Spared the worst...
December 1st 2010 Like every other sector of Government spending it was anticipated that the Comprehensive Spending Review axe would fall from a great height on the transport budget. So what happened? Geoff Dossetter reflects
High quality transport links are essential to underpin a successful economy.”Who said that? Well dear reader, since you are interested enough in transport to be reading this magazine and this column, then it could have been you or I. In fact I am personally guilty of repeating this mantra over and over again for many years.
But it wasn’t me. And it wasn’t you. Surprisingly, it is a direct quote from a publication I have been thumbing through with the catchy title HM Treasury Spending Review 2010. This was published on ‘Cuts Day’, 20 October 2010, and told us all our fortune as the Chancellor and the coalition Government seek to reduce the budget deficit over the next four years.
As a transport aficionado of many years standing I watched George Osborne deliver his decisions with considerable trepidation, awaiting what was anticipated to be killer measures designed to cut the throat of the nation’s future transport infrastructure. Only it didn’t come.
Of course transport spending will be reduced. It was described in the Review as “overall resource savings of 21 per cent by 2014- 15 through a rigorous focus on efficiency, cutting waste, stopping lower value spend and improving governance and accountability”. Which all sounds a bit like the economy drive in our house. Other bad news related to reductions in grants to local authorities are likely to impact big time on local transport spending, notably on roads maintenance etc. It looks like this summer’s campaign to fill in the potholes ravaged by last year’s snow and ice cannot be completed.
Bus fares will rise, as will rail fares. And instead of scrapping tolls at the Dartford Crossing the fees will go up in 2011 and again the following year. And the supplementary infrastructure report revealed the cancellation of many schemes which would have been welcomed by local towns and villages as well as the traffic obliged to transit communities where it is not welcome and does not want to be.
But look at the good news.
Over £10 billion will be invested on “new high value road, regional and local transport schemes for maintenance and investment in key road and local transport schemes.” This will include work on the A11, M4/M5 and M1. Outside of roads spending, there is commitment to Crossrail in London, £14 billion for Network Rail, upgrades to the Midland Metro and Tyne & Weir Metro, plans for a new bridge over the Mersey and, long term, the retention of plans for the high speed rail links from London to the North. So, contrary to all expectations, and compared to other areas of big spending like welfare and local government, transport came out better than expected.
How did that happen?
It looks increasingly clear that the Treasury’s loss was the Department for Transport’s gain when the necessary politicking which surrounded the creation of the coalition meant that Philip Hammond became Secretary of State for Transport, rather than Chief Secretary at the Treasury. He has quickly become very well regarded inside transport as well as elsewhere.
Was transport’s favourable treatment a sop to compensate Hammond, who is, handily, the local MP for the headquarters of the Road Haulage Association, for his disappointment in not getting the Treasury job? Almost certainly not, the price was too high.More likely that he was able to argue that efficient and economic transport is vitally important not just for the sake of itself but for the health of every other element of UK industry which it serves. Road congestion is not just a nuisance, it is costly and wasteful to the tune of £23 billion per year. So spending money on measures to clear the bottlenecks is an investment in reducing overall costs for UK plc.
But it is only in the relatively recent past that the ‘f ’ word, freight, has become a bit more respectable. Past lip service to the needs and merits of the transport and logistics sector seem to have, in the last ten years, turned into a much more realistic evaluation and appreciation of the importance of what is carried out. There seems to be a greater understanding of the problems encountered by the industry and the conditions which will enable it to flourish. The new transport minister Mike Penning even has a HGV driving licence, which must be a first, and very welcome too.
Nobody could pretend that life is going to be anything but hard over the next four years as the Government attempts to get the public finances back into shape and the deficit reduced to a more manageable level.Maybe four years is itself an optimistic target. And transport will take part of the pain like everybody else.
But the signs are better than they might have been. Every successful company in the UK has long since known that the efficient and economic delivery of goods is an essential ingredient in any business operation. Nothing has a value until it is delivered to the customer. And almost everything that we use or consume every day of our life is the product of a lorry journey.
Maybe, just maybe, that message has at last sunk in at Westminster. Hammond said that transport remained a ‘priority’ and Shadow Transport Secretary Maria Eagle said that road upgrades were ‘critical’ for supporting industry.
In the meantime let’s read it again - “High quality transport links are essential to underpin a successful economy.”Music to my ears! More articles from Handling & Storage Solutions: | 
