Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40
- 59)
WEDNESDAY 16 NOVEMBER 2005
RT HON
ALISTAIR DARLING
MP AND MR
DAVID ROWLANDS
Q40 Clive Efford: If it is running
unsatisfactorily do you have plans for either that PFI contract
or parts of the PPP to be altered in order to allow London Underground
to run an efficient service?
Mr Darling: The PFI contract is
a matter for Transport for London, it is not the Department for
Transport. The parties to that contract are London Underground
which is of course run by TfL and the contractors. I am not a
party to that. What I have said just a moment ago and I have said
this publicly is if they want to change those arrangements that
is entirely a matter for them. I do know discussions are taking
place but it would probably be unwise to provide a running commentary
of what these are, for perfectly obviously reasons. There is nothing
in relation to the Northern Line PFI contract that leads me to
believe that you would need to make any changes to the overall
PPP arrangement. Indeed, whilst there is a seven-year review of
the PPP contract mainly to discuss outputs and so on, I think
to embark on another renegotiation of these contracts would be
hugely expensive and delaying in time. Despite the fact there
are from time to time well-publicised difficulties, firstly I
am not sure they would not have arisen in some other shape or
form had we carried on in the old way, but I think that over the
years the fact we are spending £1 billion a year on the Tube
will ensure that people begin to see really quite substantial
improvements in its performance. After all, on the main line railways
the reason the trains are running a lot better now—and you
know we set an 85% reliability target for next March and we have
hit it already—the reason is despite all the trauma of the
last few years, by consistently putting more money in and managing
the system better you get the results, and that is what the Tube
needs as well.
Q41 Clive Efford: You are saying
that you do not see any real cause for major changes to the PPP
but that is a matter for the Mayor and the contractors.
Mr Darling: No, I do not see any.
What the Mayor and the contractors are discussing at the moment
is the separate Northern Line arrangement because quite clearly
there have been problems there and they clearly need to be sorted
out because it is hugely inconvenient to an awful lot of people.
Q42 Clive Efford: If they wanted
to renegotiate that is a matter for the Mayor and local contractors?
Mr Darling: Yes.
Q43 Clive Efford: London Underground
has produced its second year report on the performance of the
PPP. Do you agree with TfL's assessment of poor performance on
the Underground?
Mr Darling: There have been problems
in relation to performance, particularly with one of the contractors,
but in any case where you are putting in an awful lot of new investment
and making huge changes you will get problems from time to time,
but overall TfL tell me that actually, slowly but surely, these
improvements are coming through. Obviously the earlier stuff you
do is not visible like the stuff you are doing down tunnels and
so on, but it is all resulting in increased reliability. One of
the other things that is worth bearing in mind I think is that
the number of people using the Tube has gone up by about 17% in
the last seven or eight years.
Q44 Chairman: That does not necessarily
reflect they are getting more efficient, does it? It just means
there are 17% more people using the Tube.
Mr Darling: Except that if its
performance was deteriorating sharply it would not be able to
carry those additional people. No-one would argue that the problems
on the Tube are all behind us; they are not. There are always
going to be problems running an underground railway that was essentially
built by the Victorians and one that has suffered from years of
inadequate expenditure on it. I do think that whatever people
thought about the PPP, the last thing on earth we need is a bean
feast for lawyers in renegotiating the thing. It is far better
to ensure the money we spend goes to trains and tunnels.
Q45 Chairman: Before I come on to
Mr Martlew, I just want to ask you one thing about that. That
would be so if in fact it was capable of meeting a happy medium.
You are assuming that not having to renegotiate is better even
if the service is at an inadequate level, are you not?
Mr Darling: I can only go on the
advice and conversations I have with people in TfL.
Q46 Chairman: Fine.
Mr Darling: Yes, there are difficulties
and the Northern Line is probably the most recent and most graphic
one, but I think the improvements being made in terms of the trains
being available for service and reliability and so on, I think
it is quite capable of working, and I think over the years it
will work and it will provide London with what it needs.
Chairman: We may come back to that. Mr
Martlew?
Q47 Mr Martlew: On that I have a
comment rather than a question. People who live in London do not
understand what a good transport system they have got. There are
other parts of the country where we are very envious of it. Before
I come back to buses, there was a piece in the weekend's paper
which said that to meet the climate change targets you are going
to make us all drive at 70 miles an hour, which I thought was
the legal maximum anyway on the motorways. Could you comment on
that?
Mr Darling: If we believed everything
we read in the newspapers then we would be very unhappy indeed.
I read in the newspapers the other day that I was arguing for
abandoning a target at a meeting which I was not actually at.
I think it was the same newspaper actually.
Q48 Chairman: We would not put it
past you, Secretary of State.
Mr Darling: I would. In relation
to the 70 miles an hour, it is there for safety as are all our
speed limits there. You are dead right, if the law says that you
should not go more than 70, you should not go more than 70. We
are not planning to change that speed limit nor have we given
any instructions or advice to the police that they should change
their policing of it, and indeed I think, if I remember rightly,
on the list of things to do, that one was categorised right down
the bottom in terms of yield, so I can tell the Committee if we
ever decide to change the speed limits we shall let the House
of Commons know, but I suspect that of such a dramatic step you
would expect nothing less.
Q49 Mr Martlew: I do not think that
is the point, Secretary of State. The reality is that the speed
limit is 70 miles an hour. The article was not suggesting that
it should be reduced but there is a feeling—
Mr Darling: The one I read did.
Q50 Mr Martlew:—It suggested
a blind eye is turned to the fact that people do over 70 miles
an hour.
Mr Darling: We may have been reading
different articles but the article I read suggested that it should
be reduced.
Q51 Mr Martlew: This one was everybody
is going to be fined if they did over 70 miles an hour.
Mr Darling: I read that one as
well. We have not given any instructions nor can we actually instruct
chief constables what to do in that way or make any representations
to them that say you must have a huge crack down on motorways.
The police give it the attention that they think it needs. You
are absolutely right, as you said earlier, if the law says you
should not go more than 70, you should not go more than 70. That
remains the case and nothing has changed in that respect.
Q52 Clive Efford: The article I saw
and the one covered on the BBC Today programme said that
it would contribute to reductions in emissions from cars if they
maintain a speed limit of 70 miles an hour rather than go above
it. Has your Department made any assessment of whether that is
accurate and whether that would make any contribution to cutting
emissions?
Mr Darling: It is certainly true
in general terms when there comes a point the faster you go the
greater the emissions. Not only did I hear that programme I was
actually on it, so I know about that one!
Q53 Clive Efford: I thought I recognised
your voice.
Mr Darling: Yes, that was me!
I also make the point that last week I announced that the Government
would be imposing an obligation on fuel providers to have 5% of
their sales as being biofuels. That is the equivalent of taking
one million cars off the road every year. That seemed to be a
far better way, that and other measures as well, clean engines
and so on, to cut down CO2 emissions, which is very, very important.
As I said on that programme, the reason that we have these limits
is for safety reasons. That is the primary driver of these things.
Q54 Mr Martlew: If we can return
to the buses, I was very interested in what you are saying. You
seemed to be saying that there was a frustration in some areas
that the local authorities and bus companies are not working together.
To use my constituency as an example, we are in a situation where
the city cannot take any more traffic yet we have a local authority
that is downgrading the park-and-ride plans; they have never provided
any. We have a situation where the decision-makers never travel
on public transport. Most MPs will travel on public transport
here in London but when they go back to their constituency they
get the car. I just have a feeling that unless the Government
are actually directing local authorities, we are going to end
up with a situation where everybody will be blaming everybody
else but there will be grid lock in some of our smaller cities.
Mr Darling: You are right that
you do detect a degree of frustration and I think there are things
the Government can do, which I talked about earlier. What the
Government cannot do, though, is stand in the shoes of, say, the
council running Carlisle, if the local councillors will not do
something for one reason or another. Even under the days when
buses were regulated no matter what the instructions, there was
no way you could ensure that Whitehall ran Carlisle. What you
can do through LTP settlements—and we are becoming increasingly
prescriptive as to what councils ought to be doing by saying if
you want the money this is what you have to produce and of course
through the general law in relation to buses you are talking about—is
generally you can point people in the right direction. Sadly,
though, you cannot tell them what to do. As you know, there are
councils at the moment busy taking out bus lanes. There are councils
saying here is a bus lane but you are allowed white vans in them
as well. White vans are precisely the people who cause difficulty
because they stop for deliveries. I cannot be surprised if bus
companies say how can we operate a reliable bus service and the
knock-on from that is the public says I am not taking the bus
because you cannot rely on it. It does need willing partners to
make this thing work under any regime. I do not want to repeat
what I said earlier, but we are looking at ways in which we can
make things better.
Q55 Mr Martlew: Coming back to the
free concessions for pensioners on buses, it is very welcome but
the fact that it is off peak means that there is not a reduction
in peak time travel as an alternative for patrons using the car.
At peak times they are not going to catch the bus, they are still
going to use the car. My local authority is actually using the
extra money to give it throughout the day. Would it not have been
better if the Government had spread the concession throughout
the day?
Mr Darling: I suppose you can
do all sorts of things. You have to balance how much money you
have got to spend in the first place and where you actually spend
it. There is always a risk if you do something you will be condemned
for not doing more. I think that what we announced last year is
useful. I am not saying it will not change in the future. Equally,
lest there be any misunderstanding, I am not holding out hope
that we are about to do something different on that but we always
keep these things under review.
Q56 Chairman: Secretary of State,
much as I love you do you think a little brevity is in line?
Mr Darling: Happily.
Q57 Mr Clelland: Secretary of State,
I am not sure I am going to be able to live up to that as well.
Secretary of State, you mentioned before the question of the need
for financial probity—and obviously that is right—and
the difficulty of raising finances for public projects cannot
be underestimated. This is maybe a bit of a chicken-and-egg argument
but we in the North East and particularly in Gateshead have been
banging on for years now about the congestion on the A1 Western
Bypass. I have raised it with you several times. Precious little
notice seems to have been taken of what the local authority has
advised over those years and the situation has got worse and worse,
to such an extent that now we find the galling situation where
the Highways Agency are to use their powers to prevent the local
authority from developing areas of land around the Western Bypass
on the basis that it will cause more congestion. I said this may
be a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation but how could that help?
Without economic regeneration and improvements to the area how
are we going raise the money to pay for the public projects we
want to improve the congestion?
Mr Darling: I will try to be brief
here but this is a complex matter. Firstly the Highways Agency
has not blocked this. Two applications were turned down on safety
grounds and I understand that the promoters are looking at these
and they may be coming back with amended plans. The Highways Agency
has asked for information in relation to a further five or six
developments which are industrial developments and they do this
as standard practice, as does any highways authority, because
it wants to know what are the traffic implications. What we want
to avoid is a situation where you grant planning consent, the
traffic pours onto to the A1 which is already crowded and the
thing just grinds to a halt. You are absolutely right, what you
want to do is make sure you have got sufficient capacity in your
transport system to support economic development, particularly
in the North East where it is much needed. Tyne & Wear have
submitted a bid to the Transport Innovation Fund which includes
a range of measures to help manage local demand because a lot
of the traffic on the A1 around Gateshead and Newcastle, as you
know, is locally generated traffic and I have always said you
need to look at that as well as the other stuff. The Highways
Agency is also looking at measures that might help in relation
to the A1. I am acutely aware of the problems and indeed I will
be in Newcastle tomorrow afternoon to discuss that with various
of the councillors. They have put in a bid and I just want to
discuss some of these things. I hope that was brief enough.
Q58 Mr Donaldson: Secretary of State,
without lorry road user charging how will the Department ensure
that all goods vehicles, including those from overseas, make a
financial contribution to road wear in the United Kingdom?
Mr Darling: We are working with
the industry at the moment—the Freight Transport Association,
the Road Hauliers' Association and others—to see what can
be done in the medium term. In the longer term if we go to a national
road pricing scheme, that will mean anyone using our roads will
pay according to the distance they travel, so it will include
foreign lorry drivers as well as everyone else. The lorry road
user charging scheme was run by Customs & Excise as a project,
and the reason that they decided to fold it into the work that
we were doing is that it makes no sense at all to have two parallel
schemes. It was better to bring that work within the work we are
doing on a national road pricing scheme. I have said before, and
being brief as Mrs Dunwoody asked I am not going to say it again,
there are some years' work before we get there but in relation
to the lorry road user charging scheme there may be interim measures
that we can look at.
Chairman: Order, order, I am very sorry,
I am required to suspend the Committee. I think there may be two
votes. Can I ask Members if they would try and confine their voting
to within 20 minutes.
The Committee suspended from 3.37 pm to
3.58 pm for a division in the House
Q59 Mr Donaldson: Secretary of State,
we were on the issue of the lorry road user charging. Can you
tell us how much the Government has spent on pursuing research
and proof-of-solution testing on the Lorry Road User Charge, given
that it has now been abandoned?
Mr Darling: I can tell you that
we spent about just over £31 million on the project. There
are still additional costs to come in following the termination
of it, which are the subject of contractual discussions, so I
do not really want to go into them just now, but presumably in
the not too distant future, and it is Customs & Excise who
are winding this up, so it is not our Department which is running
this, but I think the termination should not take that long, in
which case we can write to the Committee and give you the exact
figures.
Mr Rowlands: I think that is right.
I think Customs will have to publish in due course the total numbers,
but they are still in discussion with the bidders in terms of
the costs and so on.
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