Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20
- 39)
WEDNESDAY 16 NOVEMBER 2005
RT HON
ALISTAIR DARLING
MP AND MR
DAVID ROWLANDS
Q20 Graham Stringer: On local transport
plans, Secretary of State, Mr Suter is getting his knickers in
a twist about the local transport plans in Greater Manchester,
but I think he means other LTP areas as well being not very good
for buses. Do you agree with that?
Mr Darling: As I have said before,
the picture is mixed. There are some parts of the country where
the bus operators and the local authorities work extremely well
together and produce first-class bus services and have increased
patronage, like Brighton, for example, or York or Oxford or Cambridge,
and other places as well. There are other parts of the country
where the relationship between the local authority and the bus
operator is not a happy one. It is certainly not a happy situation
when you have people resorting to writing in newspapers about
each other because it suggests that the normal relationship you
would expect has broken down. So I have always said that if you
want buses to work effectively you need to have a willing and
capable operator and a willing and capable council working together
and, fortunately, in most parts of the country the relationships
are quite good.
Q21 Graham Stringer: But it is true,
is it not, that bus patronage is in decline in every English region.
While you have, to be fair Secretary of State, before this Committee
pointed out Cambridge, Oxford and Brighton, when you look at bus
patronage across all the regions apart from London they are in
decline. Why do you think that is the case?
Mr Darling: I think it is a combination
of factors. One is that undoubtedly as people get better off whereas
in the past they may not have had a car, they get a car. If you
look at what has happened in the North West and North East of
England, for example, where there have been dramatic falls in
unemployment, people have gone into work, they have bought cars
and are using their cars and they do not use buses, and of course
since the 1950s that has been a general trend. Perversely, as
our economic policies have succeeded, particularly in areas which
were hard hit by high unemployment in the past, it has resulted
in people travelling by car. That is quite understandable and
we are not against people who choose to have cars if they want
to use them. I think the other thing is that if, and I have said
this before, you want buses to work you have to make them a much
more attractive proposition than using the car, which is a combination
of carrot and stick. If you do not do that then left to their
own devices people will use their car if they can use it. Can
I just anticipate your next question.
Q22 Graham Stringer: That would be
very helpful.
Mr Darling: Because no doubt as
you ploughed your way through my speech at Manchester you will
have seen there was a passage there where I said that if local
authorities, or the PTE in the case of Manchester, come forward
with comprehensive measures to manage demand in relation to their
overall transport, then we are prepared to look at taking additional
powers which will allow a rather more effective control of the
way in which buses operate. The reason that I say that is because
if, for example, you were going to do road pricing within a particular
area or region, you would have to combine it with good quality
public transport and you would need to be certain the public transport
was actually there. In addition to that, we are looking at what
further improvements we can make in relation to the Quality Bus
Partnerships regime, which patently is not working at the moment
and does need to be looked at. What I do not want to do is to
lose the benefits we have had in some parts of the country but
equally I am, like the rest of the Committee, concerned that I
think we could do far more to exploit the use of buses, particularly
in the larger conurbations and busier cities, than we are doing
at the moment, and I do not think we have got it quite right just
yet.
Mr Rowlands: Can I just add a
point. We recognise the point you make and in a sense that is
why the new PSA targets for bus and light rail use sets the challenge
for the Department not just to grow usage by 12% by 2010 which,
frankly, we can do largely off the back of London but it says
we should do it as well in each of the English regions. It sets
a challenge in terms of the point you are making. Faced with decline
outside of London we need to do something about it.
Q23 Graham Stringer: I was cheered
by that particular passage in your speech because it led me to
ask the question are you going to take more powers beyond those
powers that are in the 2005 Railway Act which enable PTEs and
local authorities to start the process of quality contracts? Was
that a commitment to give more power to PTEs and, if it was, can
you expand on it?
Mr Darling: Firstly, we are working
on the detail at the moment and when I am ready to make an announcement
I will make an announcement to the House in whatever way is appropriate.
So I cannot answer your question. I am not in a position today
to say that we are going to do this, this and this, but I hope
to be able to do so in the not-too-distant future. It is quite
clear to me that to achieve what I want to achieve we may need
to make some further revisions in the law. I cannot be absolutely
certain about that yet because I have not reached a firm conclusion
about what precisely we need to do. What I am very clear about
is if you are going to move to a world where you are saying to
people that there is a limit to how much more traffic can come
into a city—and this is, as you know, what Greater Manchester
PTE have now said publicly—they will realise there comes
a point where no matter what you do there is not physically enough
room to get any more traffic in. If you want people to transfer
either to the tram or to buses and to do other things to control
the amount of traffic, then you have got to have a reasonable
certainty that, firstly, there will be a bus service, secondly,
that there will be sufficient spaces available on the buses to
take the number of people you are now talking about, and, thirdly,
that you avoid the situation where you spend huge amounts of money
on a tram only to discover that the passengers are cherry-picked
by somebody running alongside a few times of the day and not all
times of the day. These are the issues that I think we need to
tackle. Bus operators themselves outside London and outside the
areas that have done well do recognise that the present situation
is not satisfactory and that we do need to do more to make buses
an attractive alternative to the car. I do stress this point,
you have really got to be offering something better to persuade
somebody out of the car, otherwise why should they. However, I
am confident that can be done. The Department is doing work at
the moment but I am not in a position to make an announcement
on it today.
Q24 Mrs Ellman: Mr Rowlands, you
mentioned the growth in light rail targets. Could you tell me
what target you have for growth in light rail for the North West?
Mr Rowlands: There is not a separate
target for the growth of light rail in the North West. This is
a target for England and a composite for bus use and light rail
use. There are no separate regional targets other than a requirement
to grow both bus and light rail in each of the English regions
which we have agreed with the Treasury should be in the last three
years of the period. There is not within that a specific light
rail use. There were originally two separate PSA targets, one
for buses and one for light rail, and the conclusion we came to
was that it would make sense to put them together as a single
target because they are both forms of public transport.
Q25 Mrs Ellman: So there is no specific
target for the growth of light rail in the North West?
Mr Rowlands: No.
Q26 Mrs Ellman: Did there used to
be?
Mr Rowlands: There used to be
a separate target for the growth of light rail in England. That
was a PSA target back in SR 2000.
Q27 Mrs Ellman: Is there any such
target now?
Mr Rowlands: No.
Q28 Mrs Ellman: Does that mean that
you are not intending to expand light rail?
Mr Darling: No. I think the point
that Mr Rowlands is making is that in 2002 there was a target
for light rail and a target for bus. Now they have been brought
together but in both cases they were national targets. We have
never had separate targets for each region. The target we have
got just now is an increase in bus and light rail patronage and
we want to see that increase in all parts of the country. However,
again possibly anticipating your next question, that does not
mean in respect of any particular light rail project that the
Government is going to be blind to cost increases and the rest
of it. I would like to see patronage increase but it has got to
be at a price that is controlled and affordable.
Q29 Mrs Ellman: Will the specific
conditions that the Department is now wishing to insist on before
the Mersey tram line can go ahead be applied to all light rail
schemes, not the principle but the same conditions?
Mr Darling: The conditions for
each and every one of them are not exactly the same. On the Mersey
tram the Government set an absolute cap of £170 million and
what has been happening over the last few weeks is that we have
said that we want a guarantee that if there is any cost overrun
it will be met by either the councils or Merseytravel, which of
course is underwritten by the councils. Contrary to what I read
in the newspapers I think yesterday, the Government has not changed
that position at all. Indeed, the only changes we have made are
trying to be helpful to see if we can get those undertakings,
but the ball is now in the court of the councils concerned. I
have to be fair to all tram schemes that are dealt with and it
has not been the happiest time of my stewardship of the Department
because obviously you prefer to say yes rather than no to things.
The Mersey tram has been treated in the same way as the other
trams, in other words if the Government lays down conditions we
are saying they have to stick to them. The same thing happened
in Merseytravel as happened to the other three that are around.
The costs have turned out to be rather more than people thought.
What we have said though is £170 million is there but there
has got to be an absolute guarantee that they will not come back
to us in any way for any overrun. I can understand why the councils
are concerned and are saying they have got to think long and hard
about that. The Government would have to think long and hard about
that, too.
Q30 Mrs Ellman: The specific issue
of whether Merseyside is getting equity in treatment compared
to other areas is a question to ask elsewhere possibly. When will
the Department produce its Rail High Level Output Statement?
Mr Darling: In the summer of 2007,
July 2007, because it will run from 2009 to 2014.
Q31 Mrs Ellman: And will it have
detail about growth plans and expenditure in the regions?
Mr Darling: Obviously it is not
yet written but what in general terms it will do is it will set
out how much the Government proposes to invest in the railways
during the period 2009 to 2014, what the Government expects to
get from that, and that will deal with matters about punctuality
and reliability, the rolling stock, safety, all these issues and
of course it will cover the whole country. What happens then,
just so you understand this, is that we publish it, the Rail Regulator
then prices it, so that he will say, "Well, that is a reasonable
demand if they spend that much they can expect that in return."
If he thinks it needs to be adjusted then he will say so and that
will be a public process. Alongside that, though, the Government
will probably need to publish other aspects of how it sees the
railway developing way beyond 2014. Remember the High Level Output
Specification is a regulatory contract but alongside that my guess
is that by 2007 will be quite a good time to look a little bit
further on. We will also have Eddington's work completed by that
time, which will no doubt feed into that process.
Q32 Mrs Ellman: The Northern Way
is a combination of the three northern development agencies looking
at regenerating the north, and railway provision is an essential
part of that, yet the plans for expansion do not seem to be there
to meet the Northern Way's proposals. What are your comments on
that?
Mr Darling: Firstly, the High
Level Specification has not been written yet. The reason I cannot
publish it until July 2007 is because it will not be until that
time I know roughly what the revision to our spending will be
in the spending review which is due for 2007, so I cannot write
it now, it just would not be possible. We set out our spending
in 2004 for the current three-year period which rolled forward
the transport spending from 2010 to 2015, but the problem that
we have got—and we have discussed this lots of times before
at this Committee—is we are spending huge amounts of money
on the railways at the moment but a lot of that money, a lot of
the increase which came after the regulated settlement of a couple
of years ago has been to do with the massive backlog of investment
that mainly occurred during the 1990s with the lead up to and
following privatisation. We will decide when the Government sets
its expenditure for 2007 what we can do after that. At the moment
there is an awful lot of money going into the railways. Frankly,
I suspect there always will be a gap between everybody's aspirations
and what we can actually do.
Q33 Chairman: Secretary of State,
you are quite clear about price caps being put on things like
light rail. Do you do the same thing with the Highways Agency?
Mr Darling: Right across the board
we are having to become increasingly rigorous. Look for example
at the proposal to build a tunnel alongside Stonehenge to divert
the road—
Q34 Chairman: That is a very dramatic
one but there is the M25, with the widening between 12 and 15
which has gone from £94 million to £120 million; there
is the A57; there is the A2 where phase two has more than doubled
from £35 million when first approved to £101 million.
I think we need to be clear that you are saying very plainly that
local authorities getting involved in light rail will automatically
be required to stick to the sort of figures that they were first
told. I just want to make absolutely certain that tightening up
includes the Highways Agency.
Mr Darling: We are tightening
up right across the piece. The Highways Agency also has to live
within its budget. If it spends too much on one road it is going
to have to spend less on another road, which no doubt will lead
to grief in one part of the country or another.
Q35 Chairman: And how will you know
that because I seem to recall last time the Highways Agency's
accounting gave a little difficulty.
Mr Rowlands: It is a great deal
better now.
Q36 Chairman: Like mucking up the
whole of your figures.
Mr Rowlands: We now have a clean
set of accounts without the Highways Agency mucking it up. The
numbers are solid.
Q37 Chairman: Does that mean you
have junked the Highways Agency or the Highways Agency is not
part of your accounts?
Mr Rowlands: That is because the
Highways Agency is part of the Department and we put in a new
Finance Director about 18 months ago.
Q38 Clive Efford: Secretary of State,
you will be aware that 45 trains were taken out of service on
the Northern Line. Is the Department confident that under the
PPP that London Underground is capable of running a safe service?
Mr Darling: Yes I am. Bear in
mind that the operation of the Underground is a matter for TfL
and the Mayor. Of course, I know about it and I will set out what
I know, but TfL have to decide how to operate that contract under
their responsibility for the day-to-day running of the Tube. Let's
deal with the Northern Line point and then come on to the more
general PPP one. The Northern Line contract actually was the subject
of a separate PPP contract signed in 1996 and it was separate
from the Tube PPP that we are referring to generally. There was
a problem with the braking systems of these trains, it was recognised
and it has now been sorted and the trains are back running, the
last figure I saw was about 97% reliability, which is what you
would expect. I know that Tube Lines, which now operate that contract,
is in the process of having discussions how to better organise
things. I think it is fairly common knowledge that the way things
were run prior to that was not entirely satisfactory. As I said
publicly before, if the Mayor wished to amend that particular
contract, it is a matter for him, we would not stand in his way.
You asked generally about the PPP which obviously came into force
after the Northern Line one and, yes, of course in any contract,
in any agreement there will be problems from time to time, but
there are improvements now coming into the Tube. On the Jubilee
Line, for example, the seventh car will be added to the trains.
I do appreciate that they had to be taken out of service to do
that, which is the subject of today's Evening Standard
story, but it will mean a better service once those new carriages
are there. The station is being improved, there is a brand new
station at Wembley which I think will be finished rather before
the Stadium but it will be able to handle a lot more people, so
there are a lot of improvements. Remember we are spending nearly
£1 billion a year on the Tube and a lot of the Tube's problems,
rather like main line problems, stem from the fact that successive
governments failed to spend the money on the Tube when they should
have done. That has been put right. So, yes, I am very confident
and I am very sure that the last thing we need to spend our time
doing is embarking on another renegotiation of this whole thing.
It is very important that we get on with this investment and the
Tube continues to improve.
Q39 Clive Efford: Is the contract
for the rolling stock on the Northern Line part of the PPP or
is it a separate PFI?
Mr Darling: It was done as a separate
PFI deal but it is managed by Tube Lines.
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