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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Lord MacDonald, John Prescott
said that if he did not get fewer car journeys in this country within five
years, then he would have failed. It's going in the opposite direction,
so therefore you've failed. Right?
LORD MACDONALD: No, I don't accept that John, because
you can argue about the nuance of it but we were talking about reduction
and the rate of change and the number of cars on the road were going up
in past periods at eight per cent in the previous administration, four
per cent in the early nineteen-nineties.
Now, in the last couple
of years it has been reduced to a two per cent growth and in the year 2000,
last year, it was down to one per cent. So I reckon that's progress and
what we've said is, we're not concerned about the number of cars owned
per head because in European...
HUMPHRYS: ...no, not in ownership,
I accept that...
LORD MACDONALD: ...because people can own more
cars and use them less.
HUMPHRYS: ...but that's the whole
point...
LORD MACDONALD: ...and that's what we're trying
to do...
HUMPHRYS: ...and that is the whole
point and what he said and I don't think it is a matter of nuance, I've
spoken to him about it several times myself, he was asked about it in the
House by Tom Brake, who put the quote to him, the quote in which he said
"reducing the overall number of journeys made by car" and Mr Prescott said,
and I quote his answer from the House "I agree to commitment - judge my
performance in five years". There's absolutely no question about what
he meant, he said it so many times.
LORD MACDONALD: Well Mr Prescott said in his Transport
White Paper in July '98 we need to reduce the rate of road traffic...
HUMPHRYS: ...he might have said
that as well at some stage, but there is absolutely no question about what
he...
LORD MACDONALD: ...this is a White Paper we also
want to see an absolute reduction in traffic in those places and streets
where environmental damage is worse. Now, more importantly, let me come
round to the Commission for Integrated Transport which reports to John
Prescott...
HUMPHRYS: ..Yes, whose boss is
Willy Rickett and who says he never said it.
LORD MACDONALD: No, their boss is actually Professor
Begg.
HUMPHRYS: Yeah, but the civil servant
in charge of it is Willy Rickett.
LORD MACDONALD: Well, the Commission for Integrated
Transport says no country in the world has cut traffic in absolute terms
while its economy is growing. And what they advised was that it wasn't
about the overall rate of traffic, it was about congestion and pollution,
the bad things that come from traffic, not about necessarily reducing the
number of cars...
HUMPHRYS: ...so John Prescott was
being unrealistic when he made that promise.
LORD MACDONALD: I think he was being realistic
in saying that we want to reduce the rate of growth...
HUMPHRYS: He didn't say that. "I
will have failed if in five years there are not..." - listen "there are
not many more people using public transport and far fewer journeys by car.
It's a tall order, but I want you to hold me to it." He said that.
LORD MACDONALD: Well let's just...it came up also
in your report there previously. There are more people using public transport.
If you look at the railways, it's up seventeen per cent...
HUMPHRYS: ...well, I want to come
back to railways in a minute...
LORD MACDONALD: ...right, so that's gone up. The
decline in buses....and it went down after that privatisation which ended
up like in a wild west frontier on our roads as far as the buses were concerned
in the eighties, we've stopped the decline in the number of bus journeys,
we've got eighteen-hundred more services every day amongst rural buses
alone. We've got, what is it, I think, fourteen-hundred new rail services
every day, so we have increased the number of people travelling on public
transport and the rate of growth of traffic is down from eight per cent
in Tory times to one per cent last year...
HUMPHRYS: ...well, I'm going to
have to argue with that as well I'm afraid. Your ten year plan and this
is after spending a massive of money, your ten
year plan, predicts that traffic levels will rise by seventeen per cent
by the year 2010.
Now it has, over the last ten years, been rising at fifteen per cent,
so on that basis too, you will have failed on your own figures.
LORD MACDONALD: Not at all, what we were saying...
HUMPHRYS: ...well they're your
figures...
LORD MACDONALD: ...no...
HUMPHRYS: ...I didn't make them
up!
LORD MACDONALD: Our figures say that they will
go up and that we reckon...
HUMPHRYS: ...by seventeen per cent...
LORD MACDONALD: ...it's up one per cent, seventeen
per cent, but you...
HUMPHRYS: ...over ten years...
LORD MACDONALD: ...you don't relate the reduction
in congestion. What I said earlier, it's congestion and pollution that
count John...
HUMPHRYS: ...so what are all these
cars doing, when they...
are they not adding to congestion? They're trundling around the roads
and streets of our country...
LORD MACDONALD: I hope they're flowing around more
freely, because again, as you said in your report, we're going to spend
more in reducing the bottlenecks in the roads and widening motorways and
creating by-passes. But of the hundred-and-eighty billion in our ten-year
plan, two-thirds of that goes in public transport and of the
money going on the roads, thirty billion of it, half the money going on
the roads is going to improve local roads.
HUMPHRYS: I've heard some rewriting
of promises but this takes the biscuit! I mean, Jonathan Porritt, the
man that Tony Blair put in charge of the Sustainable Develop Commission,
he says, "we are not moving forward on transport policy," and I quote again,
"we're moving backwards". And he's absolutely right. You told us there
would be a reduction in car use. We are going to see, not just an increase
in car use of seventeen per cent, after all this money has been spent,
but we are actually going to see a bigger increase in car use than we have
been seeing.
LORD MACDONALD: Well, Jonathan Porritt with respect
to him is an outside advisor. I don't think he's up-to-speed in a lot
of the aspects of our transport policy...
HUMPHRYS: ...well he's been working
in this area for a lot longer than you have...
LORD MACDONALD: ...well he's been working with....
HUMPHRYS: ...I mean he's been doing
it for about thirty years...
LORD MACDONALD: ...but some of things that he's
said about our transport policy simply don't chime with our understanding
of them. Let me say, we've got one-hundred-and-eighty billion going into
Transport and we've made a lot of progress. If you take buses for instance,
we have eight-thousand new buses came on last year, we'll have forty-thousand
new buses in the time of this government, that'll be about half the bus
fleet has been renewed...
HUMPHRYS: But it doesn't deal with
this essential problem, that we are going to see more, rather than less,
car use. And you may rubbish old Jonathan Porritt who was appointed as
I said, by the Prime Minister himself, but he says, a hundred-and-eighty-billion
pounds, which is what you're going to be spending and you'll be proudly
spending all that money, one hell of a lot of money, for one very small
policy outcome.
LORD MACDONALD: And I think he's utterly wrong.
And let me say that what we are talking about at the end of that ten years
is a reduction in congestion across the country of five per cent...
HUMPHRYS: ...you've moved the goal
posts then...
LORD MACDONALD: ...no, a bigger reduction in congestion
in cities or towns where they want to introduce other measures to control
traffic. We've made monies available on a scale they've never seen before
for local transport plans and that includes eight-thousand plans for road
safety, just in the local transport plans alone announced in December,
it's about park-and-ride schemes across the country, it's about twenty-five
new tram lines, metro lines in the big cities of England, so there's an
enormous amount going in at local level, as well as the money going into
rail, and as I say, roads make up only one-third of it, but it's very important
that we try to get our roads flowing more freely.
HUMPHRYS: May I make the point
that one-third of a-hundred-and-eighty-billion pounds is a huge amount
of money isn't it? By anybody's standards, even when it's only poor old
taxpayers' money.
LORD MACDONALD: Absolutely.
HUMPHRYS: And what is actually
going on here is this. You led us to believe, John Prescott led us to
believe that you were going to be very tough on the motorist and as a result
of being tough, some carrots as well as sticks admittedly, but as a result
of both carrot and stick, we would see this reduction in car use. Absolutely
no question about that. That is no longer the ambition. What he said,
what John Prescott said was we cannot build our way out of this problem.
Again, he said that to me, personally, on this programme, sitting in the
exact seat that you're sitting in now, last July, we cannot build our way
out of this problem. That is exactly what you are going to do and even
having spent all of that money, even having spent all of that money, we
are still going to see big increases in car use. Extraordinary business.
LORD MACDONALD: Not at all. The Deputy Prime Minister
says, and I quote him, that we should focus on the targets and policies,
and the outcomes we want to achieve, the reduction in congestion and pollution
rather than a national plan ...
HUMPHRYS: And have you forgotten
the bit where he said the reduction in car journeys and car use?
LORD MACDONALD: Well what he said is that we will
reduce those where that's most necessary inside towns and .......
HUMPHRYS: But congestion...
LORD MACDONALD: Well it is congestion.
HUMPHRYS: Even congestion will
rise by ten per cent.
LORD MACDONALD: John, you said that a hundred-and-eighty
billion was a huge sum of money. It's far more than anybody expected at
the start of this year, and that's because the Chancellor, prudent though
he may be, has put the country in a position where we've got far more in
terms of investment in every mode of travel than would have been dreamed
a year ago.
HUMPHRYS: In spite of that we're
seeing more car use and more congestion - seventeen per cent more car use,
ten per cent more congestion. What is going on here?
LORD MACDONALD: I'll tell you what is going on.
If you put a million extra people in jobs as we have done then they have
to travel to their work. What you're getting is through the general prosperity
that we're generating you're getting an increase in the number of people
travelling on public transport, there's say seventeen per cent up on trains,
an increase of seven per cent a year in the number of people travelling
by air inside the United Kingdom, a decline ended in bus travel. We're
now seeing bus travel going up ten-twenty per cent in the hundred and thirty
cities and towns across England where they now have these quality partnerships
that we've put in place, so what you're seeing is money and better strategy
and better management I believe going into ...
HUMPHRYS: Well, what we're seeing,
of course what we're seeing is a new policy, because you've abandoned the
old strategy, the old ambitions, and we're seeing a new policy, and the
reason is, I'm sure you're right. The reason is that lots of people love
it because it means they can build roads, it means that industry is going
to be very happy about it, because of course industry likes seeing roads
built. A lot of people don't like seeing roads built.
LORD MACDONALD: No, you'll get better roads, but
you'll have them based on a much more environmentally sensitive system,
and we've now got five criteria in place to make sure that the environmental
damage is very constrained and only allowed where it's necessary, and we've
also got consultation systems in where English Heritage, English Nature,
the Countryside Agency, the Environment Agency all have to be consulted
under our new criteria for the environment.
HUMPHRYS: You've turned down one
scheme out of seventy-four.
LORD MACDONALD: They don't bring them forward now
if they're going to be damaging.
HUMPHRYS: Well, let's have a look
at the railways. You told us, you promised us that we would have better
public transport. You told me about buses at some length, so let's take
buses out of the equation for a moment and look at the railways, and the
fact is and I don't believe there is a single person watching this programme
who would argue with the statement that I am about to make possibly except
Richard Branson, and I doubt even he, the railways are in a considerably
worse mess than they were four years ago. Would you argue with that?
LORD MACDONALD: I put it in context. They are
in a crisis at the moment, and it's a crisis that we're trying to manage,
and I ...
HUMPHRYS: You acknowledge that
there is a crisis.
LORD MACDONALD: Oh, absolutely. There's been a
crisis since Hatfield and I meet twice a week with - chairing a group,
an action group for the whole industry to get them back on track, and we're
hoping that this weekend the promises that have been made about their
return to eighty-five per cent of normal services running will be fulfilled
by the train operating companies. And also I'm delighted to say that
the passengers have come back. For instance in the last month in the London
area, the London commuters it's actually up five per cent, five per cent
higher in the last month than it was in the same period last year, which
is quite extraordinary given the problems that we've had. So, yes we
hope that we will get the passengers back there, but we accept that there
is a big job to be done, but where we have improved things there's all
the activity that we've had in safety for instance. The number of derailments
and collisions is the lowest it's ever been on records, the number of signals
passed at danger, we've brought them down over the last year. We've been
very tough I think on safety. What we're dealing with is a crisis of under-investment
here. We really had decades of neglect on the rail, so where there's been
that neglect we have again to invest. Where there's been I think... stagnation
we've got to expand and most importantly where's there's been fragmentation
after the industry was literally broken into a hundred pieces by privatisation
we've got to bring coherence and leadership.. That's what the SRA the
Strategic Rail Authority is in place to do it.
HUMPHRYS: But what you said the
last time you where in this studio was that it would be back to normal
services, would be back to normal by the end of January, the beginning
of February. Well we are there and they're not.
LORD MACDONALD: Well, we're back to, as I say,
I am anticipating that they'll tell us that they're at least eighty-five
per cent back to normal by this weekend.and we're also looking at a return
of passengers. The number of passengers are much higher than people had
anticipated would return after the kind or crisis that we've had.
HUMPHRYS: It doesn't feel as if
we are back to normal does it. I mean if you're a passenger, I know a
lot of it is anecdotal of course, but you can't speak to anybody, well
I don't seem to be able to speak to anybody who doesn't say that it is
absolutely hell out there. You know, the journey that would have taken
two hours takes three- three-and-a-half hours, and so and so on and so
on and so on.
MACDONALD: Well, you have to remember that
one of the problems we're dealing with, and that's why we're investing
so much money is that before Hatfield, only about eighty-five per cent
of the trains ran on time. I had three train journeys last week, all three
of them were pretty much on time to ...
HUMPHRYS: ...perhaps they knew
you were on the train, ha, ha, did you tell them ahead of time?
MACDONALD: ...I didn't, no, it was Southampton,
Leeds and the Heathrow Express, so, I think anecdotally I also hear it's
getting, it's getting back to normal, but you've got to be careful with
that, because of the fifteen per cent of people who aren't at normal have
every right still to be angry, so we're going to press on and try and make
sure that the promise that it'll all be sorted by Easter, is kept.
HUMPHRYS: Gwyneth Dunwoody says
Railtrack is on probation. Do you accept that?
MACDONALD: Well I think that what we need
is more money coming from government and the private sector and Railtrack,
but also better management and we've ...
HUMPHRYS: ...more still? More
money than is included in the ten-year plan.
MACDONALD: No, the ten-year plan I think
has money there, unallocated monies as well, I think sixty-billion is what
we're predicating in the ten-year plan that we're going to, to rail but
about twenty-nine billion of that will come from the public sector, so
we want to see the private sector investing alongside us. The train operating
companies like Richard Branson's, as well Railtrack, and indeed City investors.
So it's a big programme of investment that's in prospect. Railtrack have
to prove that they can manage that. I think they would accept it that
management hasn't been what it might have been and it should get better.
HUMPHRYS: And if they can't prove
that they're capable of managing it, or as good as is needed, are you open
as to whether the government takes a bigger hand in it, whatever system
you use, whether it's some kind of trust, whether it's some kind of golden
share, whatever it is, are you open to that possibility? Gwyneth Dunwoody
again clearly thinks you should be.
MACDONALD: We're not looking at that possibility.
HUMPHRYS: Even if they make a pig's
ear of it. Even if Railtrack continue to make a pig's ear of it?
MACDONALD: I believe in concentrating on
the problem in hand, and that's about building confidence in this industry,
and co-operation, and better co-ordination, because it was fragmented by
privatisation, broken into literally a-hundred pieces. Now what we need
is better management from Railtrack. I'll try to encourage them in every
way that I can and encourage the relationships with other parts
of the, of the industry.
HUMPHRYS: But you don't I mean,
you're not waving a stick at them here are you? I mean, there is no particular
incentive for them, I mean, if they, if they do...
MACDONALD: ...John, there is indeed...
HUMPHRYS: ...you, you can't say,
'cos, you know, if you're ruling out something that a lot of your MPs think
you ought to rule in, and that is the possibility of getting more actively
involved, if you're ruling that out, they can say, ah well, the government
can huff and puff, but at the end of it all they're not going to do anything
are, they, we'll just carry on.
MACDONALD: We'll do more than, than, than
huff and puff.
HUMPHRYS: Well, what?
BOTH SPEAKING TOGETHER
MACDONALD: Well, it's our money going in
there, and it's er...
HUMPHRYS: ...some of it's taxpayers
money...
MACDONALD: Well, it's taxpayers money,
absolutely. And that's why we've got to be extremely careful we get value
for money. But what you have here is a five-billion pound company with
shareholders who if they have a management that aren't delivering for them,
and don't forget that Railtrack are down to lose six-hundred-million pounds,
their shareholders lose that money because of what happened at Hatfield,
then those shareholders will get rid of that management if it's not performing,
and that's the Board's job, they're there to represent the shareholders,
and indeed the stakeholders, like government and passengers, and if the
Board isn't performing, then that too will be shaken up, I'm sure, by the
shareholders.
HUMPHRYS: But John Prescott said
back in ninety-nine that they were on probation then, well if they were
on probation then, they're still on probation now, nothing has improved,
as we've acknowledged, things have got worse.
MACDONALD: Now I believe things have been
improving in recent weeks...
BOTH SPEAKING TOGETHER
HUMPHRYS: ...you said there's a
crisis...
MACDONALD: ...there's a crisis and we've
been managing that crisis and managing it I hope, pretty effectively.
I believe that the targets we set of eighty-five per cent return to normality
by the end of January will be, be met, the, the train operating companies
should be confirming that this weekend.
HUMPHRYS: But here you are, acknowledging
the possibility, as of course you must, looking at it's record, that things
may not get better under Railtrack. I mean, that has to be a possibility,
they may not be up to the job, it's as simple as that, but ruling out even
the possibility, in spite of the fact that it's urged upon you by many
of your back-benchers, by people like Gwyneth Dunwoody, considering the
possibility that you should actually take a bigger part in er Railtrack.
MACDONALD: Those MPs have just put through
a Transport Act which er, gives you a much tougher regulation from the
office of the rail regulator, it gives you a strategic rail authority and
also, I believe, it gives a sense of direction and leadership to the industry
that wasn't there before. Now those MPs put that through. With that Transport
Act in place it's important now that we make sure the money goes into the
railroad, we want to see a fifty per cent increase in the number of passengers
travelling the rail in our ten-year plan, and we want to see an eighty
per cent increase in freight. Now we've already had about five-hundred
new, new vehicles running in the rolling stock, but there are two-thousand
ordered. We want to see those brought on to the railways as quickly as
possible. There are two-and-a-half thousand stations, and most of them
have been refurbished, I've seen some spectacular changes, but also the
difficulties of investment in Leeds, for instance, a-hundred-and-sixty-five
million pound development that has overrun. But we are investing in change
and we will get a better railway because for forty years it's been in decline
and at last the money is going in.
HUMPHRYS: Let me in the last couple
of minutes turn to this other subject that's preoccupying every... well
all the newspapers at least this morning and that is the war between Tony
Blair and Peter Mandelson, as it's now being described. It was quite extraordinary
wasn't it that the Prime Minister's Press Secretary, Alastair Campbell,
should have made the sort of attack on a former minister that he made in
briefings yesterday. Did you not find that a bit strange?
LORD MACDONALD: No I think that Peter laid out
his position on Wednesday and that's a position that the Prime Minister
confirmed. Sir Anthony Hammond is going in to carry out an enquiry. That
enquiry should be in weeks rather than in months and obviously...
HUMPHRYS: No question about the
result before the election, absolutely no question about that?
LORD MACDONALD: Well it's my understanding and
I think it's been stated you know by the press briefings and so on is that
it will be in weeks rather than months and therefore I wait to hear what
Sir Anthony comes through with...
HUMPHRYS: But in the meantime we
have Alastair Campbell going to war on Peter Mandelson, saying the most
extraordinary things for a man who was Secretary of State for Northern
Ireland only a few days ago - unfocused and detached, problem with his
state of mind in recent weeks. Do you not find that a little odd.
LORD MACDONALD: No, I think that Alastair played
I think a very full tribute to Peter and his work in Northern Ireland.
But I think that what Alastair is saying was what the people in the country
will agree with is that there are much more important issues here.
HUMPHRYS: He said rather more than
that, do you not think, I mean would it help to clear this matter up if
the recording that was made of those briefings were to be released so that
we would know precisely what was said because we are having the usual old
thing now aren't we, saying stuff was taken out of context, inspite of
the fact that the journalists involved say they have shorthand notes and
all the rest of it. Should they perhaps..should we not have access to those
recordings so that we can clear it all up. What's your view on that?
LORD MACDONALD: I think Sir Anthony Hammond will
have access to them and he will report to us in good time. I think that
what we are looking at here...
HUMPHRYS: ..sorry, I'm talking
about Alastair Campbell's briefings now, not other things.
LORD MACDONALD: I think what Alastair Campbell
is saying is get back to the real issues - which is jobs, it's education,
it's about health..
HUMPHRYS: ..so why did he launch
that attack on Peter Mandelson in that case?
LORD MACDONALD: He was simply trying to say to
the press, get back to what's important because this is as the Prime Minister
phrased it a "feeding frenzy" by the press...
HUMPHRYS: But he was feeding it
himself, that's exactly what he was not doing, saying let's get back to
normal.
LORD MACDONALD: This is a froth of politics, not
the real issues that I think people in the country care about. So we want
to continue governing and worrying about transport. There are others worrying
about health, about education and this is, as I say, a mindless story in
the context of the big issues that affect us.
HUMPHRYS: Well Lord MacDonald,
thank you very much indeed.
LORD MACDONALD: Thank you John.
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