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NB. THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A TRANSCRIPTION UNIT RECORDING AND
NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT; BECAUSE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF MIS-HEARING
AND THE DIFFICULTY, IN SOME CASES, OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS,
THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS ACCURACY
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ON THE RECORD
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC ONE DATE:
5.12.99
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Good afternoon. John Prescott's in
deep trouble over what his critics say is a war on the motorist. He wants
to let the trains take the strain. We'll be discussing the problems facing
the railways and the solutions the government is proposing. Can they work?
And Europe's leaders are meeting next week: are they going cool on bringing
more countries into the Union? That's after the news read by Sian Williams.
NEWS
HUMPHRYS: What must be done to make the railways
work better and who should do it? We'll bring the key players together
to find out.
And a Christmas Summit in Helsinki
for Europe's leaders, will they offer any cheer to the countries who like
to join them in future.
JOHN HUMPHRYS: But first the railways. Britain is
seizing up. It's hardly a secret that our roads are becoming more and
more congested and unless many more of us start leaving our cars at home
our cities and our motorways will become one big, endless traffic jam.
The solution: better public transport. Especially ... better railways.
The BBC's spent the past week looking in some detail at the problems facing
the railways and we've brought together all sides for this debate, politicians
and passengers, train operators and Railtrack, to see if there's any common
ground and any agreement on how to get out of the mess we're in. It's
not exactly a new mess. The problem's been building for the last half
century and as governments have come and gone the general view has been
that they've left things worse than they found them.
John Redwood, speaking of the last
government of which you were a very senior member for a very long time
anyway the fact is that Margaret Thatcher didn't like the trains, there
was very little public investment in the railways, your solution was to
privatise them and the result was a shambles.
JOHN REDWOOD: No it wasn't a shambles. The result
of privatisation has been a big increase in the use of the existing railway
network and a big increase in investment but I think if you look at the
transport problem we have in Britain now I think anyone would conclude
we need more capacity of all kinds. We need more capacity on the trains
on the buses and on the roads, indeed the buses need roads as well as cars
and we should remember always that out of every hundred miles that passengers
travel only six miles is travelled on the railways. Now we're all in favour
of expanding the railways but it's not going to solve the overall problems
we also need to look at bus and car transport as well.
HUMPHRYS: You say you're all in favour of expansion
but the fact is when you privatised them you didn't expect that there would
be any great expansion. I quote Sir Alastair Morton "There was no government
prognosis of growth for a rail industry in privatisation." That was the
reality of it.
REDWOOD: Well I thought there would be because
I always think that as soon as you introduce a bit of competition and
a bit of choice and a bit of private capital you do tend to get things
going a bit better. There's still room for colossal improvement and one
of the reasons we haven't had as much improvement in the last two and a
half years as we need is Secretary of State Prescott's refusal to make
the crucial decisions the rail industry needs to be able to get on with
the job. One very important example is that Railtrack have said to John
Prescott, 'If you let us earn a bit more money for providing new capacity
and balance that by a bit less money for existing capacity you would find
that a lot of the bottlenecks would be dealt with much more quickly.'
Now why won't John Prescott make a decision on that. I would immediately.
I would have them in and I'd negotiate a sensible deal for the tax payer
and the rail traveller and make sure they could get on and get rid of the
bottlenecks. There are chronic bottlenecks into London for example from
all points of the compass. It needs a hundred million here, three hundred
million there to put in the extra bits of track, the better signalling
so that more trains an hour can go through. Why don't we do that?
HUMPHRYS: Well why we don't do it, presumably,
is because your people negotiated the original deal and they didn't want
to do it then.
REDWOOD: I'm saying that there is a better
idea on offer.....
HUMPHRYS: So they got it wrong? The last government
got it wrong?
REDWOOD: It made a lot of progress because
there's been a big increase in use of the railways following the privatisation,
now the rail industry has come to the government and said it could be even
better. I agree with the rail industry. I think the Secretary of State
should sit down and sort it out and whilst he's doing it why won't he encourage
the rail industry to provide more car parks at stations because most people
don't live on top of a train station, they need to drive to the station
to get on the train. Why can't we look at parkway stations because it
doesn't make a lot of sense for someone like me to drive ten miles in the
wrong direction into a very congested town before I can even get on a train
to start a train journey? It would be much easier to have a parkway station.
Now these are positive common sense ideas that we are putting forward
from the opposition benches. John Prescott says he likes the railways
but he won't take any decisions on any of these things and so he is becoming
the main obstacle to growing the railways which we want to do.
HUMPHRYS: So that would cost money of course.
All these things cost money. You'd be quite happy to stump up that money
in spite of your record?
REDWOOD: No. We're saying that this is money
that can largely or wholly be found from within the rail industry and we
have a proposal on the table in the Secretary of State's office from Railtrack
about how the revenues could be re-jigged so that it would be worthwhile
to put in exactly these kinds of de-bottlenecking investments. And if
you look at investment I think it makes a lot more sense to have a crash
programme of investing in getting rid of bottlenecks then in electrifying
a complete new mainline. It's much more important now to be able to get
more trains an hour into and out of London in particular because we are
just chronically short of capacity. My constituents often have to stand
even if they have bought a first class ticket in the morning because the
trains aren't long enough, you can't get enough trains an hour through
so we need to sort out a system.
HUMPHRYS: But I mean there is billions of pounds
of investment shortfall as we speak and you're saying don't spend it on
the railways, spend it on car parks which some people might find a bit
odd, The railways can't cope with what they've got at the moment.
REDWOOD: Well I'm saying that you need more
car parking so more people can leave their car and get on a train (both
speaking at once) and you've got to allow the rail industry on the proposals
that they have put forward, or something like them, to come forward with
that investment in improved tracks and improved capacity so that more people
can move around by train. We also need to make sure that the passage to
train stations by car are not so blocked up by this government's other
'bash-the-motorist' policies that people can't actually get into the train
station in the first place.
HUMPHRYS: But that's what you're really interested
in isn't it is a roads programme? You would spend the money on the roads.
That's where conservative ideology always has been and still is.
REDWOOD: We think you need to spend a lot of
extra money on both roads and trains and we've put forward a number of
proposals as to how we could increase the expenditure on both getting much
more money from the private sector so that the tax payer doesn't have a
huge extra burden. We have for example put forward our idea of a Londoner's
tube. We think that would be a massive increase in private investment
in the tube which would free money in the existing Environment department
budget to spend on other things that are much needed but what has happened
under this government is that they came into office, they abandoned our
privatisation scheme for the tube, didn't have enough money to make up
the shortfall and so they've actually slashed investment on the tube at
a time when London is booming and when more and more people want to travel
around in London and so London is chronically short of tube capacity at
exactly the point when it's growing rather well.
HUMPHRYS: But what you would do is you would
say, 'well alright, we will spend more money on the roads and that would
be public money. If the railways want more money, that has to be private
money'? That's essentially how it breaks down surely.
REDWOOD: Well not all of the money for the
roads need be public money.....
HUMPHRYS: No but the vast majority of it......
REDWOOD: We would look at a toll road scheme
where it was a new piece of road which provided a missing link or a useful......
HUMPHRYS: No but the point I'm making is that
the money for the railways would be private money. The money for the roads,
or the vast majority of money for the roads.......
REDWOOD: The bulk of the money for the railways
would be private money because we think the markets are quite happy to
produce that money as long as the sensible decisions are made of the kind
I've indicated and I think Railtrack will confirm that when you discuss
it with their head in a few minutes' time. It is quite possible to raise
a lot more money from the markets, for the tube and for the mainline train
services. If only John Prescott stops huffing and puffing and actually
makes some sensible decisions for a change that would allow the rail industry
to get on and do the job.
HUMPHRYS: Alright. Thanks for that.
JOHN HUMPHRYS: Stewart Francis, Deputy Chairman of
the Rail Passengers Association, does all of that make sense, would you
be behind all of that?
STEWART FRANCIS: Well I think that the main problem
John is that passengers' aspirations were raised at privatisation and the
rail industry has been playing catch up ever since. I mean the fact is
the industry is suffering from a lack of capacity, a lack of new trains,
an infrastructure that can't support a decent railway at the present time.
We have got old stations built in the Victorian era and we've got a fare
system that is very very complicated. Those are the complaints that we
get as the Passengers Watchdog.
HUMPHRYS: And you've just had your first national
as I understand it, National Rail Users Conference. So the verdict was?
FRANCIS: Well the verdict was that we've still
got late and over crowded trains. They still are uncomfortable and we have
a bad entry point to the system. I mean what we are concentrating on at
the moment is a rail passengers organisation, because what this government
has done, is that it has given us the opportunity for the passengers' voice
to be heard in this debate, which is almost the first time that that has
happened. With the setting up of the shadow Strategy Rail Authority, it's
been made clear to us that we have to speak loud and clear on behalf of
passengers. Now that isn't just about the things that are wrong now, it's
actually about our future vision and what we want to see of the railway
in the next ten or twenty years.
HUMPHRYS: I'm slightly puzzled about this because
if people are so unhappy and the implication of everything you say is that
they feel they have been let down, the promises haven't been delivered
upon. Why are so many more of them actually using the trains now than were
before privatisation?
FRANCIS: Well I think you've got to look at
economic effects and you've also got to, I mean I would challenge you about
the point of if it's so bad now. I believe things have improved since privatisation,
but I come back to my initial point. The industry is actually playing catch
up at this time, people are experiencing better customer service. There
are more trains running and the industry is just about coping with that
situation. The fact is that we can predict in two or three years time,
unless the investment goes in now, and this has been the poor result of
privatisation that the investment is always just around the corner and
we need to get the investment in now.
HUMPHRYS: So you are saying if that investment
does not go in now, not in a year's time or six months time, but now..
FRANCIS: The system will grind to a halt.
HUMPHRYS: Will grind to a halt?
FRANCIS: Yeah, because there will be too many
passengers trying to get on too many trains and they are not going to be
able to get through the Welling viaduct into London down the East Coast
mainline.
HUMPHRYS: So that would be a disaster.
FRANCIS: It would be a disaster for passengers
yes, because people in this country want more and more mobility. The fact
is that Railtrack are coming up with plans now to address these problems.
What we are looking for is this process to be speeded up.
HUMPHRYS: Alright.
JOHN HUMPHRYS: Let me turn to George Muir, Director
General of ATCO, that's the association of companies that actually run
the trains, like Virgin and all the rest of it. Do you accept that analysis,
that unless this money goes in now it's all going to grind to a halt?
GEORGE MUIR: Well, it won't exactly grind to a
halt, but I do accept the analysis that decisions have to be made very
quickly to go ahead with the very major investments that are required to
build capacity, and the investments are set out in some detail in last
year's network management statement by Railtrack. And now what is now
happening is that train operators are now putting forward and are working
out detailed plans in conjunction with Railtrack and are putting these
plans to the strategic rail authority.
HUMPHRYS: You're discussing all of the new franchises
and what should happen?
MUIR: Yes, but the key thing is that it's
not so much new franchises. The key thing is that they go with investment
programmes, and it is the joint investment programme in each particular
location worked out between the train operator and Railtrack which is as
a package being presented to the Strategic Rail Authority, because we've
got to divide up this vast network into individual problem issues. You
know you don't solve the whole thing, you solve it bit by bit, and each
bit is being looked at by the train operators there who are working out
very heavy investment programmes for each location, and these decisions
must be made quickly, smartly, predictably, and that is I think what is
happening.
HUMPHRYS: Part of the solution as I understand
it is that the train operating companies are saying, we need longer franchises,
whatever their investment is. People listening to this programme will
say: Well hang on a minute, they're the people who haven't actually delivered
the goods, we have all sorts of problems, Virgin and heaven knows who else,
and yet you want us to give you longer.
MUIR: No, be quite clear. The train operators
have and OPRAV, the Strategic Rail Authority will confirm this, have delivered
on substantially every commitment they made. What has changed ......
HUMPHRYS: That will puzzle a lot of people won't
it - people who stand on wet and windy platforms at seven o'clock on Monday
morning waiting for a train.....
MUIR: .. to the extent - but the key thing
is that we must put stronger commitments into the new franchises, and the
train operators are perfectly willing to enter into the stronger commitments.
What is happening now, and it's very important to understand this, is
that people in their everyday lives have got used to levels of service
through normal consumer products and normal consumer goods, whether they're
new cars or foreign holidays of extraordinary high standards.
HUMPHRYS: Much higher than they get on the railways?
MUIR: Indeed it is, and we - and if a new
car's delivered and it's scratched it gets sent back, and they're now starting
to apply the same standards to railways, and they're right to do so, and
I want them to do so, and I want the facilities, I want the facilities
to deliver a service that meets these high ........
HUMPHRYS: How are you going to do it?
MUIR: We're going to do it in exactly the
way that the Government's set out we're going to do it, which is that we're
going to put investment programmes, each train operator's going to put
investment programmes together, working with Railtrack, are going to enter
into agreements within the next twelve months, substantially two-thirds
I expect of all train operators, of all franchises will have new investment
programmes signed up and committed to. And these will have in the franchise
agreements, will have a very high standard, will have escalating standards
which are obligatory for us to deliver on. That is the way to deliver
it, and that is what is happening.
HUMPHRYS: So leave it to the train operating
companies.
MUIR: No. It's a joint - it's a joint -
no, it is a three-way - it's a Strategic Rail Authority which was set up
by this Government contracting with train operators who contract with Railtrack.
HUMPHRYS: Right. Well on that business.....
MUIR: Altogether we'll deliver it.
HUMPHRYS: On that business of contracting with
Railtrack, you'll going to have more money because you are carrying more
passengers.
MUIR: Yes.
HUMPHRYS: What about sharing some of that money,
handing some of that extra fare money that you are going to get to Railtrack?
MUIR: We will be paying Railtrack
more through their track access when they - in exchange for the higher
investment in capacity. Every new path Railtrack provides us we pay extra
for. Every enhancement we pay extra for, and we're willing to do so.
HUMPHRYS: So that for every extra passenger
you get - a train operator gets - I think Virgin has done a deal of this
sort - every extra passenger you get, they, Railtrack will get a little
bit more?
MUIR: I don't want to pre-judge the form
in which that extra money from Railtrack will be go.
HUMPHRYS: That would be a fairer way of doing
it wouldn't it?
MUIR: Yes, but it doesn't address the particular
things we want from Railtrack. What we want from Railtrack is completed
capital investment, and I want to tie the main increased payments we make
to the completed capital investment. We want paths from Railtrack. I
want to tie the payments we make to the extra paths we get from Railtrack.
HUMPRHYS: Extra paths?
MUIR: Train paths.
HUMPHYRS: Okay.
MUIR: I want to try, we want more reliability
on the network and Railtrack I know wants to give it to us, and I want
to tie our payments to these outputs, so I'm more interested in tying our
payments to the particular outputs which Railtrack will deliver.
HUMPHRYS: In other words delivery on results.
That's what you're saying, because at the moment the results from Railtrack
are not good enough.
MUIR: Well, I do want delivery on results.
You've come and said that the results from Railtrack are not good enough.
I don't accept that. Railtrack has got a massive task to do, and they've
made it.
HUMPHRYS: But, but, yes - sorry - if Railtrack
is doing what it's meant to be doing and everything is hunky-dory from
their point of view, how come whenever one talks to somebody from one of
the train operating companies, and whenever passengers complain, they say:
well, we're sorry, but it's the state of the track, it's the state of the
lines, it's the state of the signalling, it's the state of this, that,
or the other. If everything is fine with you and everything's fine with
Railtrack, where's the problem. Why are people suffering?
MUIR: The problem is that we have not put
in the work and the investment to deliver the level of service that passengers
want.
HUMPHRYS: So everything is not fine in truth?
MUIR: No, no, you're confusing the vocabulary,
you're tripping me up with words. I said Railtrack has a massive job to
do. The last three years has been the beginning and as a beginning I think
they've done a very good job as a beginning. I'm more interested in what
they do in the next three years, and that is what is going to be set out
in the network management statements, and it's the next three years that
I'm interested in.
JOHN HUMPHRYS: Right well, Gerald Corbett, Chief
Executive of Railtrack. The next three years, you have heard there, you
have got to deliver something that you are not delivering at the moment
in terms of investment, improving the rail track and giving them extra
powers and all of that sort of thing. It's your fault, in short, what's
been happening.
GERALD CORBETT: No, I don't accept that. Things aren't
as good as they should be, but you have to see it in perspective. Things..a
lot of progress has been made. I mean the very fact that there are twenty-five
per cent more trains than there were three years ago, we have provided
that extra capacity. The performance of the newly privatised railway, every
single quarter has been better than before privatisation. The fact that
this year it's not enough, but we are investing two billion pounds, that's
over twice what we were four years ago, and on average is over twice what
BR spent on the infrastructure these last ten years. So a lot of good things
have been going on.
HUMPHRYS: Well let's look at that investment
then and there will be a few figures here which might confuse some people,
I apologise for that but it's important to get into this in a little bit
of detail. You had expected to invest twenty-seven billion pounds or so
over the next twenty years and that was on the assumption that there would
be a thirty per cent increase in passengers, more or less, these are very
broad figures. Right, now you have accepted that the increase in the number
of passengers will be greater than that, it will be about fifty-five per
cent...fifty-three per cent. Do you accept therefore, that you will need
much more than that twenty-seven billion pounds, indeed the figure the
BBC has worked out during the work it's been doing on this, is a total
of forty-one billion pounds. Do you accept that there is that size of gap?
CORBETT: Yes I do.
HUMPHRYS: Accept the BBC figure?
CORBETT: Not absolutely..
HUMPHRYS: Give or take..
CORBETT: The twenty-seven billion is an investment
programme over the next ten years to provide for a further thirty per cent
growth. It now looks like the growth is going to be of the order of fifty
per cent. We have had another strong year of passenger growth and we are
going to have to adjust our plans and the number will go up.
HUMPHRYS: Right, well now. Where is the money
going to come from. It's an awful lot of money, there's a big difference
between forty-one billion and twenty-seven billion. We're talking about
what - I can't do the figure off the top of my head instantly but we're
talking about one and a half billion pounds a year extra than you had expected.
CORBETT: Yes I think that's right and the money
can come from several sources. Part of it can come from the growth in the
fare box and the kind of deals we are able to do..
HUMPHRYS: In other words the money that they
are going to hand over to you.
CORBETT: Yes from the extra growth, passengers
paying fares and they will hand that over to us following a negotiation
as part of their franchise extension. So that's one part of the pot.
HUMPHRYS: And you accept incidentally that you
will only get the money if you deliver the services which is what the
train operators are saying.
CORBETT: Yes we don't want to be paid for nothing.
I mean we have got to be paid on results. The second way the money is going
to come is from the financial markets. We have the capacity to be able
to raise billions of pounds from the financial markets to invest in the
railways. We've done it already, we're borrowing at the moment one and
a half billion, we issued a five hundred million pound convertible bond
last year.
HUMPHRYS: You've got to double that borrowing
though.
CORBETT: We're going to have to borrow a lot
more and we may have to raise what we call share capital.
HUMPHRYS: People may actually, having looked
at what they perceive to be your record, people might say 'oh, I don't
know about that?'
CORBETT: Well I don't think. I think the record,
which is by now means perfect, but the record is okay. I think the problem
is the risk and there's huge risk in Railtrack, in that there's political
risk as we've seen in the last six months, there's big regulatory risk
as we've seen in the last year, our shares have come down from seventeen
pounds down to eight pounds and we are, sort of, we are in the middle of
the Bay of Biscay and a force ten and that's not the right environment
from which to be able to raise all this money.
HUMPHRYS: Precisely, so therefore you have to
get, you've said those are two of the sources of extra money, extra investment,
what's the third?
CORBETT: The third is public subsidy. More
money from the Treasury. A large part of the rail network at the moment
does not make a commercial profit, there are huge social benefits, Scotland,
Wales, the regional railways, they are always going to need a subsidy.
But the three sources of money, are the public purse, increase in the fare
box and the financial markets. We can deliver on the financial markets,
but we actually do need the government to deliver a stable framework for
us and that's what I hope Lord MacDonald is going to talk to us about.
HUMPHRYS: Well I'm going to ask him now in just
a moment. But, before I do that, the problem is this question of trust
in Railtrack isn't it. I mean there has been again this week another damning
report, the HSE, the Health and Safety Executive, basic failures in maintaining
the track. This is not the sort of environment in which people, the public
are going to say, yeah, let's give Railtrack all the money they need.
CORBETT: No, I agree, that is a big problem.
That particular report refers to data that was for the year to the end
of March, so the data is nine months out of date.
HUMPHRYS: Not much though.
CORBETT: Well the fact of the matter is that
year to date, the number of broken rails has come down. The initial report
that was prepared by the HSE had all the good things that were going on
in the network in terms of safety but they decided to take that out because
post Paddington they didn't think it was appropriate. We do, the railway
does, it's always been like this, it's in a goldfish bowl, you can talk
to Peter Parker, you can talk to either of the Bob Reids. It's always been
difficult, people always remember the trains that are late, they will never
talk about the good things that are happening and it's not all bad.
HUMPHRYS: So they should, that's the point,
we expect good things, we don't pay our taxes and our fares and all the
rest of it for bad things do we.
CORBETT: I think that's fair enough and we
have to be squeaky clean and we have to get everything right and we haven't
got everything right and we are only three years old. Three years ago we
were still a government department. We are facing huge challenges in terms
of doubling our investment programme, in terms of the extra growth from
the network in terms of driving down minutes delay. There's tremendous
amount to do and there are some things that we haven't done as well as
we should have done.
HUMPHRYS: Do you think you've been used as a
bit of a whipping boy?
CORBETT: Yes, if you want my honest opinion.
I think we have and I think that's understandable because it is a public
service and because two million people a day go on it and it's always going
to be high up the political agenda for that reason. But the problem with
being used as a whipping boy is that it makes it terribly difficult to
manage, it makes it terribly difficult to plan and it makes it almost impossible
to raise the necessary money. And that's the situation which we find ourselves
in. We know we have got to do better but at the same time we are hungry
for a regime and a stability and a former relationship with the government
and our regulators that enables us to get on and do the job and raise the
money.
HUMPHRYS: Doesn't help your public image when
they take away the tube from you, for instance, does it.
CORBETT: No, it doesn't but I guess that solves,
sorts out other problem, it's...
HUMPHRYS: It's a problem you don't have.
CORBETT: Well it may be a blessing.
HUMPHRYS: Alright.
JOHN HUMPHRYS: So Lord MacDonald, he's right isn't
he. They are used as a whipping boy, everybody kicks them, including,
especially perhaps one might say your good selves, the government, but
we need them.
LORD MACDONALD: We need them, that's certainly true
and we need the train operating companies and I think they and Railtrack
are the victim of two decades of neglect in terms of under-investment and
also of a chaotic privatisation programme that broke the industry into
a hundred parts and left us with defective mechanisms and what we've done
by setting up a Strategic Rail Authority is said....we've said, 'let's
try and work in partnership from now on and get these relationships right
so that Gerald can actually have an incentive for expanding the railways
and that George and his train operating companies can help fund that expansion.
If we were all pointing in the same
direction with the right kind of formula at work with Sir Alastair Morton
and his shrewd business experience driving it, then we'll get somewhere
quickly but as Gerald says we've put on twenty-five per cent more trains,
a thousand more trains every day, they're also looking at an industry that
a lot a people in the rest of the UK business would be very happy about
because it's going up fifty per cent in terms of its customers over the
next ten years.
HUMPHRYS: Well yes, good, fine, excellent, everybody
will say and talk of partnership is splendid but why, in that case, if
Gerald is doing such a good job...why are you kicking poor old Railtrack
to death all the time? We have John Prescott in this very studio just
a couple of weeks ago saying - 'I'm not wild about Railtrack. I don't
know who is.'
MACDONALD: Well what we've got is a rail regulator
who is an independent economic regulator and he is a beady-eyed chap who
is going over the various relationships that Railtrack have with the rest
of the industry......
HUMPHRYS: What's that got to do with what I
just asked you?
MACDONALD: Well because Gerald has been having
quite a hard time from the regulator......
HUMPHRYS: From you people as well, not just
from the regulator - that's his job.
MACDONALD: The independent regulator has been
going through and I'm sure the public would be very pleased to see that
he's vigilant on their behalf, they just want to try and make sure they're
getting value for money.
HUMPHRYS: I wasn't asking you about the regulator,
I was asking you about John Prescott and you. I mean are you wild about
Railtrack?
MACDONALD: I've worked closely with Gerald and
I'm very appreciative of the efforts they've made.
HUMPHRYS: So John Prescott got it wrong then?
MACDONALD: We had a safety summit last Tuesday
and Gerald and the rail companies had, within two months of Paddington,
come forward with a pretty profound changes in the way that they might
operate the railway and we were very pleased that about that.
HUMPHRYS: So we'll hear a bit less of government
dumping on Railtrack in future will we? John Prescott's going to sing
a different tune if he comes back into the studio in another couple of
weeks is he?
MACDONALD: Well John Prescott has worked hard
over the past two years to put together mechanisms that will allow us all
to work together and that's why we've brought in a Transport Bill to try
and make sure that we've got a Strategic Rail Authority that will give
us the investment that's been so lacking in two decades of Tory.......
HUMPHRYS: Well now the investment that they
want, that Railtrack want, you heard Mr Corbett saying it a minute ago
is forty-one billion pounds.
MACDONALD: Well I heard him saying it might be
in that region. I think I heard him saying earlier it might be thirty-four
or thirty-five billion.....
HUMPHRYS: Well let's go with what he said five
minutes ago (both speaking at once) Forty-one billion pounds.
MACDONALD: Your splendid track record.....he
put it at thirty-four, thirty-five earlier in the week.......
HUMPHRYS: ...... well with inflation you know.......
MACDONALD: Sir Alastair said that his back of
the envelope calculations might put it around there too. What we're looking
at is a perspective of ten years. We're looking at Railtrack having to
negotiate with the regulator and what its access charges will be. We're
looking at a very thoroughgoing process of re-franchising the train operators
will be engaged in which will be predicated on increased investment and
new relationships between them and Railtrack. Were looking at what the
SRA, the Strategic Rail Authority can invest. We're looking as John has
said at the private sector too for investment and then there's government
and certainly if we're going to cope with fifty per cent increase over
the next ten years then government will play its part in that.
HUMPHRYS: Right. Will government fill the gap?
MACDONALD: Well what will be the gap? We'll
certainly be....
HUMPHRYS: A lot. Many billions of pounds......
MACDONALD: Well we'll be there to help. We've
got a very strong position with the economy. We're intent on modernising
Britain. It's a historic role I think of Labour Parties to try and make
up for the neglect in infrastructural investment and we'll do that again.
HUMPHRYS: So whatever they need, they'll come
to you in whenever it is, a year, two years' from now and we've all heard
them say on that side of the table what they need. They'll have had the
bit of money from private investors and as Mr Corbett said that's going
to be difficult in this climate - they're out there in the Bay of Biscay
being blown hither and thither and yon. They'll have had that money, they'll
have had the extra bit of money from fares, the rest of it, as he said,
has got to come you. Now if you're saying this morning, 'No problem Gerald.
If you want those billions whatever those billions are we will fill your
boots with it', then that's fine. Is that what you're saying?
MACDONALD: No. What I'm saying is that we've
put in place a very powerful broker in Sir Alastair Morton and the Strategic
Rail Authority and he has been given the job under law with a new transport
bill of devising a strategy that develops and expands the railways and
we'll play our part in that. Now that's a long process and it's to do
with franchises being renegotiated perhaps because......
HUMPHRYS: Ah - but it's not a long process if
you heard our man representing the passengers. It is not a long process.
This process has to start now, today, not next week, not next year, it
has to start now and if they cannot squeeze..... Alastair Morton might
be all of the things that you said he is but if he can't squeeze that investment
out of the other places you are going to have to fill the gap - is that
what you're saying? Let's be very clear about this.
MACDONALD: Yes, let's be clear. The process
has already started. The Strategic Rail Authority, even in its shadow
form..
HUMPHRYS: ..I fully accept all that...
MACDONALD: ...is in negotiation with three train
operators, three down, twenty-two to go. We're beckoning them in, saying
'Come forward we want to do all of this quickly..
HUMPHRYS: ..accept all of that, but not even
Mr Corbett believes all the money is coming from there..
MACDONALD: ...we can't under law force George's
members to come up and renegotiate with us. We hope that we will make
the process attractive enough that they will see that there's an advantage
in coming forward for investment on a very large scale which helps their
business, that allows them a new relationship with Gerald and Railtrack
and that government again besides Sir Alastair being the broker that we'll
be able to play our positive part in that too.
HUMPHRYS: But the fact is you had not ear marked
real new money to fill this gap that all of those on that side of the table
need filling.
MACDONALD: Well we this year will be spending
one point three billion of public money..
HUMPHRYS: ..not near enough..
MACDONALD: And what we are saying is that as
we see this process developing we'll be standing very close to that process
and ensuring that we get the railways in the next ten years that the passengers
deserve.
HUMPHRYS: Well I'm not sure that answers the
question again, because that isn't going to be enough. We've heard that
isn't going to be enough. As it carries on, as we see the extra investment
that is needed and we repeat, we are talking now about forty-one billion
pounds, a vast amount of money. Is the government..
MACDONALD: ..over ten years.
HUMPHRYS: Sure, absolutely..
MACDONALD: Four billion a year and we put in
one point three billion a year..
HUMPHRYS: Alright, leaves a big gap doesn't
it.
MACDONALD: Well Gerald's explained how it can
help. They can help fill that.
HUMPHRYS: He's explained that it has to come
from the government, that's what he has explained.
MACDONALD: Yes, but what I'm saying is that you've
got here a process and our investment has predicated and success and negotiations
that the Strategic Rail Authority has with George's members and the rail
operating companies that the regulator has with Gerald and that we all
have with private investment that might come forward and it's also predicated
in the growth of the railways itself. So it's a complicated process and
you wouldn't say at the start of it, here is X billion. What I am saying
is this year there's one point three billion in there, Gerald Corbett has
said that Railtrack this year is investing two billion, that's twice as
much as the historic average.
HUMPHRYS: I understand that but let me give
you something else that complicates this as well. And that is that we are
now being told there's actually going to be more money to be spent on the
roads. All of a sudden instead of waging war on the motorist you're the
motorist friend because that's much more politically popular to be the
motorist's friend than the motorist's enemy. So, it's going to go on the
roads.......
MACDONALD: Yes....
HUMPHRYS: ..... as well as on the railways,
problems here?
MACDONALD: ...... Yes
HUMPHRYS: Problems here.....?
MACDONALD: Well we've got an unprecedently strong
economy and we have a chancellor who for the first time has dedicated money
from certain revenue streams, from fuel duty for instance..
HUMPHRYS: ..not certain of that, because the
escalator has gone and it may or may not be..
MACDONALD: If the six per cent went down to
only one per cent that would still be over two hundred million a year,
dedicated to transport.
HUMPHRYS: That's not guaranteed.
MACDONALD: Road congestion charging going forward
perhaps..
HUMPHRYS: ..five years' time..
MACDONALD: Five years time, a billion pounds
a year minimum..
HUMPHRYS: But five years' time, this man is
telling us that it's got to be done next week.
MACDONALD: No but you are asking about road schemes
and what I am saying if you look at road schemes it takes sadly in this
country thirteen years to build a road from end to end but we are saying
that the ones that we have already got in prospect, pull them forward to
this year, we are going through that process with two or three different
sets of road schemes, we are looking at the bottle necks in the roads as
well and saying how can we break those bottle necks. How can we invest
more in transport across the board, how can we make up for the severe neglect
that we have, not just in the railways but also in our road system over
the past years.
HUMPHRYS: It's a different sort of tune now
isn't it and that's because you're running scared in the Department of
Transport. We had what John Prescott cheerily calls the 'teeny boppers'
at Number Ten. We've had them briefing against you all over the place saying
you're selling out the motorist and dumping on John Prescott. That's what's
causing this change of heart isn't it?
MACDONALD: Not at all, I've been in this role
four months and worked very closely with Downing Street and with the Treasury
and had nothing but co-operation from them. What we have here is a very
strong economy which will allow us to do what is our historic task, which
is to modernise the fabric of Britain. We want of course to advance our
agenda of social justice and fairness but we want to invest in enterprise
and it's very important that we have a good transport system.
HUMPHRYS: You've got to get people.. you keep
telling us, John Prescott has said that he will have failed if he doesn't
get us out of our cars to a greater extent, if the number of journeys that
we make by car does not fall, he's going to fail within five years. Why
don't you say to him quietly, because you are probably an old mate of his
by now, why don't you say: 'John, why don't you get rid one of those Jaguars,
just for a start, it will send a signal.'
MACDONALD: Look, the guy has a nine year old
Jaguar that sits in Hull, his other..
HUMPHRYS: ..he's got two Jaguars. It's the
message it sends..
MACDONALD: ..his other car is a government car.
He's the Deputy Prime Minister, you get sent around, as John well knows,
you get sent around London with red boxes scurrying to and fro the House
of Commons, well fine, take your Jaguar off the Deputy Prime Minister and
give him a Rover if it makes you happy. I'm sure John Prescott would have
no concerns about that. But on that other quote, again, he didn't say quietly,
I didn't say quietly to him, he said loudly to me, that so called quote
about getting people out of their cars in five years or I would have failed,
that is not what he said.
HUMPHRYS: Well he actually said it to me and...
anyway we won't argue about that. A lot of those problems, a lot of these
problems are facing you because the DETR, the Department for the Environment
and Transport and the Regions is absolutely massive. Each single bit of
it has got huge problems and we've got poor old John Prescott running the
whole lot. Now, it is unmanageable isn't it, that's got to change hasn't
it?
MACDONALD: No, I think that's a bit of a red
herring. I think clearly the problems of the Environment are closely related
in many areas with our transport and I don't see that there is anything
mutually exclusive in running the two together. People run much bigger
businesses than we have in our department so I think that it's a big department
but he's a big man and we'll win through.
HUMPHRYS: And he's hanging on.
JOHN HUMPHRYS: Right okay, Stewart Francis, a very
quick reaction from each of you before we close this discussion, are you
happy with what you've heard, especially that last bit about investment
STEWART FRANCIS: Let's just remember that the passenger
is king. The fact is that Railtrack have been slow to invest, and Tom
Windsor, the Rail Regulator is now putting the foot on Railtrack's accelerator.
What we want is a bit of vision with this. When we had our passengers'
conference on Thursday we were talking about the well-factor. Where are
the big ideas? When I came down to this studio today I left Peterborough
station which is a relatively new station, but it's built in the same style
as the Victorian era. If we're going to get people out of cars then we
have to replicate the car journey, the comfort. Why isn't that platform
covered in glass? Now five - ten years ago we were talking about football
supporters being talked about as being treated as animals. Look at the
rail passengers' experience when they get onto a platform, open to the
elements. Where's the vision that everybody has a seat when they arrive
at the station, where are there a few shops around the station. Why can't
stations be the centre of the community?
HUMPHRYS: George Muir, where are they?
GEORGE MUIR: I went to the conference, Stewart's
conference on Thursday and it was because I want to hear as much as I
can and get feedback from passengers. And the point they were making is
vision. We want an encapsulation of the vision for the railways, and they're
quite right. And fortunately we do have a document which is a good start
for that vision, and a new version is going to come out in March, the network
management statement, and this is a good statement of the totality of what
we're trying to deliver in the railways of Britain.
HUMPHRYS: Thank you. Gerald Corbett, a quick
thought on what Lord MacDonald had to say about where you're investment's
going to come from. Are you satisfied with what he said?
GERALD CORBETT: Yes, broadly, but I mean within what
he said it highlights the weakness, because we've got huge numbers dancing
about, we actually do need a proper plan. If we were a separate business
rather than a whole industry we would have a strategic plan, and that would
be the framework within which we managed ourselves. We would know what
we were trying to achieve, we'd know how we were going to raise the money
and so on. We don't at the moment have that for the industry, and we badly
need that. It's all very well us having our plan, but we've actually got
to have one for the industry and how the money is going to be raised and
how it's going to be spent, and until we've got that leadership we're not
going to be able to make much progress.
HUMPHRYS: Okay. John Redwood, you've heard
what they've all said. You've got a motion down for MPs to discuss this
week. Are you satisfied with everything that's been said. Are you going
to withdraw that motion now.?
JOHN REDWOOD: I'm not going to withdraw the motion.
I think the conversation today has shown that there are a lot of common
sense ideas that we proposed and that the industry has proposed that need
to be adopted. But the complacency of the minister is breathtaking, and
he even seems to agree with some of them, but they're not doing them.
John Prescott has the powers today to solve these problems if he wished
to do so. He is not making the necessary decisions. It was a great Labour
lie they'd improve public transport. It's getting worse because he is
dithering, he's not up to the job, and yes we are going to debate it.
HUMPHRYS: Lord MacDonald?
LORD MACDONALD: Well, in two years we've tried to
undo some of the neglect of twenty years of Tory misrule. What we've got
now is the first comprehensive Transport Bill for a generation, and we
believe that that will give us the Strategic Rail Authority which will
give us the strategic plan that the industry wants.
HUMPHRYS: Gentlemen, thank you all very much
indeed for coming here today and discussing this hugely important problem,
and that is our contribution, On the Record's contribution to Track Record.
But, the BBC's Rail Week continues on the Money Programme today. They'll
be finding out why the Dutch run their rail system so much more efficiently
than we run ours. That's the Money Programme at Eight o'clock on BBC-Two
this evening.
HUMPHRYS: The one thing that all Europe's leaders
have been agreed upon over the years is that the Union should be enlarged
to embrace countries who had been in the communist fold. At least that's
what they all said. Now it all looks a lot more complicated. The time
has come for them to begin the process which will bring the outsiders inside.
But as Paola Buonadonna reports some of the leaders of the most important
countries are beginning to lose their nerve.
PAOLA BUONADONNA: Prague -- the capital of one of
the most successful countries of the former Warsaw Pact. Together with
Poland and Hungary the Czech Republic is one of six new democracies on
a fast-track to join the European Union, with another six countries waiting
to begin negotiations. But despite all their efforts to meet the stringent
EU membership criteria the Czechs like other Eastern European applicants
are still waiting for a firm entry date. Its people are beginning to doubt
the commitment of EU leaders to enlargement and warn that the absence of
a target date may put the entire project in jeopardy.
PAVEL TELICKA: I think it would have dire consequences,
I think it would have considerable concerns for confidence in Europe. There
would be a lack of confidence and that would be the feeling of a different
treatment of the countries that were behind the Iron Curtain. In fact to
some extent it would keep the division line in Europe artificially.
KEITH VAZ MP: There is a danger on picking dates
just to make people feel better. What we want is just good, proper negotiations
that will give a lasting solution to the problems that these countries
have.
LORD WALLACE: We are endangering the stability of
their societies and of their state - also damaging their economies because
foreign investment will flow into countries when they have the guarantee
of access to the integrated West European market. So it would be extremely
damaging to delay too long and disastrous to say no.
BUONADONNA: November nineteen-eighty-nine. For
democracy leaders Vaclav Havel and Alexanda Dubcek. address their people
in Wenceslas Square in Prague. .It's the start of the so-called Velvet
Revolution. Within days they had won., without a single shot being fired.
Dubcek calls for the country to break out from four decades of forced isolation
and rejoin the rest of Europe.
It's ten years almost to the day since
the Velvet Revolution replaced the communist regime with a democratic government
here in Prague and in that time the country has embarked on a painful programme
of modernisation. Next week European Union leaders are expected to give
a boost to the enlargement process. The Helsinki summit will declare that
membership negotiations will now open with all 12 candidate countries.
Enlargement is Europe's most ambitious
strategic project for the next decade. The European Union plans to bring
in Eastern European and Baltic countries as well as Cyprus. Instead of
15 member states there would be 27 nations with 500 million people. Turkey.
is also pushing for entry and could one day be included. This huge area
would be one single market, and eventually might share a single currency.
After years of conflict in the Balkans an enlarged Europe, it is argued,
would bring security and stability to the whole region.
Although the Czech economy has slowed
down recently the country is doing its best to promote enterprise and attract
much needed foreign investment. This Prague hypermarket, doing brisk business
even on a Sunday is part of the Tesco chain. The company has already opened
80 stores in Eastern European countries, including 13 in the Czech Republic
and Slovakia. Enlargement would offer the opportunity to re integrate the
Czech economy with the rest of Europe.
PAVEL TELICKA: We were among the most developed countries
in the world before the Second World War, and we see it as an opportunity,
as an opportunity to break down completely the heritage of isolation, to
be able to contribute to the development in Europe, to contribute to where
the European Union or European integration is heading. It is an opportunity
to influence issues, decisions, norms which have an impact on us, but as
an outsider, as a non-member we can't influence.
BUONADONNA: Every glass manufactured in this Czech
factory in the past century has been produced entirely by hand. Like many
other businesses it's now having to adjust to the harsh reality of the
free market. It's the same in all the applicant countries: in order to
join the EU they have to reshape their whole economies, trim down their
bureaucracy and privatise their industries. And before these quality goods
can be sold in the Single Market they must make sure that every single
item of EU legislation is brought into their own laws.
GREGOR WOSCHNAGG: They have to change their whole economic
system, the whole social system, and it is not only a question of taking
over the book of rules of the European Union, it's also a question of applying
this book if they have institutions, the courts, the administration to
take care of standards of the European Union.
PAVEL TELICKA: We need to show that we've learnt
the lesson, that we know the problems, we have identified them, we've got
the measures and we intend to implement them. So I think that it would
be wrong for me to try to convince you.. I think that we need to convince
by practice. And I think that in the past few months we have been progressing.
BUONADONNA: It's not just the applicant countries
who need to reform, however. In order to welcome 12 more members without
paralysing the EU the 15 existing members will need to agree to a raft
of major institutional changes. Next year Brussels will host a new Inter
Governmental conference where countries will have to agree to cut down
the number of commissioners, give up the veto in areas such as industrial
policy and environmental taxation and change the voting system so that
bigger countries have more power. With so many vested interests at stake
the process could be long and difficult.
PAAVO LIPPONEN: We need to make amendments in the
basic treaties to ensure that an enlarged union can work, that is, the
decision making functions have to be smoothed out, that's the main task,
also to deepen integration, to ensure that enlargement will not mean diluting
the union.
BUONADONNA: The EU institutions were designed
more than 50 years ago to serve just a handful of countries. To accommodate
more members voting rights will have to reflect more closely the size of
each country and more decisions will have to be taken by Majority Voting.
Most countries in the EU now accept
the argument for enlargement but for the moment are preoccupied with the
particular disadvantages it will each of them. Big countries like France
want to continue to dominate the decision-making in Brussels but smaller
countries such as Belgium and Luxembourg are worried about losing influence
in a wider Union.
LORD WALLACE: There will no doubt have to be some
very hard bargaining next year in which the small states already within
the community, Luxembourg in particular for example, will probably fight
tooth and nail against the idea that each country is not entitled to its
own commissioner or that small countries are not allowed to maintain their
privileges within a larger EU.
GUNTHER VERHEUGEN: I understand that smaller member states
are afraid that they could lose influence but it's a matter of fact that
in the European Union the smaller member states have disproportionally
more influence than bigger member states. If you compare the size of Luxembourg
and the influence that Luxembourg has with the European Union you see clearly
that the smaller member states are privileged and I think that will continue
to be the case.
BUONADONNA: But even if countries don't lose influence
they may lose money. Since joining the European Union in 1986, Spain and
Portugal have enjoyed generous regional subsidies and they're unwilling
to share them with others.
GUNTHER VERHEUGEN: There's only limited amount of money
and certainly after enlargement the average of the income and the wealth
of the European Union will go down and therefore certain regions in the
present member states will not be entitled to get European money.
BUONADONNA: Germany used to be the driving force
behind enlargement but its enthusiasm has been diminished by the cost
of its own reunification. Germans worry that enlargement will open the
floodgates to cheap labour and goods from the new entrants. And that concerns
Austria too.
GREGOR WOSCHNAGG: Our neighbours have around twenty
per cent of the salaries of the Austrian labour so this is a problem of
competition, cheap labour and people may be scared that this may also increase
unemployment in Austria.
BUONADONNA: This Czech town is on the border with
Austria. People here naturally look to the West and for ten years they've
been keen to join the European Union. But every delay in the enlargement
process risks dampening their enthusiasm and without their support the
ambitious programme of reforms could falter.
Telc, a Renaissance jewel, is far
removed from the hustle and bustle of the various capitals where negotiations
go on. But even ordinary people here are acutely aware of the dangers of
delaying enlargement as we discovered when we visited the Samek family.
JAROSLAV SAMEK: I'm worried that it would take long,
you know, and those negotiations which are prolonged indefinitely, so I
think it's very harmful.
INGRID SAMEK: If the target is not clear, if we
don't know, and we if we just hear, okay maybe one day, so I think it's
de-motivating.
MARIA SAMEK: We need to have a clear target, not
a hazy one, you know, because people are then prepared to perhaps work
harder and, you know, to fulfil all those conditions. It's very important
for us.
BUONADONNA: The once buoyant opinions polls in
favour of membership are now beginning to slide in some Eastern European
countries. The majority of Czechs are still in favour of joining the EU
but politicians warn the mood in the country could turn if people felt
that entry was going to be delayed.
GUNTHER VERHEUGEN: It would be a terrible mistake to
think that it doesn't matter when and how we do it. It matters a lot. And
I have to say we probably have only limited time, time is already running
out. We can already see that in some countries the governments and the
parliament are losing the support for the policy of European integration.
What I can say today is that the European
Union is prepared to make the first decisions on accession in 2002. Next
year I think we can produce an accession scenario and can answer the question
of who and when and under which circumstances.
PAAVO LIPPONEN: At the Helsinki summit we will be
setting a date for ourselves when the European Union will be ready to enlarge
maybe by the end of 2002. But on the other hand we wouldn't be setting
a date for the first next accession because that depends on the performance
of the candidate countries.
BUONADONNA: But so far the Union has been slow
to deal with its own reforms and people here don't know who to believe
anymore. The President of the European Commission recently said he wanted
to push ahead with a date for enlargement. But whilst member states keep
proclaiming their enthusiasm they have so far made limited progress.
KEITH VAZ MP: I think we should do everything we
possibly can to encourage them to join as soon as possible so long as our
institutions are ready for them. I don't want to see expectations being
raised in countries like Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic which are
not met.
LORD WALLACE: I have no doubt that in almost every
single capital of the EU most ministers would like to put enlargement off.
It raises problems, it's difficult, it's easier to deal with domestic problems
that is why the applicant countries have to keep pushing.
PAVEL TELICKA: I think we have to be ambitious and
we have to say that, everyone in this process can work harder than has
been doing so far. And I must say that this is exactly what I would also
expect from the Western European leaders, the leaders of the member states
of the European Union, including the UK.
BUONADONNA: Prague first dreamt of EU membership
on a cold night ten years ago when communism was overthrown. But as another
year is about to end Western European governments have still not set a
target date for entry. Next week's summit in Helsinki will be a small step
forward in what has become an incredibly slow journey towards what seems
a distant prospect. But if it takes too long it could put at risk Europe's
grand ambition of a Union of all its nations.
HUMPHRYS: Paola Buonadonna reporting there.
And that's it for this week, until the same time next week, good afternoon.
...oooOOOOOooo...
FoLdEd
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