Official Report 275KB pdf
I open the 27th meeting in 2004 of the Local Government and Transport Committee. The main item on the agenda today is our further consideration of the Transport (Scotland) Bill, on which we will take evidence from four groups of witnesses. I welcome our first witness, Gordon Dewar, who is the commercial director of First ScotRail. Thank you for your submission, Gordon. I invite you to make some introductory remarks, after which we will move to questions from the committee.
Thank you, convener. It is a great pleasure to be before the committee and to have the opportunity to give evidence again. As you said, my title is commercial director of First ScotRail, but I am before the committee as a representative of FirstGroup plc, which means that I am representing both its bus and rail interests. The committee has our submission and I will not dwell on the evidence that it contained, other than to pick out a few of the salient points that we raised.
Thank you for those introductory remarks.
I want to have a quick chat with you about regional transport partnerships and the transport agency. In your written submission, you say:
In advance of seeing how the RTPs deliver transport projects, it is impossible to say how that will work out. However, the creation of the new boundaries and the fact that the funding for the projects will come through the RTPs will remove the two most obvious hurdles that are holding things back at the moment. In most of the exciting projects that we are considering, there are cross-boundary issues. That is certainly the case for projects that involve the largest cities in Scotland, in which the surrounding authorities' interests and needs tend to be a little different from those of the cities. Most such projects have funding cycles that genuinely need to be longer than three years—with the planning stage, the cycles can often be five or six years. To be able to set up project plans, involve others—including the operators—in the partnerships and have a plan of delivery over five or six years, which typically includes the first two years of operation, gives us a huge advantage over our starting point.
There might be consensus about what needs to be done, but my concern is that achieving consensus about how to apply the cash from the various local authorities might be a different issue, particularly as the bill contains an opt-out that says that the local authorities will comply "so far as possible". We have evidence that, although the transport partnerships that already exist, such as the west of Scotland transport partnership and the south-east Scotland transport partnership, can pull a transport plan together, the local authorities cannot match the plans with resources, so what makes you think that it will be any different for the regional transport partnerships?
My understanding is that a regional transport partnership will be an organisation with a long-term future, on which specific duties are imposed; it will have the funding to match those duties and will be able to use that funding because it will have the resources for the planning and delivery of the project management and can bid for capital and revenue funding. That is what is missing at the moment. Bodies such as WESTRANS and SESTRAN are a good start and have demonstrated that the position is much improved when there is consensus across local authority boundaries, but they do not have teeth. The bill provides for a huge amount of what they are missing. We need to follow that through and ensure that we give the RTPs the tools that they need to enable them to start delivering.
I will just dig underneath the issue of whether the regional transport partnerships will have teeth, because that is the crux of the matter. A local authority will be able to decide that it is not going to play ball with the regional transport partnership. My understanding is that the RTPs will have no more teeth than do the transport partnerships that already exist. There will be a statutory requirement for the councils to talk to one another, but will the RTPs have enough powers to make things work?
We are still at an early stage as far as developing the detail is concerned, but my interpretation is that, in their residual areas of involvement as stand-alone organisations, the councils' most important role will remain the granting of planning permission. The provisions that relate to powers for highways development, the ability to promote bills and the ability to spend the cash that will be allocated to the partnership rather than through the councils' block grants seem to supply most of the tools that are needed to deliver most of the transport projects that are currently on the drawing board.
The submission from FirstGroup says:
There would be benefits of having a bespoke agency that would have continuity of staff and the ability to buy in specialist transport skills. The agency would also provide a structure that enabled us to harness the best of what Scotland has to offer and, I hope, to attract people from outside Scotland to bring in some of the expertise that we perhaps do not have at the moment. Stability would be provided and the funding streams and commitments would be understood.
That is useful.
The FirstGroup submission says:
A couple of authorities are pegs that do not fit as easily into the holes as others might do—Fife is a good example. That is why we suggest that authorities should have the opportunity to be observers in partnerships of which they are not necessarily a full member. As operators, we would be comfortable with and support such a pragmatic mechanism to allow for the sensible representation of constituency and local issues.
You welcome the opportunity for RTPs to include non-local authority members, including representatives of the business community. Which organisations from the business community would be appropriate RTP members? Are you thinking about individual transport operators or umbrella organisations that represent business interests? Would there also be a role for bus user or rail user representation?
I think that the answer is yes to all of that, but it is horses for courses. When we were thinking about the benefits of the involvement of the business community, we had in mind in particular the north-east Scotland transport partnership model, which has worked extremely well. NESTRANS includes representatives from umbrella organisations such as Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce, as well as individual operators, because there are not many such operators. However, in areas where there are many more operators, the involvement of an umbrella organisation that represents operators has worked well and provided a good voice for the industry.
Would RTPs help to secure partnerships between the public and private sectors and improve public transport?
I think so. There is a huge appetite out there for the private sector to get involved, particularly in infrastructure projects. Companies consistently see the absence of that involvement as a constraint on their economic development and their ability to expand their businesses. Their involvement would have two benefits. First, there would be an increased understanding of the genuine constraints and challenges that face us, both as operators and as providers to the public sector. Secondly, private sector companies have a huge amount to offer when they get involved in projects, whether in project management skills, in promoting projects or in looking for more innovative sources of funding.
I have two brief questions. First, on the boundaries issue, I will ask the same question as I asked other operators last week. How would you be willing to change the structure of your company to fit in with the boundaries relating to the partnerships? FirstGroup is telling us that we should consider amending the boundaries, but what are you willing to do to fit in with those structures?
It is probably best if I use First ScotRail as an example, as it is the national rail network and will have to deal with the regional partnerships. We have given a commitment to, and we are rolling out, regional forums that are deliberately designed to fit with what we anticipate the regional partnership boundaries will be. We see that as essential, because our future projects will be managed through those forums—that will be where funding will come through and where we will get engagement, develop consensus and agree how to prioritise and deliver projects. That is an obvious way of setting up the structure and of finding a mechanism—with agreement—to plug in our customer relationships, our stakeholder relationships and, of course, our partnership relationships with the regional authorities.
Secondly, you mentioned the need for politicians to look much further ahead than the two to three-year gains and the next general election. Is there also a need for the industry to look further than just profit, towards strategies? What evidence is there that your organisation has a five or 10-year plan that is motivated not only by profit, but by the need to deliver an effective service?
I do not see the two as mutually exclusive. Only by delivering a good and effective service will we have more customers and, therefore, improve our bottom line. I see the two as being absolutely in agreement with each other.
On the issue of business representation, does FirstGroup recognise the need to have a voice for freight on the RTPs, if we are to have them? Up to now we have—as I think we will hear later—focused on the carriage of people, whereas roads are used largely for the transport of freight. That is likely to continue to be the case for the foreseeable future.
That must be sensible. How such bodies choose to be represented effectively is a matter for them and for the partnerships. Wherever freight, tourism and so on share infrastructure, whether road or rail, it is essential that we take a balanced view of what is in our best interests. A huge amount of public money is going into supporting the infrastructure, whether road or rail, and we need to know that that investment is being utilised in the best way for the wider economy, the wider environment and society as a whole. That is an ambition and a requirement that we understand. Naturally, we will fight our corner by making the case for where we think that we can make a contribution to what our customers need, but we fully understand that a balanced view must be taken across all those areas.
Spoken like a true politician, if I may say so.
For a further three years.
So for a decade the franchise is set and the routes are specified. Would I be right in saying that the role of the RTPs means that they will not be able directly to require any additional routes? That ability will remain with the Executive, but I presume that it will not choose to exercise it, given that it concluded the new franchise arrangements only recently. Do the RTPs have any role to play in the rail service and, if so, what? Setting aside the case of Strathclyde Passenger Transport, would FirstGroup prefer those matters to continue to be dealt with at national level?
It is essential that the overall authority to change the franchise stays at national level, because some very large sums of public subsidy are associated with the franchise. As the railway is a national railway, any decision that we make on it has national implications for the timetable and the interaction of the rolling stock, for example. That is not to say that there is not a great deal that regional transport partnerships can do. I fully anticipate that delivery of some of the schemes will be dealt with most effectively at regional level.
I remain unclear about why the new arrangements are necessary if local authorities can work together under the existing arrangements. At our evidence session with the Scottish Executive, we were informed that one of the reasons for bringing forward the bill was that local authorities could not work together, yet so far we have not had any evidence of a major project being impeded because local authorities were not working together. Can you present any evidence from your long experience of buses or your short experience of rail franchises of any strategic development or planning being impeded because local authorities were not working together?
It is difficult to prove a negative. However, although there is a huge degree of consensus on some of the projects that we need to deliver, there has been a limited amount of delivery in the past five to 10 years, which leads me to conclude that something is not working as well as we would like it to.
I do not know whether you are familiar with it, but at last week's evidence session Glasgow City Council presented us with the model of a joint board working arrangement with other authorities in the former Strathclyde Regional Council area. I am not clear why that model, which does not require legislative change, would not be better at delivering the aspiration that you refer to than the requirement to set up another organisation.
With a will and a lot of effort, almost any organisational structure can be made to work, if there is a consensus. The difficulty arises with long-term planning and funding, which has involved people expending a lot of energy trying to do things to an unrealistic timescale or reinventing the wheel. When the round of funding dries up, people have to go through another round of funding to prove the business case again, to redesign the issues and to go back through consultations whenever there has been a change. We are talking about trying to take a streamlined project management approach that crosses the political boundaries of local authorities and crosses the boundaries and timescales of the budget.
Is that not a strong argument for the Executive to fund partnerships directly, rather than use the proposed funding mechanism, which is effectively a form of requisitioning funds from local authorities? You will probably know that there is controversy over voting arrangements, which means that the proposed mechanism is likely not to be the smoothest. If we are going to have partnerships, should the Executive not directly fund them?
I do not have strong feelings on how the funding works, as long as it is ring fenced and reliable. However, there is a huge amount of value in retaining local input. Expecting the centre to understand the nuances of local priorities and conditions is probably asking a little too much.
You touched on boundaries at the start. The committee has had much discussion of where Dumfries and Galloway will fit into arrangements. The area is in a rather unusual position in relation to your rail franchise, for example, as no trains that you operate stop at Lockerbie station, because they are not cross-border services. If Dumfries and Galloway Council was allowed to be in a partnership on its own, would that cause you difficulty?
I have no strong view about boundaries, as long as they follow the rule that the areas should be big enough to allow sensible strategic projects for the region to be deliverable and yet small enough to achieve balance in Scotland as a whole, so that partnerships have a fair crack of the whip at being properly resourced and being represented at political and practical levels.
I will ask about buses and utilities road works, which keep cropping up. Your submission says that you
It is worth expanding on why the impact on bus services is disproportionate. The effective work-around on road works is to advertise planned road works and diversionary works. People respond to conditions, which we all know can be unpredictable. The most knowledgeable transport planner sometimes gets wrong the implications of road works.
I assume that you are talking about compensation for bus companies, but we have heard a suggestion that compensation should be paid to the local authority if an inspection must take place. What is your view on the payment of compensation to different bodies?
I do not think that it is necessary to pass compensation on to the road user. There should be an incentive regime that prevents problems from arising in the first place, by ensuring that utilities companies manage their work so that they never have to pay a fine or compensation. I suspect that that would be sufficient payback for most road users and operators. We should incentivise companies to manage their work properly in the first place.
You stressed the importance of RTPs in bringing people together. Could the issue about road works and the utilities be addressed at regional level? I acknowledge that a national solution is important, but that might not happen overnight and a more local approach might be needed. RTPs might provide a useful forum in that context.
A national scheme must identify the duties of the utilities companies and their contractors and should set out reasonable management techniques for the incentive regime, so that there is a fair and even situation throughout Scotland and the utilities can be clear about what is expected of them. It would not be right if completely different management techniques were used on different sides of a geographical boundary. However, work with utilities and contractors to minimise day-to-day management issues is very much a local matter that relies on local transport professionals' knowledge and on there being understanding of local issues.
I think that we all acknowledge that the current process is inefficient. However, at the committee's meeting two weeks ago, civil servants told us that the Scottish road works commissioner's office will in effect be two men and a dog—the size of the operation will be such that very few people will be monitoring the process. If that is the case, is the establishment of a Scottish road works commissioner worth the effort? Would it be better to give local authorities and the utilities a statutory responsibility to work together to put together the Scottish road works register, instead of adding another layer of administration?
I am probably not best equipped to comment on how we deal with management of the process. The key principles are that there should be an incentive regime and a realistic checking procedure, which is properly resourced to ensure that the regime is rigidly adhered to. We can consider whether one organisational structure would do that better than another, but the procedures can be made to work.
The congestion that bus operators experience does not depend on who is carrying out road works; the congestion when the works are carried out by a utility company will be the same as the congestion when the works are carried out by a local authority.
Yes.
The point that I will eventually put to the minister is that, if minimising congestion is the aim, there is no point in having a different regime for utilities and local authorities. The impact of their road works is the same.
The need to develop best practice—and to understand the implications of failure to follow best practice and to manage a site well—should be understood equally by local authorities, utilities and other contractors. In principle, I agree with the point that the same impact is felt regardless of who is digging up the road. However, a different management regime is required because of what motivates a local authority and what motivates a contractor or a utility company. A different administrative approach may be required, but the understanding of how and when we should manage a project should be consistent.
We move now to the final part of the bill, on concessionary travel.
First, I would like to touch on something that Gordon Dewar just said. You represent the largest transport operator in Scotland, and you are keen on rigorous penalties for problems involving reinstatement of road works. Is that a fair comment?
We would like an incentive regime that imposed a duty of care and in which not carrying out that duty of care would have implications. We have no interest in having associated revenue streams or compensation; we are interested in roads being reinstated to a high quality and on time.
I just wanted that point to be clarified so that we can pursue it with the minister.
First and foremost, in Wales there is one formula that is well understood by all local authorities and operators. The formula takes into account the number of people who travel because a journey is free, as opposed to the number who would have travelled if they had had to pay. The formula also includes the costs to operators of having to put in additional resources. There is compensation to take account of lost fares and an adjustment to take account of people who are now travelling who would not previously have travelled. Compensation is based on the average adult fare. The formula is realistic and covers operators' costs with a bit of a margin. Operators are therefore in a position to invest further, to gear up to carry people, and to ensure that the fleet is kept up to date.
From what you say, I take it that you would support a non-time-limited scheme, similar to the Welsh scheme. One of my worries is that the Executive might still be considering an off-peak travel scheme. In Wales there is no time restriction, which helps with the simplicity of the Welsh scheme. As the largest operator in Scotland, would you suggest that there is no requirement for a time-restricted scheme?
Because of the importance of the morning and afternoon peaks, there would be a cost implication to making the travel scheme apply at all times; it would affect the number of buses that we need in the fleet to enable us to carry all the passengers. However, if compensation to the operator in terms of revenue lost was sufficient to cover that cost—as it is in Wales—and made investment in additional resources sensible, most operators, and certainly FirstGroup, would have no problem in offering that.
When you talk about simplicity and ticketing incentives and schemes, you seem to be suggesting that we could have a multimodal concessionary scheme that would operate not only on buses. Do you agree that the technology exists to enable us to develop a multimodal ticket for bus, train and ferry travel?
There would need to be significant investment in the technology. However, we do not need technology to run free travel schemes, as there is no value in the token. That said, there is a significant challenge to our ability to implement a free scheme on trains. A free scheme generates twice as many customers as there are when everyone pays the full adult fare. Although it is easy to add capacity to bus routes, that is not the case with rail. There would be a significant problem in trying to accommodate the level of growth that would result if rail travel were free. It is more difficult to introduce additional capacity into the rail system than it is to do so into the bus system because of the infrastructure and rolling-stock implications. We can go out and buy hundreds of buses over the next three years, but we cannot go out and buy lots more railway in the next three years.
As you are the new operator of the ScotRail franchise, I hope that you will accept that you have not been able to deal with the overcrowding problems in Scotland's busiest networks and that, often, you supply far too few carriages for those networks at peak times and far too many carriages at off-peak times, when you operate with empty carriages. Do you think that there is a role for you, as the manager of this mode of transport, to try to get that balance right?
I am not sure that that is entirely related to the Transport (Scotland) Bill.
It probably is not, but given the amount of times in the morning and night that I get it in the ear from people who have to stand for entire journeys, I felt that I had to take the opportunity to raise the issue with Gordon Dewar.
I will be happy to go through those points after the meeting.
Okay.
In relation to buses, we could do exactly what Wales is doing, as long as the funding was in place and we had a sensible administration scheme that would let that happen efficiently.
You have stressed continually the need for the scheme to be appropriately funded. There are a number of companies that provide support to the elderly in various forms—for example, some do-it-yourself stores provide subsidies to the elderly. Why should not operators such as FirstGroup take a hit with regard to providing help in relation to elderly people's social need? Why should the Government have to fund a multimillion pound company that already receives substantial subsidies?
There are a number of points to make. First, bus operations are not substantially subsidised—that is simply not true. About 5 per cent of our total income, other than from concessionary fares, comes through such things as tendered network. The subsidy of concessions is not a subsidy to the public transport operators, but to passengers, for example those who travel for free.
Do you accept that things are not as simple as you say they are? There will be times when you will run buses when you would be running them anyway and concessionary fares fill buses during those periods. It would be difficult to quantify the loss that you have mentioned.
We have quantified it and have given evidence to the Scottish Executive and our local authority partners. About 15 per cent of all our passengers are passengers only because there is a free-fares scheme. Also, to say that we would be running buses anyway is simply not true. If 15 per cent of my passengers vanished overnight—which they would do if we abolished the concessionary scheme—we would no longer run 1,000 buses in Glasgow, 400 buses in east Scotland and 250 buses in Aberdeen.
Perhaps there could be independent scrutiny of the issue.
Information is on the record with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and the Scottish Executive, and through a number of papers that I have given at conferences.
I thank Gordon Dewar for giving evidence.
There is not much that I want to add to the paper. Perhaps we could explore parts of it in more depth later. I reiterate the fact that the Freight Transport Association is a multimodal organisation. The vast majority of our work is road based, but we are certainly interested in other modes, too, although not in passengers.
How well does the freight transport industry interact with the existing voluntary partnerships around Scotland? How could that interaction be improved or developed and greater cognisance be taken of the views of the freight transport industry in developing transport strategies?
I suppose that we have had mixed meetings with the various partnerships. We have a strong link with the north-east Scotland transport partnership, as we have a freight quality partnership that is based in Aberdeenshire, which has helped the work with NESTRANS. We exchange minutes with the Highlands and Islands strategic transport partnership—that is about the size of it—and we have had various meetings with it. We keep in touch with some members of such organisations, probably more on a personal basis than on a formal basis. We are in touch with SESTRAN and WESTRANS, but do not deal with them in any great depth.
Looking to the future, what are your views on how the regional transport partnerships that are proposed would best interact with the freight transport industry? Do you agree with Mr Ewing that the freight transport industry should have representatives as partners in those organisations?
The proposals deal only with the movement of people. Why that should be, I do not know. It does not matter where we go, we deal with movement of people. As far as the vast majority is concerned, transport is about people. Transport is not in my opinion given the profile that it deserves, probably because it does not have a vote. The problem that we have is that when the word transport is used, people immediately think of buses and trains, and the movement of self-loading freight—as I sometimes call people—rather than the movement of goods and services. I hope that if the transport partnerships are set up, they will include representation from the freight side, merely to act as a brake—if nothing else—on some of the potential excesses if the partnerships concentrate purely on transporting people.
What do you mean by "potential excesses"?
When we consider the movement of people, there are many things that can be done that are not in the best interests of movers of goods. Gordon Dewar talked about bus quality partnerships. They are fine, but every time we put in a bus corridor we take away road space from other road users; the road users that I talk about are the freight interests. Here in Edinburgh we are just about to open the Straiton to Ocean Terminal bus corridor, which will take a lot of space from other road users. We can say that we do not give a damn and that car drivers can do what they like, but we have to remember that the vast majority of goods in this country are moved by road, and that the shops need to get the goods so that the shoppers who are coming on those quality bus corridors can buy them when they get to the shops. That is the problem. There is the potential for a dilemma, and there exists the potential that if the partnerships deal purely with the movement of people, there will be a downside for the freight industry.
You said, quite correctly, that the vast majority of freight is transported by road. Do you think that the proposed national transport agency and the regional partnerships will be able to develop further the amount of freight that is transported by rail or sea?
There is potential for that. We have achieved a lot in Scotland over the past few years in respect of movement of goods by rail—especially—and by water. Water freight is one area in which we can make fantastic savings, for example by shifting stuff from Campbeltown to Ayr, rather than moving it all the way by road. That is a perfect example of something that can be done by modal shift. However, the problem is that modal shift is limited, mainly in that it is good for long distances, although one organisation is considering the possibility that moving freight from Grangemouth to Hunterston might be economically viable by rail. Generally speaking, we are talking about bulk goods.
I represent the Bellshill area and I am sure that you will be aware of the problems relating to the A725 Bellshill bypass, which has Shawhead junction at one end and Raith interchange at the other. That area has been identified as an area of major road distribution and many companies have set up at Righead industrial estate, Strathclyde business park and Motherwell food park specifically because of the road network in that area. However, I am constantly speaking to companies in that area that have never had any discussions with either the local authority or the Scottish Executive about what is required in order to establish better transport for the public in the area. Obviously, the nearby Eurofreight terminal is specifically located in the area in order to take freight from road on to rail. Do you feel frustrated that the bill might have missed the opportunity to bring an organisation such as the Freight Transport Association into the regional transport partnerships?
You say that the companies there do not get in touch with the local authorities. We see our role as being to represent those companies in contacts with local authorities and the Scottish Executive. You will be aware of the policy document that we produced in June and the trade routes document that we produced for road and rail. Our members identified the contents of those documents as being the needs of the transport community.
Your written submission says:
It is true to say that the movement of goods in the urban areas tends to be over short distances. When we are talking about the average 30-mile journey, we are including refuse collection vehicles, for example, which make 5-mile journeys. Obviously, some journeys are much longer than that. Most supermarkets, including those in Inverness and Aberdeen, are served from the central belt—from the very places that Mr McMahon was just talking about. Everything comes from that M8 corridor, from where goods are transported right up to Stornoway, Lerwick and Shetland.
I understand that, but I am still trying to unpick exactly how we can best help the freight industry. You have said that most of the journeys that involve the transportation of goods—whether they involve a refuse wagon or a joiner's van—will take place within the travel-to-work area. It is quite important to establish that if we are trying to find a way to help the freight industry. I think that you are talking about how to get the freight industry much more involved in the national plan on how we deliver throughout the whole of Scotland. I would like to know how that can be done better, how the industry can be better involved and how the new transport agency might allow you to participate much more in developing that national plan.
I take your point about a lot of journeys being made in the travel-to-work area. We could probably play a role in that context with the transport partnerships—I would certainly not like to take my bat and ball away and say that the partnerships have nothing to do with us because we do not think that there is the right number of them. We would certainly want to be involved with such things. The business community and the logistics community—whether it is the Freight Transport Association or other bodies such as the chambers of commerce—need to get involved with the partnerships. We are talking about the infrastructure that we all want to use and there are differences—although this does not sound sensible—between what the passenger-carrying industry and the goods-carrying industry see as an ideal. There must be a compromise between the two.
I hope that most of us recognise the essential role that heavy goods vehicles play. Some MSPs seem to be very much against freight, as if it is a sort of original sin. Admittedly, some of those MSPs are in the Green party and have not shown a particular interest in turning up to the committee yet.
We have the draft instrument now.
Secondly, in the longer term, the iceberg on the marine horizon is the introduction of lorry road-user charging as a pilot. Charging would affect lorries but not cars, for some reason. You should feel free to mention other problems, but I mention those two matters because, with respect to the bill, the ministers have a proposed national function and you call for a national strategy. You also seek representation—or at least to be heard in some way—in the regional transport partnerships. What do you and representative colleagues in the Road Haulage Association want most? Do you want a national strategy or a place in the regional transport partnerships, or will both be required to ensure that haulage interests are not overlooked? To me, that seems to be an extreme danger from the bill and the apparatus that it proposes to create.
Let us have everything. If regional transport partnerships are to be set up, we will certainly look for representation of the movement-of-goods industry on them. However, we would like to see a national freight strategy for Scotland. We have done a lot of work in other parts of the country on freight strategies, such as for the north-east and north-west of England, and we would certainly like to look towards a national freight strategy for Scotland. To a certain extent, we are talking about a national transport strategy for Scotland, and we should put freight within that strategy.
As far as it is possible to glean what the Department for Transport is proposing, it does not seem to be arguing for that. It seems to be proposing simply that motorways should have the lowest charges, but the fact is that Scotland has the lowest number of motorways.
I would like to encourage us to go back to issues relating to the Transport (Scotland) Bill rather than Westminster issues.
I was thinking of section 12 of the bill, which gives Scottish ministers powers to bring forward a national strategy. I thought that, as we have Mr Scott here, we should give him an opportunity to explain some of the problems that might be faced in that regard. However, I appreciate that that is not directly relevant to the bill. It might be in the future, though.
It is funny that everything that the Executive produces on the subject of transport seems to be about people and roads. There seems to be little effort being put into an examination of the other modes, such as train and ferry. It seems stupid that a regional transport partnership in the Highlands and Islands would not deal with ferries and the few train services that there are in the area as well as road usage.
I fall into one of the categories that Fergus Ewing was talking about in that I am supportive of the freight industry. However, I would be interested to know what you would like to contribute to discussions in the regional transport partnership and what conflict issues you think might arise as a result of a distinctive contribution being made by the freight industry.
In the first instance, we would like to have a watching brief. Almost inevitably, the transport partnerships will concentrate on the movement of people. That is axiomatic. Therefore, we would like to ensure that, when people formulate policies, they do not forget the people who move goods and, instead, take a step back and ask what effect the policies will have on the logistics industry.
Would there be any scope for a discussion on a regional level of, for example, agreed routes?
Again, we have been involved in that sort of thing, in connection to the timber transport routing work that is being done in the south-west and in Perth and Stirlingshire. If industry can get involved in discussions on areas like that, we can help.
I do not think that anyone disagrees that the national freight strategy needs a more Scottish focus and, having been involved with some of the timber transport meetings in Stirling, I know that a lot of work has been done in that regard already. Obviously, however, there is a lot of work still to be done. What other work have members of your association done to get a more co-ordinated vision?
There is still a lot of work to be done. The problem that we have is that, although all of our members are involved to a greater or lesser extent in the moving of goods, they are a disparate bunch of people and organisations, ranging from the joiner with bits and pieces in his van to Exel, which is the biggest logistics company in the world. The problems that they have are extremely different and the problem that we, as the organisation that represents them, face is trying to bring together all the needs of those people.
On road works, your written submission says:
I would certainly hope so. The problem is that each proposed regional transport partnership would share a boundary with another RTP, so there would have to be co-ordination in some cases. The last thing that we need, for example, is for Kincardine bridge to be closed for painting when the A8000 is being upgraded. However, that area comes under SESTRAN, so I hope that such a scenario would not happen. You will get the drift of what I am trying to say, though.
You suggest in your written submission that local authorities could claim for 100 per cent of the cost of inspecting road reinstatements. Do you have ideas for any other measures?
That suggestion arose from the fact that less than 10 per cent of reinstatements are inspected—one of my colleagues got that figure for me—so there is a fair chance that many bad reinstatements will be overlooked. There must be a better way of operating than inspecting less than 10 per cent of the reinstatements. For example, local authorities could do reinstatements and charge contractors for that, or local authorities could do proper inspections of reinstatements and recover the cost of doing that from contractors. I am not qualified to say whether it should be one or the other, but there must be a better system than the current one, in which only one in 10 reinstatements of roads that have been dug up is properly inspected by a roads engineer.
On the idea of utility companies co-ordinating their work, I have spoken to utility companies about that and they hold up as an example a road work that was conducted in the centre of London near Buckingham Palace. The utility companies agreed to dig one hole and to do their repair work at different times. However, the problem is that utility companies work at different levels in a road because gas pipes are at one level, electricity cables are above that and so on. Although the authorities in London gave that work an award, the utility companies found the work problematic because the road remained dug up for much longer than it would have been if the companies had done their repairs at different times of the year. Have you heard of arguments along similar lines?
I am aware of that example. The question is whether it is better for utility companies to dig up a road at three separate times or to do one big job together. That question would need a bit of working on to decide what kind of working would cause the least disruption. I do not know whether it would be less disruptive if, for example, there was three months between each utility company working for a week in a particular road, or whether it would be better if all the companies worked in the same road for a solid month.
That brings us to the end of the questions for you, Mr Scott. Thank you for your evidence. We will move on to the third panel.
I thank the committee for the opportunity to give evidence.
Your written evidence shows that you feel that HITRANS, NESTRANS, SESTRAN and WESTRANS do a good job, despite being inadequately funded. If those non-statutory bodies do a good job, how could the proposed RTPs take on their work more successfully, given that the bill states that councils would take part in the process only "so far as possible"? How would the RTPs improve matters?
The proposed strategic set-up would have three advantages over the current largely voluntary set-up. First, the proposed RTPs would have a greater engagement with their various user communities and would allow for a better articulation of such communities' needs.
Okay, engagement, sharing best practice and running pilots are all good things that the RTPs could do, but what would happen if the local authority were to invoke its powers under section 8(1) and say, "Sorry, we're not giving you the cash"? Would the RTPs have the teeth to be able to make the changes that are required?
We support the answer that Mr Dewar gave to that question. That is where the national strategic body comes into play.
But the local authority still has an opt-out, because the bill says that it will partake of the RTP's activities "so far as possible". The organisations that you have already named in evidence—HITRANS and SESTRAN, for example—have done a job and the regional transport partnerships will take that job on a bit, but will they be effective enough? Will they have real teeth?
We have not so far spoken about what is core here, which is the fact that what is in the interest of business, a local authority and passengers is usually largely the same. It is a matter of degrees of what can be achieved, so I perceive much more consensus on the RTPs than your question implies.
I was interested to hear about the experiment that you mentioned, but regional transport partnerships are not necessary for us to be able to run such experiments.
Indeed, but the experiment is an example—the only one that we have to hand—of an easily controlled, localised experiment that has led to considerable benefits.
However, surely HITRANS, for example, could have done that.
Yes. Earlier, Mr Mundell asked Mr Dewar to give an example of local authorities not working together, and I will answer that question. Cast your minds back to the consultation on strategic priorities for Scotland's railways. During that consultation, it fell to a local consumer pressure group—rail action group east of Scotland—to try to co-ordinate a common view from Scottish Borders Council, East Lothian Council and Midlothian Council on the strategic priorities for the east coast main line. There was no joined-up thinking between those local authorities, and that is exactly the kind of scenario that an RTP could address.
I understand that, but you are answering not only another member's question, but another member's question to a different witness, which is a novel and innovative approach to questions. You represent rail passengers, and although, as we heard from the self-same Mr Dewar, the regional transport partnerships will not be able to do very much about rail transport, you are ultra-enthusiastic about them, despite the fact that, as you have just said, HITRANS could carry out the experiment that you mentioned. That was one of the three reasons that you gave as to why you should support the partnerships, but they are not required for that, and you do not seem to be bothered by the evidence that we took in our meeting with local authority representatives from the Highlands and Islands—perhaps you are not aware of that evidence. I think that it was the councillor from Shetland Islands Council who argued that the local authorities will have to pay up to four times as much as they do currently because the funding is being requisitioned. If the local authorities have difficulty in coming up with the funding, will that not jeopardise the efficacy of the RTPs and would that not be a reason to oppose them, rather than give them a blank cheque as you seem to be doing?
Robert Samson is rather more familiar with that evidence, so I will ask him to answer that question.
You have rightly highlighted a potential problem. However, one of the frustrations for passengers is that there is a myriad of proposals for improvements, not only to railways but to bus services. As has been highlighted, one of the RTPs' core responsibilities—if not the only one—will be to produce a regional transport strategy, which will tie into the national transport strategy. Because there will be some form of prioritisation not only for a two or three-year period, but for a 10 or 15-year period, passengers will be able to draw down a menu and see when a certain improvement will come about. That is one way in which the regional transport partnerships will bring about improvements and be of benefit to passengers.
You might be right about the long-term nature of the strategies that the RTPs will have to devise, but where in the bill does it say that they must be long-term strategies or, indeed, strategies of any specific duration? I cannot see anything in the bill that says that. If I have just missed it, I put my hands up and admit it, but if I am right, are you not assuming something that is not in the bill?
You are correct that it is not specifically stated in the bill, but, from the lessons that we have learned over the past four or five years, it would be foolish for a strategy to cover only a small timescale. One of the arguments that we have made time and again when we have meetings with the Scottish Executive is that the problem with the railways is that, unlike with buses, there is a long lead-in time for projects. To deliver a project from inception to completion, we need continuity of funding, resources and operations. One way to achieve that is to have a long-term strategy, and we hope that the bill will encourage that, rather than short-termism.
So if the strategy is not long term, you would not be so supportive.
We would not be so supportive of regional transport partnerships or a national transport agency that only dealt in short-term strategies, because that would not be a solution for the railways.
You would also not be so supportive if local authorities could not afford to participate in the RTPs.
No, we would not.
Given that many of the Executive's transport priorities and many of the projects to which it is committed are medium to long-term measures, not simply short-term fixes, would it not be reasonable to assume that the national transport agency would adopt that approach following ministers' lead and that the regional transport partnerships would do likewise?
Yes, indeed. I could not view optimistically the creation of a national transport agency that considers only the short term, which obviously does not need legislation. That would defeat the purpose of what we have been trying to achieve in transport since the creation of the Parliament.
It would be an unlikely development.
Yes, it would be very unlikely.
Do you want to be on the regional transport partnerships?
That presents a problem. Next year, the Rail Passengers Committee Scotland will cease to exist. The Railways Bill that is going through the Westminster Parliament at the moment will dissolve the eight regional committees—there are six in England, one for Wales and one for Scotland—and replace them with a national rail passengers body. Apart from the fact there will be 14 committee members for the whole of Great Britain, the body's structure and size are still to be decided. There will be mechanisms for getting in touch with passengers by e-mail and over the internet, but those have still to be developed.
However, perhaps the trick can be recovered in an amendment at stage 2, when it might be competent to introduce such a measure.
Indeed. I was just planting a seed in your minds just now.
The decision about whether we can do that at stage 2 lies with the convener, who has sole discretion. The power lies at that end of the table.
We will see whatever ingenious amendment you come up with, Mr Ewing, and consider it at that time.
Yes. For example, the Airdrie to Bathgate line would embrace west and east regional transport partnerships. The Executive has the laudable objective of having that route reopened. However, in relation to service provision on that route, it might be that the regional transport partnerships have a better understanding of passengers' needs at each end of the line.
There is another example. Regional transport partnerships in Aberdeen and Inverness could promote the infrastructure improvements that are needed on the rail line between those cities in order to increase the train frequency and reduce the journey times.
The problem with what you have been suggesting in your useful answers to the convener's question is that we do not know what the regional transport partnerships are going to do because a great deal of power is being given to Scottish ministers to say by order what the partnerships will do. That is concerning because we will not be able to scrutinise the orders, which will be either affirmative or negative statutory instruments, to the degree that we are able to scrutinise the bill. Would it be better for the Executive to bring forward to stage 2 an explanation of what the regional transport partnerships might undertake, so that we can get real discussion going about the shape of what is going to happen and the delivery mechanism? Right now I do not think that anybody can say what the system will look like.
Passengers would find it helpful if they could understand at an earlier stage than might otherwise be the case what the bodies might do.
I want to ask you about your pilot programme. Seven out of 10 car commuters converted to other modes of transport, which is an impressive statistic. Can you explain why they converted to taking the train? You said that you made them aware of information of which they were not aware before.
I am not sure that this is within the scope of your inquiry, but I will be brief. We discovered that many car commuters fell into the habit of car commuting within travel-to-work areas simply because they lacked knowledge of the rail infrastructure. We had 35-year-olds who were totally unfamiliar with trains. Once they were introduced to rail and they could compare their car journeys with their rail journeys, the perceptions of rail journeys that they got from media reports or friends were not borne out. What astonished us was that those on the rail side were often more punctual than those on the car side. A whole bunch of such findings came out of the report.
It is impressive and, to be honest, hard to believe.
It astonished us. The trial was conducted towards the end of the winter, which might have contributed to there being slower journeys than there would have been in the summer. However, the fact that those people transferred to rail and, five months later, during the summer, they were still on rail, is a powerful testament in relation to long-term sustained trials of rail versus road. We have to give people an incentive to transfer in the long term.
I return to the issue of the rail powers that are changing. One of the issues that SPT has raised is the proposed transfer of rail franchise powers to Scottish ministers. Does the RPC have a view on that proposal?
We have no particular view other than that SPT has provided the services over the years in a professional and passenger-oriented manner. The SPT evidence was that the region has the highest number of passengers commuting on the rail network in the morning and the evening outside London. SPT's stewardship of the rail network has been second to none. We only hope that that is not diluted by the transfer of powers. We know that in some quarters people envy SPT's record and we hope that ministers can replicate it Scotland-wide. SPT has provided a wonderful service for passengers over a long time.
Thanks. We move on to questions on part 3 of the bill, which deals with concessionary fares.
I am interested in a couple of aspects of your evidence. If I have understood your written evidence, you are calling for a degree of local flexibility in the implementation of a national concessionary fares scheme. Will you expand on how that might work and justify why a minimum standard would be acceptable? What are your views on introducing a concessionary scheme for those who are using ferry services to the islands? What benefits might it bring to your passengers?
I am rereading the responses to the committee. There is a slight conflict between the two paragraphs to which you are referring. Our aim is to see a level playing field in a national concessionary fares scheme. At the moment passengers report enormous difficulties in crossing boundaries and understanding journey options. The operators sometimes have great difficulty applying the right discount. A national, level-playing-field concessionary fares scheme is in everybody's interests. That is our primary point.
That clarifies your position.
I think that the scheme should apply across all modes of public transport. The Welsh model raises issues of capacity on the railway, which would have to be addressed by significant funding for new infrastructure and carriages and an improvement in the frequency of the services. There are a number of overcrowding hot spots in the network and increasing the number of passengers carried by rail would make journeys extremely stressful and more uncomfortable for passengers than they are just now. I am not trying to paint too black a picture of the railways, but some routes would become unsustainable in the long term. That means that, if you were to introduce a national concessionary fares scheme, you would also have to think about who would fund the on-going necessary infrastructure and rolling-stock improvements in the short, medium and long terms, which would have a significant cost.
There is a parallel with the issue of taking bicycles on trains. It is commendable that the Executive's policy is to encourage people to use their bikes rather than cars. However, because of the constraints that have just been mentioned, the railway can take only so many bikes. That means that there is conflict on the platform when passengers wish to use the transport but are unable to. The same could happen in relation to concessionary fares.
Are you saying that a national concessionary fares scheme should be a long-term aim and that we should recognise that there will be difficulties in the short term?
Yes.
To some degree, your view mirrors that of Gordon Dewar, who talked about the problems that the rail industry would face if a free concessionary scheme were introduced at peak times. Do you think that there is scope for such a scheme to be introduced at off-peak times?
Yes. The trains are running to timetables protected in the franchise for seven years. Rather than running some of the trains at one third of their capacity, we should have a concessionary fares scheme and run them at two thirds of their capacity.
Of course, the Executive would say that all that has cost implications and that a balance must be found. Some people have suggested that one of the ways in which to strike that balance would be to have a half-fares scheme rather than a free scheme so that the savings that were made could be used to make the service available on trains as well. What do you think about that?
Someone has to pay for the scheme. Mr Dewar's evidence made good sense in relation to where the pressure for payment comes from. We would generally favour some form of payment so that only those who needed to make the journey would make it and the operators would get some form of recompense.
However, the payment would have to be at such a level that it was not restrictive.
Because there would still have to be an incentive for people to use it.
Yes, you have to strike a balance between, on one hand, encouraging those who are entitled to the concessionary fare to use the service and, on the other, charging to use it, which could be restrictive.
Even if the concessionary fare was only a quarter of the full fare, it would still enable some resources to be diverted toward ensuring that there was some level of off-peak concessionary fares on trains.
That would also encourage the train operating company to collect the fares. That ties into a wider view that we have about encouraging off-peak travel. Passengers want to travel at off-peak times but, sometimes, they do not do so because of concerns—often incorrect—about safety. The more schemes that we can put in place to encourage off-peak travel and to encourage the operator to collect the revenue, the more uniformed people we will be able to have on trains to assure passengers of their security. As with other issues in the rail environment, the issue that we are discussing ties into a wider agenda.
If you argue that a concessionary scheme for rail should include some element of payment rather than being free, should that principle not apply to the current proposed bus scheme?
Yes, for the same reasons.
So it would be better to have a scheme that did not provide free travel but which offered half fares or fares of some other proportion.
Yes. The more consistent the scheme is, the more it will be used.
It is safe to say that all parties represented here acknowledge that there is no magic pot of unlimited cash at the end of a rainbow. Parties that take that view are not represented here at the moment.
There might be disagreement about that.
I was trying to find consensus. We have a pot of £100 million or thereabouts. Would you, as rail passenger representatives, not be better arguing for—or indeed are you arguing for—a multimodal or omnimodal scheme whereby instead of bus passengers getting free travel, all passengers, including rail passengers, get half-fare travel? Would that not be better for the people whom you represent than having no extra concessions, which is what you appear to support in your paper?
Rail and ferry passengers tell us that they want a common scheme that is simple to operate and which they understand. The level at which that is set is a matter for the Executive.
Perhaps I did not put the point clearly. As I understand it, the Executive is offering a national concessionary scheme for senior citizens and those with a disability that will apply to buses, travel on which will be free. We do not know exactly what form the scheme will take, but travel will be free. I am asking whether for the same money—or perhaps less—it would be better, particularly for rail passengers, to provide half-fare travel on buses, ferries and trains than to provide free travel on buses to those who are entitled to it.
There are advantages and disadvantages. Concessionary fares on the ferries would be advantageous to people living in island communities, because that is the main, if not the only, mode of transport by which to get to the mainland. The problem with off-peak travel on the railways is the cost of the rail fare against the bus fare, which is why trains are sometimes two thirds empty. Nine times out of 10 the bus fare is cheaper, so most people use the local bus service or the city bus service. For example, off peak, the trains from Motherwell to Glasgow are two-thirds empty, while the buses are full, because of the price difference. It is about trying to strike a balance. The problem in getting the concessionary fares on the railway the same as those on the buses permanently relates to infrastructure and rolling stock. Passengers using Caledonian MacBrayne ferry services tell us that they want to see a concessionary fares scheme not just on buses but on ferries.
I am becoming increasingly puzzled about why you are not arguing for concessions for rail passengers, given that those are the people whom you represent. If the argument that the cheaper the bus the more incentive there is for rail passengers to transfer to bus applies now, in future such transfers will happen in spades. If everyone in the categories that I mentioned can travel by bus free, you will lose more customers. I am not attacking you in any way; I am just genuinely puzzled about why you are not knocking on the Executive's door and saying, "We want a concessionary scheme that benefits rail users. Would you not consider a multimodal scheme in which everybody gets the half fare, quarter fare or three-quarter fare, which would take the same amount of money as a scheme that applies just to buses or ferries?"
That is what I was trying to say earlier—I obviously failed. We want a national scheme with fares at the same level for all modes, whether half fares, three-quarter fares or whatever.
Would that be better than a scheme that was just for buses?
It would seem so, because a bus scheme would encourage people on to the roads disproportionately.
I think that we got there, convener.
Sylvia, we touched on ferries. Do you want to ask anything else?
No, Bruce Crawford covered what I was going to ask.
That brings us to the end of questions. I thank Robert Samson and James King.
Good afternoon, and thanks for inviting me to the committee. I have taken a tight interpretation of the invitation to talk about road works only, although we have views on matters such as regional transport partnerships. We do not have a remit to discuss the boundaries of regional transport partnerships, but we are supportive of the concept of a regional transport partnership that is focused on the customer and on delivering projects. You have been talking about long-term strategies, but we would prefer the regional transport partnerships to produce long-term delivery plans rather than long-term strategies. I will try to answer questions on regional transport partnerships as well as on road works, which are the main thrust of my written submission.
Thank you for that. We will explore your views on regional transport partnerships, but I will leave that aside for the moment, because I know that Sylvia Jackson is keen to question you on road works and I do not think that she has long with us today.
You state in your submission:
Yes. The problem at the moment is that motorists do not know who is in charge of the road works that cause them problems. The road works are often short term, it is unclear who is running them and it is difficult to contact someone to find out what is going on and get something changed. Several freephone numbers for highlighting defects, such as the road and lighting faults service, or RALF, and the customer lighting and roads enquiry centre, or CLARENCE, have been in operation for many years, but they do not attract many people to use them, and it would be much easier if there was one simple way of reporting a bad set of road works and getting something done about it. If that could be clearly marked at the road works and advertised in some form, it would be an easy way to interact with the consumer.
The Freight Transport Association has called for roads authorities to be able to recover 100 per cent of the reinstatement inspection costs. Would that aid the commissioner to enforce high standards of reinstatements?
In an ideal world, there would be incentives for people to finish early and no fines. Everything should be finished on time to the right standard. It is a bit like speed cameras: the best speed camera never catches anyone, because everyone is driving past safely, not speeding and not having an accident. One of the problems that we have come across when we have spoken to local authorities is that they do not have the resources to get inspectors out to inspect the works—the FTA mentioned that local authorities inspect fewer than 10 per cent. The key issue for us is that the income from the fines should be channelled back into better inspection of road works so that, ultimately, the standards improve and the chances of being caught increase, because when a set of road works is in place for only a couple of hours, it might cause chaos on the roads, but by the time anyone gets there to inspect it, it is long gone and the problem is forgotten about. There is a strong requirement for more resources to go into inspections and, even though much more money is being spent on local authority road maintenance, I do not see any other source for the money to spend on inspections.
Your written evidence comments on the necessity for a practical relationship between the commissioner, the local authority enforcement inspectors and the utility companies. You state:
It is clear from the bill that those who will go out to inspect the works will continue to work for the local authorities, but they will also be working with the road works commissioner, so unless they have a good relationship with the commissioner, who will take information from them and pass information out to them, the system will simply not work. Over many years with the Automobile Association—far too many, in fact—I have come across voluntary schemes to improve road works information. It is a complex area. I have seen some of the maps that show the layers of complex apparatus under the roads and know that, in many cases, councils and so on do not know what is there. If that information is not being distributed to someone who is working for another organisation, we will not get the full value out of the register. It is great that people will be statutorily required to use the register, which we hope will work better than the voluntary arrangements, and that we have the computing power to present the information graphically and so on, but if the people who are sent out to inspect the road works do not have that information, they cannot put that information into action.
Where do you think that the regional transport partnerships come into this?
They could be a useful forum for talking about road works. I have not thought about the regional transport partnerships in terms of road works. I had thought about them more in terms of the bigger projects.
On the Scottish road works commissioner, I have read your written submission and heard what you have got to say. Am I right in saying that the AA is not signing a blank cheque for support of the road works commissioner or the proposals in part 2 of the bill and that that support depends on a number of factors? Is that a fair summation of your paper?
The detail of the targets that are set for the commissioner will be all-important to us. If those are customer-driven targets, such as reducing the amount of time wasted at road works, rather than simply targets for the number of fixed penalties issued, for example, that would go a long way towards allowing us to say that we think that it is a good idea.
Where in the bill does it provide for the setting of targets or the achievement of what you say is necessary for it to succeed?
The bill does not do that.
It does not, does it?
I do not know. Information is quite difficult to find on specific budgets for reinstatements of road works in particular. Even in the consultation document, the information on exactly how many works are going on was fairly scant.
That means that you must be in favour of sufficient fines being imposed to provide a ready stream of income to fund the tsar's office and general expenses.
I do not think that fines income should be the only income; it should be supplementary to an allocated budget that would allow the commissioner to undertake his task. Obviously, a complex computer system could not be set up from fines income because it could not be predicted what the income would be. If there were the kind of financial circle that I described, the money would not be lost to elsewhere and there would be an incentive to keep things going.
I do not think that we have heard previously an argument for fines being an income stream. Now that you have raised that suggestion, it seems to me that it would be difficult to put into practice. For example, how would it be ensured that fines would be constantly available for the future? If there were a reliance on fines for 30 or 40 per cent of income, there would be an in-built incentive to ensure that that income continued to pour in from the utility companies in order, let us say, to keep Joe and Maisie in a job.
It has been done—for example, speed camera partnerships.
Yes, but I gather that they are not universally popular.
Do you want to make a confession, Fergus?
I was not declaring an interest.
Very much so. When drivers arrive at road works, they do not care who is mounting the works. The situation can differ slightly because road authorities tend to do road improvements rather than dig up roads for a purpose that is hard to see. Ultimately, drivers benefit from road improvements such as road widening or resurfacing. As far as I am aware, the best local authorities work closely with the utilities. The case that we cited in our written submission involves West Lothian Council, which seems to have taken it on board that the council should do reinstatements. Its system seems to work well. However, that has taken place against a background of greater spending on roads, so the council has the money to enforce its system—other councils do not have the money to do the same.
Obviously, utilities by and large have a clearly discernible commercial interest in doing road works quickly because until the roads are reinstated, they cannot get income in from the customers—they cannot start charging anybody. Therefore, the sooner they get the work done, the better. However, local authorities do not have a similar direct interest in the outcome of the speed and efficiency of their road works. Should there be a level playing field for utilities and local authorities whereby they would be treated equally and it would not matter whether it was a utility or a local authority that was at fault and got fined?
It comes back to what we discussed about targets. The target should be congestion reduction. The overall thrust of the bill, the traffic commissioner's advice and local authorities' views is about minimising disruption and delays on the roads. Technically, codes of practice are in place for that, but it has been shown that they do not work well. If the local authorities were brought into the remit and made to adhere to it, they would have to plan their road works to keep traffic delays to a minimum.
That is interesting. I read your proposal about lane rental, but my question was whether utilities and local authorities should be treated in the same way. Would you answer yes to that question?
Yes.
Finally, if there is to be a system of fines, which you have said would be necessary in order to fund the road works commissioner's office, would the real cost not simply be passed on to the public? The utilities would simply increase their charges if they had to pay fines to the proposed new creature of the Government, and local authorities would have to do the only thing that they can do currently to raise cash, which is to put up council tax. Is it not the case that the AA is urging the imposition of an additional burden and tax on consumers, whose interests, you said at the outset, are your primary concern?
If the fines system works as planned and the targets are set properly and everybody works together, the amount of time spent on road works overall will reduce, which will bring benefits for everybody. I cannot see why fines would lead to increased charges for gas or electricity customers or increased council taxes.
To pay the fines.
If existing funds and new funds from fines were used efficiently, the overall efficiencies should lead to a better position. I could get into a wider argument about the fact that drivers generally pay far too much in tax anyway and that they should get some advantage from a fines system. The problem is that the drivers are the ones who suffer the congestion, but there is no way of recompensing them. If the proposed fines system worked, the recompense to the driver could not be financial—it would be far too complicated to arrange that—but there could be recompense in terms of better management of road works leading to less congestion and time saved, which would be of benefit to drivers, who suffer at the moment.
I will ask Fergus Ewing's question in another way, although you have almost answered it already. The other side of the coin of his analysis is that if the AA demands better reinstatement of the roads and quicker work from either the utilities or the local authorities, it is arguing for greater efficiency. If the AA is focusing on that argument, are you confident that greater efficiencies could be delivered through the bill's proposed commissioner?
As I said, the detail would be in how the targets were set and in the whole thrust of the commissioner's work and much of the local authorities' work. I have high hopes for the bill. We support the idea of a road works commissioner, but the commissioner must be customer focused. If the commissioner's office became just an extra layer of bureaucracy, that would be a waste of everybody's time. The voluntary schemes have not worked. There have been several attempts over the years and many big reports have been done on them, such as the Horne report many years ago, but the voluntary approach has not worked. The important issue for us is that our roads are getting busier and we must make better use of what we have. Because of the rising number of cars, we must almost be more efficient in order to stand still. There is a lack of new roads coming along, though there will eventually be some. However, more road maintenance is being done. If we put things together properly, we should have an improved roads system that is better run and more efficient.
I have a question that follows on from questions that were put to the Rail Passengers Committee. Obviously, you will want the regional transport partnerships to work, but do you, as a users' group, feel that you can have a role in them?
It would be useful to have some form of motoring information input into the RTPs. Currently, we work with all the existing partnerships. In terms of a direct relationship, the NESTRANS area has included us at a more institutional level and tends to involve us from the start of whatever it does. However, like everyone else, we tend to be involved with WESTRANS and SESTRAN only when consultation documents come out and we put our responses in as required. The important issue for us is resources. If all the RTPs were set up and it was said formally that there would be a motoring representative in each one, that would be difficult for us because I am the only such representative in Scotland. There is definitely a need to have at an early stage in the thinking of any regional transport strategy direct input from an organisation representing the vast majority of transport movements in the area.
Surely not everyone can be involved in these partnerships. One of the points that were made early on in justifying the bill and the partnerships was that we needed a decision-making body, because everything got too bogged down, as everybody wanted their say. If we are going to bring in everybody, will we not achieve the same thing?
The AA Motoring Trust does not need to have a vote on investment in small-scale public transport schemes, but many of the bodies sometimes do not get the emphasis right in trying to integrate the car with public transport. When people talk about transport integration, they tend to be talking about integrating the bus and the train and forgetting about trying to integrate the car. We have a big interest in park-and-ride schemes, which are the biggest example that I come across of where a regional transport partnership can add value. In areas such as Glasgow in particular you will see a lot of work being done on a bus corridor and bus lanes into the city centre, but at the far end of the bus lane there is no park and ride—there is nowhere for people to choose to come out of their car and use the improved services. Getting all that matched up is important. It would be useful for us to have input in the decision making at an early stage before the partnerships go down tracks that they find do not get people out of their cars or reduce congestion, which should be their key aim too.
I am not focusing on your evidence. The suggestion is that cyclists will also have to be involved so that cycle issues are taken into account and walkers will have to be involved so that the Executive's walking strategy can be implemented as part of the work. There must be a limit to the number of consultees. Surely there has to be a decision-making body, given that one of the justifications for the bill was that it would allow us to cut through many of the things that have clogged up decision making. If we have a system in which every single interest group has to have its say, we will be just where we are at the moment.
I agree. Delivery should be the focus, particularly for the national agency, but also for the regional transport partnerships. I do not think that our involvement has ever led to delays in projects in the past. A lack of funding has tended to cause long delays, particularly in major road schemes. We have gone through a lot of consultation of late. There was even another consultation as part of the bill, with the publication of the consultation document on regional transport partnerships. We are just unable to get involved in every single partnership and meeting, but we would like to be involved in some form at an early stage in the deliberations, although we are not seeking a vote.
The Executive will not fund the partnerships directly; they will operate on the basis of a form of requisition of funding from local authorities. That method of funding will not necessarily facilitate easy decision making if and when there are conflicting interests between those involved in the partnerships.
We have long been advocates of ring fencing of funding and of having some kind of stand-alone motoring trust fund into which a certain amount of motoring taxation is top sliced. I think that could be done in Scotland, which could pilot the approach, although it would apply more to the funding of the national agency. We would have an independent fund that could not be raided year after year. The main problem with transport funding is that it tends to get cut when there is a bad year in other areas of local government funding. Given the way that the funding is set up, that will continue to happen. If there are problems in education and social work, transport spending will be cut. There needs to be some long-term, guaranteed funding and the bill does not seem to change the situation.
I agree with you on that point.
Yes. There have been registers before and there have been efforts to promote good practice before but, if that is not enforced at a street level and people can see that nothing is happening on the ground, nothing will change. There have to be more inspectors enforcing the legislation.
One of the problems that the local road network in Scotland has suffered from is that some pretty significant A-roads, which are designated as local roads, pass through several local authorities' areas. Do you think that the new regional transport partnerships will be able to co-ordinate the maintenance and improvement of those roads?
I would hope so. Over the years, we have held out against de-trunking roads. We have felt that long-distance A-roads should be run by one authority to ensure that there are consistent standards along them. There is no doubt that the main road safety problem in Scotland is not in towns and cities. Around 75 per cent of the people being killed die outwith towns and cities, on our A and B-roads. The worst accidents—the fatal and serious ones—take place in the countryside. There is a great need to have consistent signage and standards of maintenance along our A-roads. The regional transport partnerships could provide an opportunity to ensure that that is the case and could implement the findings of the various studies that are being done into ways in which we can improve our rural road safety record.
Currently, congestion charging powers lie with individual local authorities. Leaving aside the AA's views about whether congestion charging is the right or the wrong way in which to approach the issue of congestion, is it your view that that power would be better held at a regional level than a local authority level, in order to ensure that the interests of the areas around cities are taken into account?
The regional transport partnerships would be well placed to ensure that any congestion charging scheme would have regional benefits. We have seen already that there have been some initial problems, as the only scheme of that type that we can currently examine, the one in Edinburgh, seems to be focused on the city rather than the surrounding areas. Aspects of any such scheme, such as exemptions, need to be consistent. In the long term, there will probably be some sort of consistent charging system across the network and we have to ensure that the local systems join up to that and work together so that the same hardware and so on can be used.
Thank you very much for your evidence. As a representative of West Lothian, I was pleased to read your commendation of the excellent work that is being undertaken by West Lothian Council in the area of road works.
Meeting closed at 16:34.