JOHN HUMPHRYS:                         Let's get a political 
view on that. Don Foster, the structure of the railway Christian Wolmar 
says is absolutely crucial, George Muir says no it isn't, it's a dangerous 
distraction.  What do you think?

DON FOSTER:                Well can I begin by first of 
all giving condolences  to those families of the people that were killed 
in this tragic accident, but I think Christian's absolutely right.  The 
fragmentation that we saw following privatisation has led to significant 
difficulties, not least because we frankly don't know who to praise and 
who to blame for each of  the things that are happening on our railways 
and there a number of things that could be done very quickly to resolve 
that particular problem.  We could very easily reduce the number of train 
operating companies, that is by reducing the number of franchises, and 
going a stage further and giving an opportunity for the train operating 
companies who want to, to take over responsibility for the maintenance 
of the track on which their trains run. That doesn't mean wholesale re-nationalisation 
but it is a way of reducing that fragmentation, and fragmentation is also 
reflected even in the safety arrangements that we've got for our railways. 
  We've got a number of different bodies who are involved  and indeed a 
number of different bodies currently involved in the current investigation.

HUMPHRYS                    So you wouldn't go back 
to the old British Rail; system.  You wouldn't go back to having an operator 
of the trains and the operator of the railways, of the track, of the infrastructure 
all one body?

FOSTER:                    In the ideal world I'd 
certainly like to see that, but the reality is achieving that would to 
some extent, as George Muir says would be a distraction, but more importantly, 
would cost  a vast amount of tax-payers' money to buy back all of those 
shares in the train operating companies and the various other bodies and 
that money is urgently needed.

HUMPHRYS                    .....well maybe you simply 
give them Railtrack...maybe you give the train operating company...find 
a way of giving the train operating company Railtrack.  

FOSTER:                     Well, that's a possibility, 
but the linking of the maintenance of  track with the train operators I 
think is the most sensible way of moving forward, but let me give you one 
specific example about where I believe we've got real problems.  Following 
all of those previous accidents, recent accidents, that Christian Wolmar 
 referred to, we've had a number of detailed reports.  Those reports have 
made a number of recommendations about improvements that need to be made 
with very clear timetables associated with them.  But the reality is that 
in each case we have not seen those recommendations implemented to timetable, 
and indeed, in the case of the most recent crash at Hatfield, we haven't 
even had the publication of the final report as to what happened there. 
 So there's real concerns that because of this fragmentation we don't even 
know who to blame for the fact that we're not getting on with the recommended 
improvements to our railway system.

HUMPHRYS                    But isn't that partly 
because some of those recommendations would have been absolutely breathtakingly 
expensive.  If you'd introduced the kind of ATP system right across the 
network the way that was recommended on one occasion it would have cost 
countless billions of pounds and you'd then have to start saying do you 
not:  should we be spending that amount of money to save one life?  Of 
course every life is precious, but you have to put this into context.

FOSTER                    No, John you're right. You 
choose a very good example, Lord Cullen's recommendation of the introduction 
of  Advanced Train Protection Systems to be installed by 2008 and to be 
up and running by 2010 is in my view totally unrealistic, not least because 
the type of system that we really need to see which is the European Level 
Two System to be technical simply isn't operating anywhere in the world 
at the moment, so that's an understandable one where the industry has quite 
rightly said, look, we simply can't do it, it costs too much, and anyway 
it's realistically not possible to do.  I have no objection whatsoever 
to the industry looking at the various recommendations that have been made, 
making clear where they don't think that they can be achieved, or are not 
even sensible to do, and we have a revised timetable for those recommendations 
we're going to go ahead with.  But that has not happened either, the vast 
majority of recommendations that the industry accepts should be done have 
not been done to timetable, and where there's been a disagreement there 
hasn't been a sitting down and a coming forward with a clear new timetable 
so the public knows what's going to happen.

HUMPHRYS                    Is.....

FOSTER:                    If we're going to regain 
confidence we need to know what is going to be done, who it's going to 
be done by, how it's going to be paid for and when it's going to be achieved.

HUMPHRYS:                    But the other way of 
regaining confidence might be some say, to put this whole thing into context 
- it's very difficult to have this discussion at the weekend like this 
when people are grieving for their loved ones and people are in hospital 
terribly injured, but the fact is railways are safer than other forms of 
transport.  We had terrible accidents when British Rail was running things, 
and indeed before British Rail came along.  Have we not to say this was 
a terrible accident, and we'll try and learn the lessons, but let us not 
over react, let's not scare people off the railways.  Some politician have 
done exactly that.

FOSTER;                    To some extent you're right. 
 And I accept entirely that our railways are very much safer than travelling 
on our roads.  Indeed if you look at the figures per passenger mile safety 
on our railways is actually getting better still, but that doesn't alter 
the fact that there's a great deal that needs to be done that could be 
done, and will be done more easily if we had a less fragmented system. 
 I'll give you one other example.

HUMPHRYS                    Make it a brief one.

FOSTER;                    Four and a half years ago 
the government introduced a Secure Railway Station Scheme, to make our 
stations themselves very much safer.  Four and a half years on less than 
ten per cent  of the two-and-a-half thousand stations have achieved accreditation. 
 Nobody's pushing them, nobody's making that happen, and that's just one 
of many examples of things that could be done and have not been done.

HUMPHRYS;                    Don Foster, many thanks.