Official Report 196KB pdf
We move to agenda item 3, which is the integrated transport bill. The committee has already taken evidence from the minister on the matter. There were many areas that we wanted to investigate and we ran out of time. We are very pleased that she has returned to continue the discussion. We left off in the middle of a debate about buses and national timetables.
I thought that we had covered that.
We will discuss concessionary fares later in the meeting. Are there any questions for the minister on congestion charging?
I am taken by the concept of additionality, minister. Can you confirm that there will be no reduction in real terms in the money available to local authorities for transport and infrastructure, should congestion charging be introduced? Can you also confirm that there will be no reduction in the Executive's expenditure on those areas where congestion charging has been introduced?
I can give a strong commitment that the charging revenue will result in genuinely additional expenditure on transport. The safeguard for that is full transparency—we are asking local authorities to identify a separate account for the proceeds from road user charging. As members will be aware, we do not ring-fence local authority money for transport. However, the way in which the local authority spends resources on transport should be transparent. It should be possible to identify the revenue as additional money.
I understand that the money is additional, because it is coming in from an external source, and I understand what you are saying about transparency. However, I do not think that that necessarily guarantees that matters that are currently funded directly—through rates or through central Government provision—will not be funded by road user charging. Can you give a guarantee that that will not happen—that such revenue will result in additional expenditure for new projects and that things that are currently funded locally or nationally will remain funded in that way?
In approving any scheme undertaken by a local authority, I would have to be satisfied that the authority was definitely putting in new resources through the schemes. I would also ensure that the local authority was not changing its accounting system to avoid using existing transport expenditure.
Glasgow City Council is considering a report on the ability of the new legislation to generate public-private partnerships. There is concern that the private sector is unlikely to enter into agreements that might be cancelled if the political control of an authority changed hands. It is remarkable that Glasgow City Council brought that up—perhaps it is anticipating proportional representation.
I certainly do not want to comment on the future politics of Glasgow.
If, for the sake of argument, you approved a 15-year scheme, would you be approving all the detailed expenditure throughout the life of the scheme?
If I were to approve a lengthy scheme of that sort, the local authority would have to be able to demonstrate fully the need for such a scheme and how the proceeds would be spent. Thereafter it would have to produce an annual report both for my purposes and to enable the authority to identify how the proceeds of the scheme were being spent and how construction work on different projects was going ahead.
I have noticed a problem when motorway traffic re-emerges on to trunk roads. I cannot see any indication that that problem is going to be dealt with. Are there any plans to introduce incentives that would address it? When people leave the M74, for instance, they encounter big queues of traffic, which has safety implications. Local authorities do not have responsibility for that.
We are not addressing that in this bill. We have announced new national road safety targets, which involve reducing child accidents by 50 per cent. That is where we will address road safety. In our future expenditure on trunk roads and motorways, one of our key aims will be to introduce safety measures on those roads. That does not require legislation.
When do you intend to start spending money on such measures?
We are currently spending money on road safety. During the strategic roads review, one of the five principles that we considered when evaluating schemes was safety. Route action plans are being drawn up throughout the country to identify clear measures to tackle safety problems. Those are in addition to our national targets on child safety and on reducing the number of accidents generally.
I have two questions. Murray Tosh mentioned Glasgow, and one of Glasgow's successes in traffic management is its differentiated charging scheme for parking, which penalises people who bring in their cars at peak periods and leave them there all day, but involves lower charges for people who come in for short periods to shop. Is there any possibility of considering time differentiation for congestion charging, as the objective is to reduce congestion at its peaks rather than to remove cars from specific areas at all times of day? Does what you are proposing include a mechanism that would allow such fine-tuning of the management process?
That is a very important point. Schemes for congestion charging would have to be linked into local transport strategies. In the long run, we are looking towards more sensitive options such as time charging. Those could be introduced if we had some form of electronic capability. I know that that is being considered in other countries. Part of the purpose of the Hermiston Gait study will be to enable us to examine different traffic flows and to test the electronic technology that would allow charging to be used in a much more focused way. Over time, we could move to a more sophisticated approach that would meet other road traffic objectives.
As a pilot scheme, it might be feasible to examine the way in which trucks and so on deliver goods to sensitive areas. An electronic system for charging trucks or barring them from making deliveries at particular times of the day, thereby encouraging them to make them at other times, would be a useful traffic management system that might come out of the congestion charging process.
That is right. Partly it is a matter of consent and fairness. It is important that local authorities that would be affected by a congestion charging scheme should be fully involved from the outset in the discussions on its operation and benefits. Fair treatment is a critical issue, which will need to be resolved; it would be up to local authorities to submit a joint scheme for congestion charging. If a local authority submitted a scheme on its own, I would want to know that it had consulted effectively with the surrounding local authorities and that it had discussed not only the operation of the scheme, but its key benefits—not only in the reduction of congestion, but in the identification of new revenues. That process has been started where local authorities are seriously examining the option of congestion charging.
Does the Scottish Executive envisage any role for itself in the event of disputes in which, for example, a suburban authority considered that a city authority or a neighbouring authority was designing its traffic management schemes in ways that would create bottlenecks for people who wanted to enter that area, or that would discriminate against other groups? A classic example of such a dispute arose between the authorities in Clydebank and Glasgow, when Glasgow City Council fenced off one of the routes that Clydebank folk used to get into Glasgow. Because Glasgow City Council had the authority to do that, there was no basis on which people in the neighbouring authority could object. There are routes over which there could be hundreds of disputes. Have you anticipated potential areas of controversy under the new circumstances?
The key issue will be the two stages at which local authorities have to gain ministerial approval. The first stage will be approval of the principle. At that point, the local authorities that are driving the scheme forward will have to be able to demonstrate to Scottish ministers that they have consulted neighbouring local authorities and that those authorities are content with the scheme in principle. The second stage will be consideration of the proposals. The schemes will have to be in line with the local transport strategies; any local authority that attempted to create congestion would be acting against the principles of our programme to tackle congestion. By definition, that would have to be one of our considerations.
In Edinburgh, particularly in my area, there is a considerable difference between traffic flows during the holidays and traffic flows during school time. I would like consideration to be given to a couple of ideas. First, some firms and public bodies could stagger their working hours. When schools decided to go for the asymmetric week, quite a lot of them changed their start time from 8.45 am to 8.30 am, which would have gone some way towards helping the traffic flows. Secondly, more consideration could be given to the pedestrianisation of transport. Pedestrians do not seem to figure as much in the proposals as one might like. Will you consider those things?
Safer routes to school, pedestrianisation and the promotion of cycling do not require legislation; they require action. Local authorities can use the local transport strategies to shape the use of our road space and public space, and the creation of safer routes is critical. You are right to say that our streets are much less busy in the holidays. Promoting those aims as part of a coherent approach is the way forward for local authorities. We know that the majority of transport routes are short distance, so there is an opportunity to do much better. Increasing travel awareness is part of that process; it is not part of the legislation, but it is part of the context.
Page 32 of the document shows a flow chart for introducing a charging scheme. I have some questions about how we would get from stage 3 to stage 8. Stage 3 is:
The local authority would not have that power. That is a power for Scottish ministers to exercise in conjunction with the strategic rail authority. I propose to exercise that power by examining the local transport strategies prepared by each local authority and considering how they fit into an overall transport vision for Scotland.
John Prescott has talked about £80 billion over 10 years. Can you say what money might be available to a local authority that is keen to implement ambitious plans? What is the ballpark figure that will be available for the public transport fund that local authorities can access?
It is £90 million over the next three years, £14 million of which will be for the rural transport fund. The programme will be over three years and it will be up to us in our comprehensive spending review in Scotland to shape the public transport fund for the future.
I have questions on paragraphs 89 and 91 of the document. Paragraph 89 states:
It would have been useful for you to have been a fly on the wall and to have a note of what we discussed at that meeting.
If an authority had an approach that did not necessarily reduce congestion but eliminated some projected congestion, would that qualify?
I would want to consider that.
What level of transparency will be required in the private finance initiative schemes that are entered into by local authorities with the approval of the Scottish Executive and the minister? What right of scrutiny will the Parliament have for individual schemes?
I have made it clear in the paper that, when approving any scheme for a local authority, we would have to be satisfied that it made economic sense and provided value for money. There would have to be consultation before any scheme was approved, and there would have to be an annual monitoring process. I hope that that would provide transparency for all affected by the scheme. Local businesses, authorities or communities would be able to see how the money was being raised and spent. That would be true for public-private partnerships, PFIs, or straightforward capital investment by local authorities—they would all have to have ministerial approval at the start and would have to be reported on annually.
What rights of scrutiny would the Parliament and Audit Scotland have? Will those rights be enshrined in legislation?
We have not made that commitment in this bill. We have said that I, as minister, would have to be satisfied, that the local authorities would have to consult, and that there would have to be an annual reporting mechanism.
Reporting to the Scottish Executive, not to the Parliament?
No, not just to the Scottish Executive. The charging schemes would be local, so accountability would be to local communities, local businesses and local residents. The schemes are being suggested by local authorities and given ministerial approval. In a sense, they are owned by local authorities. The safeguard is ministerial approval, which will ensure that local authorities have met the requirements for consultation in the paper that we are discussing today and the bill when it comes through.
One of the legitimate gripes about PFIs and PPPs concerns the administrative complexity and the costs involved in putting the schemes in place. Listening to you, Sarah, I am beginning to worry about the level of administrative complexity that is associated with each stage. There is complexity for the local authority in proposing the detailed plans for the schemes; there is complexity at your end when you have to evaluate the schemes; and there is the complexity of consultation and monitoring. Has there been an audit of the costs of putting a scheme in place? Do we have a broad grasp of what the additional administrative burden may be on local authorities and on the Executive?
The paper makes clear that the consultation requirement has to fit the nature of the scheme. A relatively straightforward scheme would have a different requirement for consultation than a major scheme that crossed several authorities' boundaries.
I accept that we have to manage congestion effectively and that this is an innovative approach to doing so, but we need to ensure that the benefits of the schemes are not reduced by the imposition of an elaborate administrative system. We must be conscious of the balance between cost and accountability.
I could not agree more. That is the sort of issue that we will have to bear in mind when we have the bill.
Do you accept that an investment of £90 million over three years will not provide the resources that are required? If we are talking primarily about the City of Edinburgh, do you agree that what is required is an improvement in rail transportation, such as a Borders rail link and improvement of links with West Lothian? If that does not happen, the danger is that we will be left with peripheral park-and-ride schemes on various sites on the other side of the Forth and at Lothianburn, Kinnaird Park and so on. If we really want to make a difference, we will have to spend substantially more. What schemes could be built in the Edinburgh area with £90 million over three years?
The public transport fund must apply across Scotland and we must ensure that there is appropriate investment throughout the country. I do not want to underplay the investment that has already been made in the key areas where local authorities are tackling congestion. You have picked the example of Edinburgh. Major investments are already taking place in crossrail, in East Lothian and Fife. A significant turnaround in the bus fleets in Edinburgh is happening only this week. New ticketing schemes are being considered by all the authorities in the south-east of Scotland. It is important that we do not underplay what is being done now.
I do not understand the logic of taxing the nurse who cannot get to St John's hospital at Howden except by car when she works the night shift but letting off the guy who will not walk from his house in the Gyle to the shopping centre for his morning paper and packet of fags. What has persuaded you that it is right to charge the nurse but not the guy who will not walk 500 yards?
That is a great soundbite, but it is not what we are talking about. There has already been a members' debate in Parliament on health authorities' charging for workplace parking. Such schemes already exist. When we propose legislation, we must prioritise and decide what our key targets are. The main problem that we are dealing with is congestion. Currently, the main driver for congestion is people travelling to work and using roads to the extent that they are becoming congested. That is why we formulated the bill as we have.
I will be brief, as I need to get down to the car parks in Ayr to distribute my leaflet on the latest SNP policy initiative.
I do not wish to become involved in Murray Tosh's charm offensive toward Glasgow City Council, but I will say that we are carefully examining all the responses that we have received from a wide variety of organisations. At present, it is our view that we should ensure that the system we develop is enforceable and that it provides for independent adjudication and allows people to be clear about who is liable for charges.
If the onus of enforcement is put on the owner and provider of the space because that is the easy way to enforce the scheme and collect the money, does that not mean that schemes will be revenue raising rather than congestion reducing? Does that not go against the principle that is established in paragraph 89?
No, because the schemes have to link into an overall congestion approach by the local authority. I return to the point that this is about providing people with transport choices and using the revenue that is raised to create positive alternatives for employees who currently use their cars. It is not just about workplace parking levies; it is about the wider congestion approach of the local authority and the wider move to green transport plans. It is important that we adopt an integrated approach to this issue.
On workplace parking levies, what do you mean by national exemptions? Within what parameters will local authorities be able to make local exemptions?
We have suggested national exemptions because it is clear that there would not be any scheme anywhere that should not have an exemption for emergency vehicles or for those whose mobility is impaired. Rather than having a designation order on each occasion, we are being clear now about national exemptions. The need for national exemptions came through strongly in consultation responses. It is an important issue for the emergency services.
Will local authorities have the right to make decisions on local exemptions? Will there be guidelines or will permission be needed to apply local exemptions?
It would be a matter for local authorities.
I have a question that relates to congestion and workplace charging. A local authority might introduce a civil penalty for the breach of a regulation that is supposed to raise money for that local authority. Has that element of the integrated transport bill been checked for compliance with the European convention on human rights?
Independent adjudication will allow people to complain or to object to the application of a penalty.
But has that aspect of the bill been run past the ECHR?
As all new legislation must meet ECHR requirements, the drafting of the bill's details will have to demonstrate that.
Has consideration been given to offset or rebate schemes for workplace parking charges to encourage employers to build secure facilities for storing bicycles and indeed to encourage more bicycle use? Such schemes could provide useful leverage to facilitate the use of more environmentally friendly transport.
That is what I had in mind when I said employers could develop green transport plans. There are a range of mechanisms for businesses. It would be up to them to identify schemes to tackle congestion or that might exempt them from a workplace parking levy. We are open to creative discussion on the issue and it might prove to be one of the benefits of the legislation.
As members have no further questions—I can see that you are relieved by that, minister; I quite understand—I want finally to mention concessionary rates. The committee has discussed the matter with you and two of your officials kindly gave us some insight into details of the proposed research. We are anxious to ensure that the work is carried out but not to duplicate any of the Executive's work. We have certain reservations about which I have written to you. Although you have stated that research on this issue will be aimed at groups such as elderly and disabled people, we are concerned that the socially excluded, the unemployed, carers and other groups who might be identified in our research have not been included and have requested that you widen your terms of reference.
By the time the bill is given royal assent, I want to be clear about how to proceed on concessionary fares. The Government has prioritised elderly people and people with physical disabilities. I want to ensure that I have the funding and have clearly worked out its implementation and implications. That is why the Executive's research must be focused and delivered on time—so that the committee can appreciate the extent of the research when we finally implement the bill. I am more than happy to circulate any interim reports so that the committee can follow the progress of the research.
That clarifies the matter. If we know your intentions, we can discuss in detail what we intend to do.
Can I have that in writing, please?
Thanks very much.
Meeting adjourned.
On resuming—