08 April 2005
Transport white papers have become mere political adverts and will contain policies doomed to failure until ministers change their relationship with civil servants over reforms, a regulatory expert has warned.
Francis Terry, chair of the UK regulated industries network, this week accused successive governments of being 'more concerned to make reassuring noises to the electorate… than with identifying and rectifying long-term problems'.
He warned that poor political leadership had resulted in a demoralised transport civil service, which suffered from short-term targets, ill-conceived private partnerships and ministers' use of advisers without transport expertise.
Delivering a speech to the Public Management and Policy Association on April 7, Terry claimed that the value of white papers had reached a new low with The future of transport, published by the Department for Transport last July.
He dismissed the 'self-congratulatory and evasive' document as 'treating transport demands as needs' and failing to recognise that central initiatives must be combined with local co-ordination if national transport networks are to work effectively.
The government's transport reforms have come under fire from political opponents and business leaders in recent weeks. Both accuse ministers of damaging UK productivity and delaying improved conditions for passengers, despite record levels of investment.
Politicians, Terry added, have 'assumed that civil servants are either intrinsically incapable of implementation [of reforms] or liable to be obstructive,' leading to the use of private operators or special advisers.
Such alternatives had their place but the way they had been used had led to confusion of roles and a waste of resources, he argued.
Terry also dismissed targets identified in Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott's infamous Transport Ten-Year Plan 2000 as 'laughable', and asked: 'Who now believes that 25% of new rapid transport lines will criss-cross British cities by 2010?'
Terry called on ministers to restore their trust in civil servants, who must develop wider transport skills, and to decentralise transport functions.
Seminar chair Tony Travers, director of the Greater London Group at the London School of Economics, concurred: 'The government spends extraordinary sums on transport, particularly the railways, but there is little evidence that its approach will improve on the service levels we experienced under British Rail.'
PFapr2005
