FTA: Turner tells MPs - honesty required for transport investment
March 16, 2004

Freight Transport Association Chief Executive Richard Turner has told a committee of MPs that honesty is essential in improving the UK’s ailing roads infrastructure. Political honesty in recognising the absolute need to support the world’s fourth largest economy with a roads network up to the job of delivering it, and financial honesty in making sufficient investment available to realise that vision.

Mr Turner was speaking at the House of Commons all Party TENS (Trans European Networks) Group on Tuesday (16 March).

Mr Turner said that roads congestion is the curse of modern logistics. It evades efficiency, saps the morale of staff, annoys customers and confounds planners. It has to be beaten if the UK is to benefit from and develop its real economic opportunities.

The government has to face up to the realities of providing a roads network fit for the purpose. Any progress achieved or likely to come from the current Ten Year Transport Plan is simply not good enough. The truth is that despite the novelty of aligning the Comprehensive Spending Review with the Ten Year Plan, the political expectations of what the plan would deliver have not been matched by sufficient funding to deliver them.

Turner said, ‘Tom Winsor the Rail Regulator made this point last month. The levels of service and reliability the government has implicitly promised the railway customer are simply unachievable with present funding. In deciding the level of future funding of the railways the Regulator has simply costed the promises and commitments made by government and its agent, the SRA, to create a fair market for those in the private sector expected to deliver the outcomes. If the government decides it can’t afford it, then it must modify its expectations of the railway system, and those of its customers.

‘I am pleased to say that Alistair Darling has accepted these commitments and said the government would provide the necessary guarantees. It thus seems that Tom Winsor has encouraged some political honesty about the future of rail, ‘if this is what you want, this is what it will cost’.

‘What we need is similar honesty on the roads programme. The FTA is not prepared to contemplate a cutback in the objectives of the Ten Year Plan, or to stand by while its promises and targets are scaled back to equate them, honestly, with the amount of the money that is currently available. The Ten Year Plan outcomes and promises represent the bare minimum that must be achieved. The costs and consequences of a gridlocked road and rail network simply cannot be contemplated.

‘Investment is required to bring our road network up to the standards needed to support the fourth largest economy in the world and one that relies on competitiveness and trade for its success.’

Last updated: Wed Jul 21 14:20:04 2004