The ConservativeHome Future of Transport Conference – featuring the Transport Secretary, government ministers, local and national politicians, and industry leaders – will discuss the future of transport, from sustainability to space; the role for transport in levelling up; and the work the government is doing to invest in transport and keep Britain moving.
We are delighted to be joined by Mark Harper MP, Secretary of State for Transport who will deliver the keynote speech.
Uh good afternoon uh ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the conservative home future of Transport conference my name is Angus parad chief executive of conservative home and it’s my great pleasure to welcome you all here today for those of you in person and hello to those of you joining us on
The live stream as well um transport can unite communities uh Drive economic growth and enable equable Equitable development across the UK it’s essential for connecting Britain and driving forward the leveling up agenda um today we’re not just looking at domestic transport but also the impact of transport and the role of Transport uh
In international trade defense navigation space exploration and much more in an era where technology and environmental Consciousness are undergoing profound transformation it’s essential that we equip ourselves with the insight and foresight to navigate these challenges and hopefully we’ll do some of that today but we’ve only got
Three hours we’ll see what we can fit in uh we’re privileged to be joined today by a distinguished array of speakers including the Secretary of State for transport Mark Harper and his ministerial team of Hugh marman guy opman Anthony Brown unfortunately Lord Davies is unable to join us State due to
Votes over in the house um they are joined by councelor Abby Brown Matt Finch Joe field and Daisy pal Chandler who will introduce you to you as the afternoon goes on uh each of our speakers will be bringing their unique perspectives uh to our conversations on the current challenges in transport and
Opport unities for the future I’d also like to express our thanks to transport and environment for their support in sponsoring one of our panels today thank you very much um and before we begin just a few housekeeping points uh there are no planned fire alarms this
Afternoon so if the fire alarm does go off please leave via your nearest exit uh cabin crew moment upcoming they are there and there um to minimize disruption during the conference please take a moment now to check that your mile phones are switched to silent or off um and there will be opportunities
To ask questions during each of our three sessions we do encourage people to participate to ask those questions um but please make sure you keep your questions concise first and foremost so simple question not a kind of long statement or an explanation about your story of how you came to understand how
Trains operate and etc etc um keep them concise and please obviously keep them respectful as well our speakers will given up their time freely to be here with us today so please be respectful of that um it’s my pleasure to introduce our keyate speaker for this afternoon uh
Mark har was first elected as a member of parliament in 2005 uh and served in various Shadow ministerial roles uh in opposition um since 2010 Mark has served a number of government posts as well including as Minister for immigration and chief whip so should all be on our
Best behavior um Mark stood for the leadership of the conservative party in 2019 and went on to chair The covid Recovery Group uh before being appointed transport secretary in October 2022 as transport secretary uh Mark is responsible for planes Trains and Automobiles that’s uh but also boats buses ports airports roads yes including
Potholes uh fuels ticketing Freight Security and much much more it’s a very very busy brief so we’re honored to be joined by him today and thank you again Mark for giving up your time in your pack schedule to be here following the Secretary of State’s speech he’ll be
Interviewed by Paul Goodman the editor of conservative home and then there’ll be an opportunity for you to put your questions to Mark so please do get your thinking caps on uh thank you once again for joining us and without further please welcome the SE state for transport Mark [Applause]
Harper Angus thank you and uh thank you for your uh cabin crew moment I feel I feel like I’m qualified to assess that that seemed to be quite remarkably good so there’s a job for youever a conservative home doesn’t uh work out so um ladies and gentlemen a pleasure to
Speak to you today at the conservative home uh transport conference since its foundation uh conservative home has been a compelling voice for our party um particularly in helping Westminster understand the views of members and activists across the country and it continues to do so so I’m honored
To come and talk to you today I’m going to talk for about 15 minutes uh but what I really want to do once uh Paul has finished grilling me as he did at the Party Conference uh is listen to you and to try and answer some of your questions
Now when the Prime Minister appointed me to this role um pretty much every colleague I bumped into afterward in Parliament said two things the first thing they said was congratulations on your new job and then there was a small pause and they said now about my road scheme rail scheme
Potholes uh whatever the transports thing was in their particular area which rather illustrates the point that Angus made in his introduction that there are few other jobs in government where you touch as directly the lives of people across the country planes to shrip trip ships to trains to cars to buses walking
And cycling all of us rely on some form of Transport every single day of the week it’s a a key issue and it’ll be a key issue I suspect uh listening to the question there about or your comment about potholes uh during the uh election campaign and during this election year
So I want to talk about a bit about what we’ve achieved already under the prime minister’s leadership and to highlight at this year’s election why we’ve got to make the case in trans for sticking with our plan the conservative plan rather than going back to square one with K
Starma now there’s no better example of this than the prime minister’s decision to cancel the second phase of hs2 conservative home made the case for scrapping hs2 a decade ago I think uh as did various members of parliament Daily Telegraph the Ia and many other people was originally planned to cost 38
Billion pounds and this labor in project grew and grew and grew into successive governments of all colors until it was consuming a third of all of the money the government spends on transport in the UK on a single train line and for many governments the project was too big
To fail the easy option was to Kick the Can down the road and there was really been a better example I think of the sunk cost fallacy that’s I’m afraid my inner accountant an economist coming out there uh but instead of doing the easy thing the Prime Minister I think did the
Wrong right thing and he cancelled the remaining stages of hs2 so that’s the second phase hs2 East and just as conservative home call for all of the money saved that would have been spent in the north of England is going to be spent in the north of England all of the
Money that would have been spent on hs2 East in the Midlands is going to be spent in the Midlands and the rest of the country will benefit from the savings made from delivering Houston in the new way we’re going to do by making it a much more developed velopment Le
Project uh developing much more development and using the private sector much more so instead of one new train line we’re going to have many transport projects across the whole country the savings for example will allow us to pay for over 5,000 miles of roads to be resurfaced over the next 10 years
Instead of a project that benefited a few cities we’re now able to allocate the savings into projects that benefit more people in more places more quickly than the full hs2 project would have done now it wasn’t an easy choice and you’ll see from the reaction Afters not
Everyone has agreed with it but I think it was the right choice it was the right conservative choice and what’s the labor party done in response various figures in the labor party have taken different and conflicting positions just this year on the 6th of January labor sources told
The guardian that labor could revive the scheme because land was unlikely to be sold before the election just 5 days later on January 11th the shadow transport secretary tweeted that she was going to commission an expert review on transport infrastructure must have been a very quick review because just the next day
Kier starmer apparently agreed with the prime minister went to Manchester and ruled out extending hs2 apparently on the basis that despite what labor had said the week before the land may or may not be sold they’re in complete disarray they can’t even keep the same story on
Hs2 from one week to the next here’s sters hoping to point in as many directions as he can before the election as on many issues it’s what happens when you don’t have a plan and it’s not just on hs2 where you can see the difference between a conservative plan and Labor’s
Lack of one on our Railways and you’ll be hearing more about that later from our fantastic rail Minister Hugh merman we do have a detailed plan to reset the public private partnership harnessing the minimum necessary oversight that the state needs to do with the dynamism M Innovation and efficiency of the private
Sector which I believe is the only realistic route to a better Railway at an acceptable cost to the taxpayer and you only have to be responsible for detailed operational rail decisions as a politician to be absolutely certain if you weren’t beforehand that the government is not the right body to be
Making detailed decisions about running railways should be done by companies that have to think first and foremost about their customers both passenger customers and Freight customers that is how you get a good Railway at an acceptable cost to the taxpayer by contrast labor talk about nationalization they’ll clearly let your
Rail Union pay masters be in charge like aslef it’s the only Union where we still have a dispute where the general secretary sits on Labor’s national executive is an in charge of uh trade unions who can campaign for the labor party he refuses to even give his
Members a say on the pay offer that is on the table that would give the average train driver a salary of 65,000 a year now you could argue about whether that’s the right amount of money but I don’t think it’s an unfair pay rise taking the salary from 60 to 65,000
At the very least it would seem to me Railway drivers ought to be given the chance to make a decision themselves on whether they accept it uh and they’re being blocked from that by their Union leadership so the choice is clear you can have modern Railways that pay their
Way or Labor’s vision of an unaffordable state bureaucracy Run for the benefit of unions not passengers on buses which is worth reminding people support twice as many public transport Journeys as Mainline trains we’ve helped people with the cost of living with our two pound Fair cap labor would push up council tax
By imposing Council run bus services across the country without the money to pay for them turning to Aviation I was proud to fly to New York in November on the first transatlantic flight with 100% sustainable aviation fuel it’s a Virgin Atlantic Flight a UK carrier using jet engines produced by the UK’s Rolls-Royce
Demonstrating our leading role in Innovation and Excellence uh in aviation but flying is not just important for travel it directly or indirectly employs over a million people in the United Kingdom whether in manufacturing whether in Airlines or in the wider international travel sector and this job’s given me the chance to meet lots
Of them from eager apprentices to Cutting Edge Engineers pilots and many others and I’m absolutely clear I want to see British Aviation continue to prosper into the future to be affordable for everyone and to keep providing great jobs into the future so I back UK Aviation to decarbonize to develop fuel
Sources which will see more and more of our aviation fuel made in the UK that’s why I took the decision that I wasn’t going to support direct demand management that’s a terrible double speak for ensuring only rich people can fly when they want to normal people cannot and that Sparks some legal
Challenge but I firmly believe it to be the right approach decarbonizing Aviation so people can continue to have the essential Mobility to grow the economy and to be able to take the journeys that they want and again labor won’t tell us what they think do they back UK Aviation UK jobs
And rule out demand Management in aviation and rule out tax hikes to stop people from flying we’ve set out a clear plan to do all of those things again labor don’t have one but it’s with a car where you can see the difference between the parties most clearly most Journeys
In the country around 60% are made by car and incidentally 30% of other Journeys are on foot which many people don’t realize actually almost everything we need or use comes in a van or a lorry Motor Vehicles are vital for our economy and our way of life that’s why I
Published our plan for drivers last October setting out a package of measures to make life easier and cheaper for motorists from stopping unfair enforcement to clamping down on blanket 20 m our zones to using AI to speed up traffic lights the RAC welcomed my colleague CLA cino’s announcement of the
Pump watch scheme to expose ripoff fuel prices it’s worth remembering on taxes every year since 2011 this conservative government has frozen fuel Duty whereas the last Labor government put fuel Duty up by over 55% that’s why the Prime Minister delayed the phase out of petrol and
Diesel cars by five years to ensure time for other Technologies to be affordable for ordinary motorists it’s why we’ve committed 8.3 billion pounds from the savings from hs2 to improve the condition of Roads across the country that’s the biggest ever uplifting funding for local Road improvements and
It’ll directly address as you heard from Angus one of the most frequent concerns of MPS counselors and the public which is the quality of local RADS doesn’t just benefit drivers it benefits bikers bus passengers cyclists and pedestrians but it’s only possible thanks to the decision we took to reallocate that
Funding to spend it elsewhere and labor don’t only have no plan for motorist if you look at their record in the parts of the UK where they’re in government today you can see that they have a contemp for car drivers in Wales the country where K starma used
To say that you could see the blueprint for a labor government you just like being reminded of that now they’ve led a series of attacks on all REM motorists they’ve effectively banned all road building including even safety schemes so even Road improvements to deliver increase safety they’ve banned those two
They’ve gone further imposing a blanket 20 mph policy across the entire country instead of 30 with only limited exceptions their own impact assessment said that would cost the Welsh economy 4 and a half billion pounds but they’ve gone ahead and done it anyway causing confusion and anger across the country
It also undermines the protective benefits of 20 mph zones in the places they are appropriate outside schools uh in high-risk areas where they add real value but it’s in London where sadik Khan shows what labor will really do to drive us his ulz expansions a 200 million pound tax on the poorest London
Motorists he says it’s about air pollution but his own impact assessment says it will have a negligible or minor effect so Revenue raising tax dressed up with a Shabby green disguise which also damages actually the record of sensible Environmental Policy measures taken by this conservative government have actually seen air pollution in the
Country fall to its lowest level in reported history without penal levels of Taxation what’s he doing with the money he’s raised he’s found 30 million pound to pay off the rmt and freeze fairs in an election year but instead of distancing themselves labors transport Shadows said last week London was a
Shining example of Labor’s vision for transport speaking days after a survey revealed that London is the slowest city in the world to get about in labor won’t say what their plan is but we can see for ourselves mandatory 20 mph zones where they make no sense taxing the
Poorest drivers off the road government cash to fill the cof off of trade unions and government interference to stop you using any form of Transport that they don’t control that’s not me asserting that that’s not speculation that is the actual record of labor labor uh elected politicians in Britain today higher
Taxes less Choice trade unions in charge with private Enterprise and private citizens paying the price friends the conservatives have a plan we stand for the freedom to travel how you want when you want keeping tax down making the right long-term decisions for everyone’s future labor have shown they’ll put
Their interests before the interests of the country that’s why this year is important it’s vital we make the case for conservative transport policies with a conservative government led by Rishi sunak thank you very much [Applause] indeed should be enough there question topics absolutely um and I’m Paul Goodman editor of conservative home and
Just let me say something about the amount of time we have left we’ve probably got about half an hour so I’m going to cut my list of questions quite short um in order to allow more of you to get in so I’ll do about 10 minutes
Okay uh and then everyone else in so Mark right at the start um both you and Angus talked in terms of Transport coming everything thing from walking to space um of course one of the things you cover is shipping and at the moment ships are Under Fire in the Gulf of the
Red Sea and tell us about the degree to which your department is involved if at all and what you’re doing so yeah so for those that that haven’t seen I supect everyone seen the news today but may not have seen the Prime Minister statement so um the UK and US undertook uh a
Second round of air strikes uh on on houthi Rebel positions in Yemen it’s worth just reminding people that the houthis are Rebels the government of Yemen actually was um supportive of what we did um we carefully aimed at uh military targets the assessment from the ones we undertook last week uh was that
They were successful and have degraded houthi capability uh and the justification is very clear it’s using self-defense it’s about the threat to seaf farers uh in the Red Sea and the freedom of navigation which is an incredibly important principle not just in the Red Sea but globally and it’s
Worth also saying that there was a un Security Council resolution last week not a chapter 71 authorizing the action but a more General one which reminded everybody that freedom of navigation is incredibly important and states have the right to defend themselves uh if their ships and sea farers come under threat
And that resol ution was carried by the security Council and interestingly not vetoed by either Russia or China uh and although the US and us were the only ones that did the action we had Operational Support from another four countries uh and much wider support uh
From many others and Al final point on operation Prosperity Guardian it’s a much broader Coalition of um countries bringing Naval assets into the Red Sea to defend the freedom of navigation so my department is very heavily engaged in this we conduct all of the engagement with the shipping industry uh at various
Levels of of information sharing uh I met a lot of senior Executives last week they support the action we’ve taken um they recognize things may get more tricky before they get better but it’s very important that we degrade both the H’s intent to attack shipping and their
Capability uh to do so and the Prime Minister made it clear today we reserve the right to take action again um it’s also worth saying that uh this is part of a wider diplomatic picture uh in the region uh and the foreign secretary will be in the region
Again this week um working with our partners um to reduce tensions to send clear messages to Iran to uh not support the huther any further but also to play our full part in supporting uh the resolution of all of the issues in the region do you have any sense even if
It’s rough a rough sense of What proportion of the ships passing through are linked to the UK in summer so that information obviously has changed because we’ve already seen a very significant number of ships both container and those uh shipping oil and gas have now decided not to Transit the
Red Sea more of the container ones have changed their decisions uh but some oil and gas companies have as well but most UK products uh imports and exports um arrive in the UK by C so for us particularly Maritime trade is incredibly important uh and if we
Weren’t to take action to ensure freedom of navigation continue there would be an impact in the UK both on the prices of goods uh and the availability of goods and it’s very important for us particularly um that we take the action to to uh keep freedom of navigation
Going okay let’s now turn away from the Red Sea and just try and think about transport more broadly very difficult to do given the sheer range of issues involved but let me just start in this way by picking you up uh about what you said about London uh as you know you
Made your point about Sadi khong and you made your point about how slow it is to get through London but some of the transport experts they point to London as the Exemplar of everything that works well uh you’ve got your rail you have your buses you have a tube Network which
You don’t have in some cities you’ve got the oyster past you’ve got contact lists you’ve now got the Elizabeth line they argue l a sort of great example of joined up transport that actually one should be trying to reproduce in a different way what happens in London in
The rest of the country well i’ say a couple of things first of all it’s worth just reminding ourselves given that you mentioned um crossrail the Elizabeth line as it’s now called that was of course a largely conservative project um which George Osman continued uh at the beginning of the coalition government uh
Which we uh made sure we delivered so it’s worth just giving ourselves a little bit of credit as conservatives for delivering that um but it’s also worth reminding ourselves that you can’t deliver uh or exactly replicate what you have in London in every part of the country the population densities are
Simply not there uh I say two things first of all we are of course part of the decision on hs2 was to invest in better transport across the whole country to make sure actually that we’re investing significant amounts of money in rail in buses in roads everywhere in
The country so significant amounts of money in the north the Midlands and the rest of the country but it’s also worth saying uh looking at how people get about in the rest of the country London is the only region where most people get to work on public transport in every
Region of the country most people get about by car uh and we should be trying to facilitate people doing that rather than trying to drive them away from using cars and in London again I think you should be trying to deliver people choices so it’s perfectly reasonable to
Give people better choices and I’m a great supporter of encouraging people to walk and cycle but it shouldn’t be by forcing them out of cars or pricing them out of cars so only richer people can drive it should be about giving people better choices um and Sadi Khan’s doing
The let’s try and force people out of car’s approach that isn’t the conservative way it’s to give people a range of choices so they can make the decisions about how they travel to suit themselves not to suit the mayor which is why I am strongly backing Susan Hall
In the election this year I think she’d be a fantastic mayor and I think she’d reverse some of these anti- motorist policies and I think she’d help get London moving and again some of these transport experts say just one should be able to take out from the example of
London having some sort of Home National transport strategy for for England I think SC Scot’s got one I think Wales has one I don’t think we formally have one in England whereas other people say no that’s all rather High flute in theorizing we just need to get the you
Know diggers in the ground and get a move on with doing stuff what’s your your view two two things first of all if Wales does have a comprehensive overall transport policy it appears to be to stop people moving and not build any roads uh make the cars that are on the
Roads go extremely slowly um which isn’t actually a conservative vision for transport of s no I think what we’re doing is actually to uh ensure the given the size of of England relative to Scotland and Wales I think we’re trying to make sure that you can have sensible
Decisions so one of the big things we’re doing is uh empowering uh Regional Mayors so one of the things that comes out of the hs2 savings is very significant amounts of extra money to Regional Mayors so fantastic Mayors like Ben hin you may have seen he got an
Extra billion pounds almost 97 million p as a result of the decisions we took on hs2 and you’ll seen he set out how that money is being spent across his region to benefit the people he represents Andy Street uh is setting out a clear plan on improving rail um bus Light Rail and
Tram Connections in the West Midland so actually I think what we’re doing is empowering local leaders who know their regions best to deliver that infrastructure and I think as a conservative I would suggest that that that’s a better way of getting decisions than somebody sitting in whiteall or
Westminster trying to make decisions for the entire country the evidence is that’s not how you get the best decisions and going back to my points about trains I absolutely know that the transport secret or the rail Minister sitting in London trying to plan the entire national rail network is not the
Way you deliver better services for passengers or freight companies quite the opposite are either anti Street or Ben huchen other Mayors by the way asking for more transport Powers my general experience of talking to Andy is he’s always asking for more powers of one kind or another so easy asking you
Freddy and what answer are you giving so I think I think this is a a actually helpful answer for Andy stre every time I meet Andy stre he has a list of things that he would like uh and he he absolutely uh Champions his region extremely effectively um but I think
He’s getting on now as the other Mayes are in delivering what they’ve promised they’ve now got a very significant uplift in the amount of money they got we made some clear commitments uh in our Network North plan for example for the 1.7 billion pounds for the Midlands rail Hub which is going to
Connect um the Midlands to 50 uh destinations in the United Kingdom really improve the connectivity it’s worth just remembering of course that we’re still delivering the first phase of hs2 which is going to connect Houston and Birmingham which is transforming the economy in Birmingham and and is been
Trailblazing that so I think actually he’s focused on delivering for the people of his region and I hope they’ll reelect him when they get the chance in may just quickly on on hs2 there’s a vein of thought that says we started in the wrong place and should have begun by building East West
Rather than north south do you have a view on that well we can have a theoretical debate about look we started where we started I think the important thing is we’ve got to deliver phase one uh a real focus on controlling cost I’ve been very clear with the board of the
Company and the executive chairman who’s running it until we appoint a new chief executive about controlling cost uh and Hugh and I are working very closely with the team there to Bear Down on cost um so I think it’s important we get it done I mean we can have a theoretical
Conversation about whether we should have done it differently but we’re a long way we’re halfway through building phase well we’ve got to get it done for the lowest possible cost get it operational in the 2029 to 2033 window that we promised which will abs Ely on
Track to do get the trains built um and get it operational um and that’s what we’re focused on doing okay I’ll leave it to others I’m going to let some some people in because others we’re just going to run out of time can I ask for names and please questions not
Statements so there’s a guy right at the back with his hand up yes sir you with yeah hello yeah I’m Steve Smith I’m the chair of the ATF operators Association so atfs are in partnership with dbsa for heavy Goods vehicle testing uh so we haven’t had a review since
2010 on our rates of pay and I was just hoping to just have your opinion and maybe gather some support in uh culing a a revieww of our rates of pay because we’re effectively subsidizing the transport uh compliance within our country a lot of The Operators that I represent are
Independent garages uh family-owned companies and it’s been very difficult to run these uh or run these uh run this uh program without an increase in Pay since 2010 thank you okay uh I think on that one the best thing I can say um my special advisor has Jing your name down
I will go away and investigate I’m not going to give you you wouldn’t expect me to give you a uh an immediate answer let me go and do a bit of digging into that and I will commit coming back to you with a specific reply to you uh which
You can then um distribute if if you feel it appropriate to your members okay the lady there yeah thanks for that um Isabelle Grant um today I’ll be a newly elected um fellow of this institution that we’re in today that I got various hats on um Mark uh do you
Have a vision for what I’m going to call high capacity rail or high frequency rail since high speed is obviously not going to happen well a high speed rail is going to happen because we are building a highs speeded line between the future Houston and uh Birmingham and we are still going
To be delivering by the way it’s worth just saying faster connectivity still between London and Manchester just not as fast as it was going to be although and remembering of course they weren’t going to get it till 2041 either um so look we do I mean look the decision we
Took was about a balance post pandemic when we’ve seen a significant change in the use of Railways I mean we’re still seeing passenger volumes overall not on every line but overall still being around 15% lower than pre pandemic rail revenues uh in real terms are around 30%
Lower I mean the rail industry I’ve said this before publicly currently is financially not sustainable it is being significantly subsidized by tax Pairs and I don’t think that is going to last forever given the number of Journeys made by it so it is incredibly important that we drive up the number of people
Using it both passengers and rail Freight uh and part of the reason I set out in my remarks I didn’t do it in detail reason why we are making the changes we are with Great British Railways about bringing together track and train is I think there is a role for
The state in setting the overall regulatory structure for the rail network but you also need to have it working in partnership with the private sector and I think there’s a role for both I think the the rather ridiculous nationalize or prioritize one or the other debate I think is for the past our
Approach I think is the right one is bringing track and train together having Innovative private companies focused on delivering for passengers um and also freight companies for their Freight customers that’s how you’re going to get a long-term sustainable rail industry and in fact I think the last thing you
Want is a politician having a vision for exactly how to map out the detail that should be driven by what customers want rail Lin should be where we think the business is going to be and we should plan Services based on what customers want not what on what I want
It should be on what customers want and what is financially viable that’s how you get a sustainable long-term rail network and I think having setting up gbr and we’re taking through the draft legislation going to be scrutinized by the transport select committee uh shortly uh I think is the right way of
Going about it just a quick supplementary to that given what You’ just said about reform of rail is there more your predecessors could have done during the pandemic to speed the pace of change along when after all the unions were not in a position to go on
Strike well again we we could go back and have a debate about what should have happened but I mean we we are where we are um it’s clearly I think look the positives are that other than azf the other tra unions involved in the rail industry uh have settled the disputes
We’ve had some sensible negotiations they put pay deals to their members so on network Rail and the train operating companies uh the rmt the tssa and unite have all settled they’re having sensible conversations about reform it’s just very disappointing that aslef representing the best paid people
Working in uh on the front line of the rail industry refused to put the deal and keep going on strike and all they’re doing is driving away passengers uh damaging the industry and putting actually at risk their members jobs in the future um I think that um you know
We’ve made our arguments very clear on that we’re not just going to keep throwing taxpayers money at it because it is taxpayers money at the moment and I hope they see sense because they’re not going to have a long-term future if they keep driving passengers way I’m grateful to the other unions who’ve
Actually put the offers to their members and their members overwhelmingly voted to accept the offers on the table they were fair and reasonable pay offers with a sensible amount of Reform to help fund them um and I think that’s the position that we’re we’re taking forward Okay who
Wants to the lady at the front then lots of hands and the lady at the side there yeah hi my name is MIL Milda mon I’m the Innovation director at Railway industry Association I want to ask you an innovation question um what is your vision ision how artificial intelligence
Will affect transport as a whole and Railway specifically so I think one question is we don’t fully know uh but I think we want to use I mean it was interesting when we talked about artificial intelligence uh in the runup to the summit the global Summit the Prime Minister hosted about risks in
This space um I did it in the context of shipping uh as of London international shipping week and interestingly across all of the transport modes all of the sectors are using artificial intelligence uh in designing Transport Systems looking at how they can operate more efficiently so I think there is I
Suspect a very significant opportunity both in how you design Rolling Stock how you operate networks how you make them more responsive to passengers uh one of the things we want to do is move to um a better price ing structure it’s incredibly complicated at the moment um
And I think if you uh changed how you did pricing and we’ve done some we are doing some experiments and tests on lnr at the moment we’ve done single leg pricing we’re looking to do more demand Le pricing I think you could probably um do pricing much more successfully to
Manage demand uh and Supply on train so I think actually there’s a real opportunity in transport to get the system working better using artificial intelligence and i would support companies and we’re doing a lot of work in the department working with businesses but also importantly working with our colleagues across government including
In the National cyber security Center about also making sure that it’s resilient um from threats from both within uh the United Kingdom and from outside as well yeah hi there um Jennifer Scott from Sky News um you said before that you you want to encourage more people back onto
The railways and what most people want to encourage them back are more trains faster trains reliable services and and cheaper tickets but you said with the hs2 funding 8.3 billion of that is going to be spent on roads instead do you not think that money should be spent on
Public transport encouraging more people back onto public transport because you can’t really have one without the funding well I think we’re rebalancing a little uh where we spend the money as I said 60% of Journeys that people make are by car uh 4% of Journeys that are
Made are by bus and 2% of Journeys that are made are by train and so I think what we’ve done so I think spending a third of the Total Transport Budget on one train line was disproportionate so what we’re doing is rebalancing that funding of the 36 billion P we’re
Spending around uh still a significant amount of money of that is being spent on rail infrastructure for example we’re spending 12 billion p on uh Northern Powerhouse rail which we’re committed to between Manchester and Liverpool and I’ve had meetings with the Mayors in that region about that but we’re
Spending a significant amount of it on the form of Transport that most people use every day of the week which is the car we’re improving the road Network which also benefits people that use buses and we’re taking the fund some funding as well which is paying for our
2 pound bus Fair which is a massive cost of living benefit to many people that use buses and twice as many Journeys are done by bus as by train so I think what we’ve done is we’ve rebalanced some of our transport spending to the modes of Transport that people use every day of
The week rather than spending a huge amount of it on a single Railway line and I think that’s the right decision the right conservative decision and I strongly support it I really quick up that sorry it’s very very quick I promise it’s just but that’s the status
Quo at the moment is 60% of people are on the road if you want to encourage more people to public transport you’re not going to do that by putting the funding into the existing how things are you need to spend money on making public transport better do you not think yes
And we are and we’re spending a significant amount of money on improving rail infrastructure across the country I gave an example where we we’re spending 1.7 billion pounds on the Midlands rail hub for example um which is a significant project in the West Midlands which will connect the West Midlands to
50 um areas across the country that will improve the rail network so we’re still spending a significant amount of money on the 36 billion we’ve saved from hs2 on rail but we’re spending some of it on improving our roads uh enabling people to use buses I think that’s the right
Balance on more projects delivering more quickly to more people across the entire country I just think we’ve rebalanced the transport spending in a way that’s better still supporting public transport still encouraging active travel but also recognizing that most people use roads and we should put a significant
Investment into that as well right he’s yep the leg straight ahead of me y hi Claudia TOA from whiton Insight um thank you so much for your speech um would you mind just touching on what your vision and policies will actually be for the next general election when it
Comes to transport I feel as that we’ve covered uh labors confusion but I’d love to hear more about what the conservatives are actually promising what the future of Transport will look like come the election well I I’m clearly not going to write our Manifesto
Set it out today but I think look in the plan that we’ve set out in the network North plan I mean we’ve set out a very clear strategy we’ve taken 36 billion pounds that we were going to spend on hs2 and we’ve set out in quite considerable detail what we’re going to
Spend it on on uh improved rail network uh 8.3 billion pounds on improving the quality of Roads across the country which as I said was the largest singly investment uh in that and it was over a long period I mean it’s worth just saying you know that money 36 billion is
Not probably to the disappointment of many of my colleagues not available in the current year to spend uh but will spread over a considerable period of time so that 8.3 billion is over the next 10 years so clearly those are commitments that we have made and those
Are commitments that um you know were we reelected which I very much hope and expect us to be we will clearly deliver what we say will obviously be set out in the manifesto but the network North plan is a plan over a number of years into
The future which I think gives you a very clear idea of what we are trying to deliver uh under the prime minister’s leadership the lady there near the back yeah uh thank you Sarah Ingam columnist with conservative home um is the popularity of electric vehicles going
Into to reverse and if so is public policy going to reflect the public mood and maybe are we going to defer the 2035 um timetable for or Target for um getting rid of all other vehicles thank you um so the short answer to your
Questions are no no and no um so the the there is no evidence actually that um the popularity of electric vehicles is going into reverse actually we saw more electric vehicles sold last year than the year before um we’ve set up our zero emission vehicle mandate uh and the car
Industry is putting I mean you’ve seen some of the very significant investments from Jaguar Land Rover from Nissan from BMW Mini into their UK manufacturing operations um and that’s also true globally by the way if you talk to Global car manufacturers this is the direction of travel uh into having zero
Emission Vehicles which are by by the way zero carbon emission but also importantly zero um NO2 emissions as well so cleaner air as well as not contributing to climate change uh and I think uh as you see from um the AA the aa’s recent report about um the performance of electric vehicles they’re
Now saying you know the number of people now that have issues with um running out of battery power is about the same as the number of people that managed to run out of petrol um the cars become increasingly reliable and the final p p uh which uh Anthony Brown is working
Very closely on is the rooll out of the charge Point Network we put a lot of effort now in with the industry into getting the barriers out of the way whether they’re planning barriers working with the um distribution companies um to get those out the way we’re having weekly meetings to get
Those barriers out the way and we put a significant amount of public money into helping the two areas of market failure which is on Street charging really important for those people that don’t have street parking uh and also making sure we can get electric charges into Motorway service areas so that gives
People then the confidence to buy electric vehicles knowing that they can charge them and fast charge them um wherever they may be on the rad Network do you have a target for the proportion of car Journeys to be done by electric vehicles not the number of car Journeys
What we’ve set out is the proportion of new vehicles that will be sold um it’s worth saying seen it’s worth saying that of course there’ll still be for a considerable period the existing vehicle stop we’re not taking anyone’s car away from them we’re saying that for new vehicles an increasing proportion have
To be uh zero emission um up to 80% by 2030 and then the full phase out by 2035 and I think that’s a very sensible trajectory and by the way the car industry is very confident that can hit that trajectory without getting fined it thinks that’s a very sensible strategy
And we listened very carefully to the industry as we were setting those targets um so we think that’s a very doable confident there’s enough capacity in the grid to power this massive and in fact one of the benefits of publishing the zero emission vehicle mandate is it doesn’t just help car manufacturers but
It gives a very clear uh road map now to the charge Point industry they’ve got about6 billion pounds worth of private investment Capital now to develop that charge Point infrastructure uh and they are now delivering that at PACE and we saw a 43% increase in the number of
Charges over the last year and I expect that sort of pace to continue over the next few years okay who’s next well need to go to the side that go right at the end there afternoon Paul Clark from Acom I think it’s fair to observe there’s tension between government and its
Delivery bodies for for your transport strategy I just wondering if you could help paint the picture as to how you will enhance those relationships going forward so that we can collectively recognize the productivity gains the outcomes and benefits that these infrastructure projects are designed for so it’s really about your role as
Government in helping to govern and and deliver um the outcomes that we’re expecting um I’m I’m not sure whether you have a specific example I’m not quite sure when you say tension I mean I we have a number for those that don’t know I have a number of arms length
Bodies so um Network rail reports into me that obiously delivers rail infrastructure National highways which delivers the infrastructure for the Strategic Road network uh and hs2 obviously to build and operate uh hs2 so I mean clearly it’s my responsibility to set overall policy and direction for all
Of those arms length bodies uh and I set uh the government collectively sets how much money they have to do those task and of course I hold them to account on behalf of the public for getting stuff delivered for for the money that is available so you’d expect you know them
To always want more money probably and I tell them how much they’re having and I hold them to account on delivering it um I think that approach works very well we’ve got good relationships I think in all of those um operational bodies and both I and my junior ministerial team
Have regular meetings with them I don’t know whether you have a specific point that you were driving at but I think those relationships actually broadly work well okay perhaps around Lessons Learned and how we deliver those lessons that we learn in delivering infrastructure projects in our contemporary era okay
Well I I we’ve set out some of those that I think we’ve learned already and there are bits of government the infrastructure projects Authority uh National Audit office obviously do reports on these things government listens to those and we’ve tried to take account of some of those
Lessons as we work with uh all of those bodies that I’ve just mentioned and particularly the focus on delivering phase one of HS to at the lowest possible cost to get it operational for the Target date that we’ve set and we’re absolutely on track to do that
Sir hello there Tony Scott from um the risk World decision and risk management software company um you mentioned in terms of hs2 the benefit in future and Lessons Learned in terms of more sort of State um private Partnerships and I’m just interested in the story that was
Front page of the Sunday Express about um hs2 back on track only two days ago I thought i’ would wake up on Monday with that being a huge story and didn’t see much on it but um is there Merit perhaps in that story that talks are underway
And either way could there be Merit in such an approach where the the private sector does actually come in and potentially does resurrect that that Northern Lake well look this isn’t really um uh for those that haven’t been following have been following this isn’t really a surprise you you may remember
When the Prime Minister set out um the decision as a I said it wasn’t welcomed by absolutely everybody and one of the things that Andy Street said that he wanted to do uh was work with the private sector on looking at the Birmingham to Manchester piece of of
What would have been phase two of hs2 to see if there was an opportunity for the private sector to deliver it without any cost uh to the taxpayer uh and he secured the prime min’s agreement that we would um listen to what he you know listen seriously to what he had to say
And he and Andy Burnham have commissioned an expert group to look at that that work is underway um I’m um meeting them to hear from them uh how well that work’s got on and we’ll absolutely listen to them I mean having taken the decision we did on the
Challenge of delivering that project at a sensible cost we reached the conclusion it wasn’t possible to do that which is why we took the decision I I I think I’m somewhat skeptical that the private sector could do that without any cost to the taxpayer um but I’m very
Happy you know we gave Andy that commitment I’m very happy to look at the work that he and Andy ber have commissioned and we’ll look at it with an open mind um but but I am somewhat skeptical that that can be done that wasn’t the conclusion that we reached
When we looked at the hsd project uh in detail uh this summer um but we committed that we would look at it with an open mind so I’m going to keep that open mind okay I’m going have to make this to the last one it’ be the lady right at the back
Thank you Minister um I raised this comment with your colleague uh Hugh marman a couple of weeks ago um at a uh select committee meeting and um I said basically as you said right now um You Want To Build The Last Leg well so sorry the remaining leg of hs2 for as little
Money as possible but the recent publication of the procurement bill becoming the procurement act now states that it must be the most advantageous tender not the most economically advantageous tender so will you please ensure that should the conservatives you know remain in power after the general election that there will be an emphasis
On social value built in um and moving away from the most economically you know the raise to the ground in terms of how little we can spend to make the infrastructure viable um well look first of all I I I think it would be difficult
To argue um in terms of how hs2 has been delivered so far there’s been a race to the bottom in terms of how much money we’re spending on it uh and I think in terms of uh and I think the taxpayer would expect us to get good value but I
Think actually if you look at the way hs2 is being delivered in terms of its uh wider impact I I would argue they’ve actually been doing um a very good job actually in some of their wider um social behavior so for example they’re a leader in uh hiring apprentices so I
Think they’ve now they’re going to be hiring 2,000 apprentices and they’re well on track to do that so actually the future of the British construction industry a huge number of people that will be working in that industry for years to come will actually have been trained on delivering hs2 um the work
That they do in communities in Trying to minimize the impact the inevitable impact of delivering a piece of infrastructure I think they’ve worked incredibly hard um to do that and the uh I know not every will agree with this but they’ve worked incredibly hard on minimizing the environmental impact I
Mean inevitably there is an environmental impact on building huge infrastructure projects but they put a huge amount of effort into minimizing that and in fact part of the reason that’s driven up the cost is because actually we put in place a lot of uh measures to minimize the impact on the
Environment a lot of a tunneling for example is about protecting the environment so I would argue actually that rather than than suggesting that we’re driving down the cost um and harming The Wider um social um an economic impact actually quite the reverse but I do think for the taxpayer
We do have to keep a focus on making sure we deliver not just hs2 but wider infrastructure for uh the best possible price but you’re right there are wider factors to take into account and actually I think the way government does procurement does actually take those into account um today and we continue
Doing so mark thank you so first of all apologies to those of you who couldn’t quite get a question in but thank you all uh very much for participating and asking questions rather than making statements which you all did uh and mark thank you for your tour of the course um
That was really um great stuff across a wide uh spectrum of questions although you won’t have been surprised you said at the beginning you covered these massive issues I don’t think you’ll have been surprised to have quite a large proportion of questions but hs2 as ever
But at any rate thank you very much pleasure thank you