reduction?
Q170 Ms Barlow: Yes.
Mr Tarboton: We have not done
a full analysis but we certainly think it could be greater than
the current projection which is a zero reduction. There are mechanisms
like certificate trading, like public information which could
be introduced on top of the measures already provided in the Climate
Change Programme Review and if you introduce those we should be
able to have greater reductions. However, to analyse that you
really need to have access to the overall transport model and
apply a number of different policy mechanisms into that model
and come up with a result. It is a very complicated piece of analysis
that needs to be done because one effect has an impact on something
else. So I do not have an exact figure on but I think it is something
which needs to be given serious priority within DfT, setting a
CO2 target.
Q171 Ms Barlow: If we did have that
complicated evaluation what difference do you think that would
make?
Mr Tarboton: I think it would
drive policies to be introduced such as certificate trading, such
as public information, league tables, et cetera, to achieve those
targets. If you were to have a focussed objective of, say, a 5%
reduction in carbon from transport you would need to then test
a number of policy mechanisms to achieve that through a model
and then test them in the market place. That would certainly bring
about change if we could see some policies being introduced.
Chairman: I think we are going to have
to call it a day at that point. Thank you very much for your responses.
It has been a very interesting session and we are grateful for
your time and I am sure we shall see you again in due course.
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