BBC On The Record - Broadcast: 28.01.01

Interview: LORD MACDONALD, Transport Minister.

Has the Government abdoned its plans to get people out of their cars and on to public transport.



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.
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.