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JOHN HUMPHRYS: But first the railways.
Every other day there's a new horror story about the state of the railways.
And there seems no end in sight to it all. Well now the government has
put the Transport Minister, Lord McDonald, in charge of a committee that
will meet regularly to sort things out. How can a politician succeed where
the railwaymen themselves have failed? Lord MacDonald is with me. Good
afternoon
.
MACDONALD: Good afternoon.
HUMPHRYS: What's the committee
actually going to do, because it's hard to see what you can do that the
industry itself without your help, cannot do.?
MACDONALD: Well, we're simply trying to
co-ordinate, we're in there in a sense as a support group because there
is a smaller management than you would imagine in Railtrack. They're called
upon from all different angles to report to this group or that group, so
that we've done is get half a dozen of these groups round the one table
so they can share the agenda and I or the permanent secretary can sit there
and listen to the concerns that are expressed and try to get those sorted
out as smoothly as possible, in order that the Railtrack management can
get on with the job which is the rail recovery plan for the whole network
HUMPHRYS: But we seem to have seen
an awful lot of these meetings over the last months with ministers, whether
it's you or John Prescott or whoever it is there, they have emergency summits
and God knows what else. Nothing seems to get any better, indeed the on
the contrary things seem to be getting worse.
MACDONALD: Well it does get better. At
the moment we've got about I think about seventy-five per cent of the journeys
in the Inter-City routes running, and about fifty per cent of those are
coming in on time. That's a bit better than it was, and in the other areas
we've got a much higher incidence of trains running, about ninety per cent
and about seventy-five per cent arriving within ten minutes, and about
half the franchises say they're running close to normal, so it's not total
chaos everyone. There's about twenty per cent of passengers who come off
the network but it is getting better, they're lifting I think almost three
hundred speed restrictions over the next days and couple of weeks.
HUMPHRYS: Three hundred?
MACDONALD: Well, a hundred-and-forty going
up from forty to sixty, and another two hundred going up from twenty to
forty.
HUMPHRYS: So when will they all
be lifted by then?
MACDONALD: I would think about the end
of January, beginning of February, but we can't be too sure on that because
they're still in the process of discovering some of the problems in the
network. They've covered two-thirds of it, the last third is still to
be done although that's the least problematic third of it if I can put
it that way. But they reckon they've almost bottomed it out.
HUMPHRYS: But we still don't have
is a proper time-table. I mean we had one way back when. It was abandoned
when all those problems happened, Hatfield happened, all the rest of it.
We don't have a proper time-table, we don't have a real emergency time-table
to which the train operating companies are committed. They guarantee that
this is the time-table against which we can measure them. When are we
going to have that?
MACDONALD: Well, they say they have a time-table,
it's the one that will be in place until the Christmas time-table comes
in about the seventeenth or eighteenth of December, and by the
way you'll know about the Christmas time-table I think it's on Tuesday
they're announcing that, and then after the Christmas break, the New Year
break the new time-table will come in and that will be I think a lot more
efficient than the one we've got at the moment.
HUMPHRYS: So, I'm slightly puzzled
by this. Then what - because we were promised that we'd have this within
a fortnight of Hatfield weren't we and now it's what, five weeks.
MACDONALD: We were hit by flooding of course
John which didn't help.
HUMPHRYS: That was a problem, though
it wasn't everywhere. I mean it was only limited areas. Now, this time-table,
we're going to have a time-table that will come in, will be announced on
Tuesday and that'll be good until...?
MACDONALD: Well, that's the Christmas time-table
that comes in then, and the Christmas time-table runs let's see, from the
eighteenth of December to the seventh of January, and then the post-holiday
time-table comes in, and it's in on the - it'll come in - it'll be announced
on the fifth January and it will run on through January and February.
HUMPHRYS: So the one that comes
in for Christmas, the Christmas time-table as you describe it, that is
guaranteed. In other words if I try and catch a train to Manchester and
it's more than whatever it is late, according to that particular time-table,
I will be able to go for compensation they way I would have been able to
do six months ago?
MACDONALD: Indeed. If you can bear with
me I'll just give you some of the figures that I've been given by the companies
here. They reckon on the Inter-City they've got seventy-six per cent running
as normal on the present time table, the one that'll be in place up till
Christmas. Of those seventy-six about half of them are coming in within
ten minutes. The other half are more than ten minutes late. On the London
commuting and the other commuting lines and other lines around the country
it's actually much higher than that, it's over ninety per cent of trains
that are being set out as normal on the time-table and three-quarters of
those are running inside the ten minute delay.
HUMPHRYS: But I mean the problem
is that there are going to be far fewer trains aren't there. I mean this
is the difficulty, so there are going to be fewer passengers, both GNER
and Virgin say that.
MACDONALD: Well, not far fewer. Again,
what I've got.....
HUMPHRYS: GNER said less than half
the passengers they'd be able to cope with.
MACDONALD: Well, what we've got here is
eighteen-thousand three hundred trains run each day ....
HUMPHRYS: Normally you mean.
MACDONALD: Normally, and about six hundred
they tell me are being cancelled formally and then some others are being
cancelled. But ninety-five per cent of those trains are in the current
time-table as normal.
HUMPHRYS: Sorry, if a third of
them, you said eighteen hundred and then six hundred being cancelled.
A third are being cancelled, it's hard to see how they're going to carry
anything like the number of passengers that you just described.
MACDONALD: No, of the eighteen-thousand,
three hundred per day they reckon that about ninety-five percent of those
trains will be in the current timetable, the ones that we've got at the
moment. They're supposed to be working as normal. Those trains are supposed
to be leaving the station but what I'm saying is that on the Intercity
lines only half of them are arriving within ten minutes of when they should
but it's a much better record than on some of the commuter lines and other
lines around the country.
HUMPHRYS: On the other hand that
leaves the other half which could be absolute mayhem couldn't it. I mean
there are no promises are there.....
MACDONALD: Well of those eighteen-thousand,
three hundred I'm told that the number that are over thirty-eight minutes
late per day are about five hundred. So it's about three per cent. It's
not as much as the overall chaos, no progress being made headlines would
suggest.
HUMPHRYS: Well yes but if you're
planning to travel over Christmas it still sounds a bit dodgy doesn't it.
I mean you hear 'post early for Christmas' you might as well say, 'travel
early for Christmas' or 'Don't travel for Christmas. Stay at home for
Christmas'?
MACDONALD: Well obviously a lot of people
have stayed at home. One of the curious things that's happened here is
that they reckon about twenty per cent of people who would normally travel
on the rail haven't travelled and there's about two point seven million
travel every day so you're probably losing something between a quarter
of a million and half a million people not going by rail. But if you look
at the number of cars in the country, there's twenty-seven million cars,
two point seven million people go by train each day, looks as though people
aren't making journeys or they're hitching a lift in a car or they're maybe
taking a 'bus. So what we've got as the Highways Agency this weekend has
said there's only a one or two percent increase on the amount of traffic
on our roads.....
HUMPHRYS: It can make a huge difference
though can't it - one or two per cent?
MACDONALD: It can. But remember the headlines
in the paper said "Twenty-five per cent...up in London. Ten per cent....."
HUMPHRYS: It might be in London
for all we know because if it was two per cent across the country it could
be anything in London couldn't it.
MACDONALD: As well as the Highways Agency
we've actually got one hundred and sixty sites across the country where
we look at traffic volumes and they don't show anything more than a couple
of percentage increase and then the London Underground, where you would
expect people to go obviously in the London commuting lines, the increase
between September when Hatfield happened and this month is actually no
greater this year than it was last year. So it's a bit counter intuitive,
I know it goes against the received wisdom but I don't think there is this
gridlock that the newspapers have been saying across the country.
HUMPHRYS: But the problem is, isn't
it, from your point of view, you've now... some people might say you've
been a bit of a fall guy in this because you've been put in charge of this
committee and you have these meetings. We were told at one stage you were
going to be meeting them every single morning and cracking the whip and
all the rest of it. If things don't get hugely better, and you can't absolutely
guarantee that they're going to get hugely better, it's all going to look
like a bit of a PR stunt isn't it?
MACDONALD: Well it's not. Really it's
a group to try and build confidence by getting everybody around the table.
You'll have heard Sir Alistair Moreton who is the Chairman of the Strategic
Rail Authority say that the industry had got a bit spooked, especially
Railtrack, they'd lost confidence and that was why they'd perhaps over
reacted and that's certainly the feeling of the train operating companies.
So what I'm trying to do is......
HUMPHRYS: Over reacted by putting
on too many speed restrictions....?
MACDONALD: Putting on too many speed limits.
It's understandable because the people working on the line are probably
saying - 'If I'm making a mistake here, if I'm not being cautious enough,
could I end up causing another Hatfield? Could I end up perhaps having
legal action taken against me?' So we've got to try and make sure that
the Health and Safety Executive, the Strategic Rail Authority, the Rail
Regulator, the passengers' councils, they all sit round the same table
with us. It won't need to be every day. It'll be as required. Railtrack
were standing shoulder to shoulder with me on Friday saying 'This is helping
us' because it is supposed to help build confidence and their ability to
make serious decisions and the Health and Safety executive have been working
closely with Railtrack, it came over in our meetings and it's helped lift
some of the speed restrictions and speed things up.
HUMPHRYS: Talk about being spooked,
it may be that you guys are getting a wee bit spooked at the moment aren't
you because people will blame you. I mean the way you have now taken responsibility
with this whole thing. If things don't improve really seriously, drastically
between now and next May or whenever the election is, you'll cop the blame
for it won't you?
MACDONALD: Well the amount of frustration
amongst passengers is huge and understandable and I believe the service
they're getting is unacceptable and that's why you've got to have a government
involvement. We believe that with the transport bill that became an act
just last week there that if we put more powers in place it will be a more
co-ordinated, more coherent network. We've also put a lot more money in
place. There's sixty billion going in over the next ten years. So the
money's there. The structures are there. What we need now are competent
management of the network and to reduce a lot of the problems and Alistair
Moreton has been working with other groups to try and reduce the frictions
that have been in a system we inherited which is overly fragmented, incoherent
and not working.
HUMPHRYS: Ah well, yes. But that's
the point, isn't it? Incoherent, fragmented, not working. But this is
something that you are not going to change. I mean, the structure of the
network, as far as one can tell, unless you can tell me differently this
morning, the structure of the network, this extraordinary number of train
operating companies, Railtrack, all those different people who service,
look after the railway lines, the network and all the rest of it, all of
that, as far as one can tell is going to stay the same. Maybe what you
ought to be doing, instead of going off to these meetings with Railtrack,
is sitting down and working out a new structure for the whole railway system.
MACDONALD: Well the, what the railway system
has lacked has been investment, certainly over the last twenty years, as
you know, Mrs Thatcher had actually an ideological aversion to the railways,
she...
HUMPHRYS: ...ah but it's more than
that, it's more than that...
BOTH SPEAKING TOGETHER
HUMPHRYS: ...it's the way they
were privatised that you so strongly criticised, you've just done it again
now, and quite right too. A lot of people will say, if it was wrong, what
they did, what the last government, if that was so wrong, why are you not
saying, right, let's have another look at it and do something differently.
Clearly it isn't working.
MACDONALD: Because we've strengthened the
powers of the rail regulator, we've brought in a strategic rail authority,
and most important of all, we are making sixty billion available, because
the industry has lacked investment for a very long time. I won't blame
just the Tories in the last twenty years, it's lacked investment for the
last fifty years. Now, we're doing something about that, but we want that
money to be spent quickly and efficiently. And that's the job now. So...
HUMPHRYS: ...yes but, how can it
be? This is the point I'm making. If you have a structure that doesn't
work, if by your own definition this thing is incoherent and doesn't work,
throwing money at it is not necessarily going to solve it. Why do you
seem to be so scared of saying..., you've said, it's a mess, effectively,
this thing is a mess. We'd have never done it like this. Why therefore
do you not say, so let's do it differently, alright, there'll be a bit
of upheaval, but let's do it differently.
MACDONALD: Now we are doing it differently,
we've got Alastair Morton and the Strategic Rail Authority...
HUMPHRYS: ...a body of bureaucrats,
that's all.
MACDONALD: No, the re-franchising and the
twenty-five different franchises on the, the network, we're putting the
money into Railtrack, much tougher regulation, better scrutiny of where
the public money is and how it's being used. The alternative John, would
be years of upheaval and that's not what the industry needs. We believe
we can bring coherence where there's been fragmentation, we can bring investment
where there's been neglect.
HUMPHRYS: Well, alright. You're
not going to do that. And yet here you are, you mentioned London Underground
earlier, here you are. You've looked at the mess that the railway network
is in. You're now looking at London Underground and you're saying, we're
going to impose the same structure on London Underground that was responsible
for this almighty mess on the railway network. Why? When everybody says
it's gonna be a complete shambles, even worse many people say. Why do
it?
MACDONALD: No. Well, we're not doing that.
What we're doing is leaving the operation of London Underground and the
control of safety in the public sector. What we are trying to do is to
ensure that private sector expertise and disciplines are brought in for
the maintenance and renewal of, of the track and systems.
HUMPHRYS: Separating the operators
and the track, exactly what happened in the railways and exactly the problems
that we have there.
MACDONALD: But in a very different way
from the railways, and we believe that that will put in again, investment
in very, very large quantities. We're looking at investment of about thirteen
billion going into the London Tube. Again, infrastructure there's been
very neglected. What we're trying to do is with eighteen years of neglect,
with the kind of stable economy we've got at the moment is to get investment
into the infrastructure in Britain, not just Health and Education, but
in Transport in particular. And the remarkable thing is that in the polls,
despite all the problems of, of recent times, the majority of people still
say, it was the fault of the previous government of what they did to the
railways.
HUMPHRYS: Well, we'll see what
happens. Lord MacDonald, thank you very much indeed.
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