4th December 2024: In the first of five articles leading up to the 6 month anniversary on 4th January of the new Labour government in power, Anthony Rae – author of the ‘Will Labour fail its transport decarbonisation test?’ report (May 2024) – assesses the significance of the ‘integrated transport strategy’ launched by Secretary of State Louise Haigh on 28th November, the day before her unexpected resignation.
The August update of my report – prepared for the northern Environmental Transport Organisations (ETOs) grouping – commented on two statements made in July by newly appointed Transport Secretary Louise Haigh, MP for Sheffield Heeley.
‘The first stated that ‘the critical thread weaving through every priority should be greening our transport networks’: a principle which would be powerful if it was then extended down through the policy hierarchy’. Yet when on 30th July Haigh came to announce her intention to ‘develop a new long-term strategy for transport, [for] a modern and integrated network with people at its heart’, two words were yet again excluded: ‘… with people and decarbonisation at its heart’. In practice carbon reduction will have to be the dominant determinant of any ‘new long-term strategy for transport.’
And then, silence from the DfT on anything about that proposed strategy – something which seemed to be part of a pattern across government of rigid suppression of communication about policy issues – until 24th November when the Sunday Times, in a planted (and I think online-only) article, announced that ‘On Thursday, Louise Haigh, the transport secretary, will unveil an Integrated National Transport Strategy in Leeds, which with a population of 822,000 is the largest city in Europe without a rapid transport system.’
This Transport North article will assess the proposed new strategy from three perspectives: taking it at face value, as a significant reaffirmation of the ‘integration’ component within transport policy and operations, particularly between public/active transport services; then alternatively whether instead the strategy amounts to yet another DfT ‘distraction trick’, diverting attention away from the critical policy frameworks that most urgently require revision: roads, aviation and decarbonisation; and finally, what will be its fate in the hands of brand-new Secretary of State Heidi Alexander?
FACE VALUE: The strongest part of Louise Haigh’s speech lay in locating the foundations for her proposed strategy in 1968’s Transport Act:
‘It’s been over 50 years since …Barbara Castle, set out her vision for integrated transport in the 1968 Transport Act. At its core was … a vision of a coherent transport network that gave people real choice. A system in local hands, run by local leaders, and which met the needs of local people. [A] system that …was integral to all other planning – economy, housing, environment – … transport enabled it.’
The 1968 Act brought about the creation of passenger transport executives of which the current crop of regional mayors are now in charge, and in parallel are being devolved new powers and (some) additional resources. The mayors ‘will be given a statutory role in governing, the managing, the planning and developing of Great British Railways network’, and September’s Bus Bill does the same for bus networks. Technologies not even dreamt of in 1968 will then assist the integration of ticketing and how services are experienced: ‘This could mean buying one ticket, at the best price, across a range of options. Local transport looking and feeling like one brand, with timetables that are aligned – so your bus doesn’t leave 5 minutes before your train pulls in.’
This restatement of the key importance of transport integration is obviously a very significant and entirely necessary shift in the DfT policy framework, but now let’s look at some of the weak spots in Haigh’s announcement. The new strategy is described as ‘national’ but in fact only applies to England. It exists at the moment just as a 2,000 word speech and, after 4 months preparation time, wasn’t even accompanied by the slimmest of documents setting out the scope, core principles and objectives, and issues that the strategy would have to engage with; just a flimsy questionnaire to prompt participation by organisations and individuals in the promised consultation next year. And this DfT tweet.
Then the speech is mostly about the design of integration, with the implication that technology will somehow miraculously overcome existing operational and structural deficiencies; this is the criticism that has been levelled at the authors of the Transport for Humans book which she cites. But the design of integration is a very long way indeed from its delivery.
And 2024 is not the same as 1968 because, in between, there have been four decades of deregulation and disintegration. Over that same period – and as I experienced in months of interrailing across Europe this year and last – countries in all parts of the continent have been systematically investing and piecing together genuinely integrated public/active transport networks. Returning to the UK inevitably prompts the comparison that, in terms of integration, public transport in this country is by far the worst in relation to european counterparts.
How exactly do you reintegrate back from that?! A ‘strategy’ on its own will not be able to overcome: the absence of infrastructure and depleted bus/rail networks and services; or of the physical colocation between rail and bus stations and interchange; or embedded structures of governance endowed with revenue and local taxation resources. A question raised by my colleague Anne Robinson is ‘how will the English subnational transport bodies (STBs), with boundaries much wider than the city regions whose role do feature prominently in the speech, be accommodated in the strategy’s mechanisms?
Whilst the Sunday Times article said that ‘Leeds is likely to be the first city to get a new tram network’, there is no reference to it in Haigh’s speech and another article noted that she made no commitments as to funding it either. Instead ‘She told reporters that land value capture – where local government can use the increase in land value that comes from development to pay for vital projects – could leverage money in from the private sector’, and ‘ruled out new tax-raising powers being handed to leaders at local level’.
This contradicted the over-promise in her speech that ‘this government will remove every obstacle in your [regional mayors] way’. Similarly her rhetorical gesture – ‘I want people’s needs to be at the heart of how we plan, build and operate transport. That must begin with the outcomes we want: People living and working where they want, Travelling in the way they want … ‘ emphasis added – risks inviting the response that most people travel by car and maybe will prefer to continue to do so.
As a precondition for the possible success of her proposed strategy, the Transport Secretary failed to convince her colleague the Chancellor before the 30th October Budget that it shouldn’t send precisely the wrong policy signals: bus fares up with that reduced subsidy likely to be targeted more narrowly in the future, and motoring costs down (because of the continuing fuel duty freeze) despite the fact that petrol/diesel prices are at a two-year low (see the chart here). The inconsistency has been described as ‘ludicrous’ by the IFS’s Paul Johnson. Louise Haigh was asked about this (by LibDem Olly Glover, MP for Didcot & Wantage) at her appearance before Transport Committee on 13th November but failed – just as the Chancellor did – to explain why the ‘cost of living pressures on motorists’ justification for the fuel duty decision didn’t apply even more so to public transport users! Transport economist David Leeder also found this ‘very strange’ (and see his interesting assessment of the financial challenges and choices Labour faces in improving transport here).
In terms of the strategy’s future process there were no suggested metrics for how an area or service could measure the extent of its existing disintegration and possible future reintegration, or a proposed toolkit that would establish a ‘best case’ sequence of interventions and milestones, such as the introduction of one ticket for a single journey regardless of mode used. Such assessments and delivery options will have to recognise that the extent or not of integration will in each case everywhere always be unique. Undoubtedly the ‘call for evidence’ will result in an outpouring of observations of existing non-integration, each sui generis, but then what? With the work of the DfT’s capital infrastructure portfolio review likely to be now extended until July 2025, who knows how it will be able to resolve the ferocious competition for funding between road versus rail proposed schemes – that must be causing policy turmoil within the DfT – in a way which would then allow both revenue and capital expenditure, but presumably also in reduced amounts, to support reintegration?
Most of the interpretations and responses to the proposed strategy from transport organisations and campaigns have been typically ‘welcoming’. Those which set objectives which the strategy would need to work towards include IPPR and Transport Action Network
With all these limitations, what are the chances that Louise Haigh’s initiative can make a significant change to the quality, quantity and integration of public/active transport services by 2030(such that they can contribute to that year’s critical decarbonisation target)? And then more specifically how likely is that northern regional mayors (and others around England) are going to be capable of actually delivering that change against the present backdrop of faltering bus and rail services (with even London bus patronage in decline)? Without rushing to judgement, surely the odds can’t be favour of that outcome. What this tells us is that a transport strategy that limits its scope just to reintegration cannot be successful; it’s necessary but not sufficient. Which leads us onto the …
ALTERNATIVE INTERPRETATION: In August, knowing only that the Transport Secretary intended to prepare a quite unspecific ‘new long-term strategy for transport, developing a modern and integrated network with people at its heart’, the Labour transport decarbonisation test report suggested that the strategy ‘must have decarbonisation objectives at its heart; contain policy frameworks for all modes that are demonstrably compatible with NZ; and be built from transparent scenarios and a modelled accelerated emissions trajectory. It should be prepared in conjunction with the Climate Change Committee, and in compliance with its recommendations.’
As we’ve seen, some 4 months later the actual ‘strategy’ that has emerged turns out to be much more limited in scope. Yes, the reintegration of public transport is a prerequisite for better transport outcomes but what about all the other areas of policy about which her speech says nothing at all? In reality, is it just another of the DfT ‘distraction tricks’, the purpose of which is to divert attention away from the reality that, out of public sight, the intention of the now Labour government is that the ‘big three’ policy frameworks inherited from the Conservative government – roads, aviation and decarbonisation itself – are to remain in place, unchanged and utterly failing to tackle the scale of required transport carbon reduction? In later articles in the series I’ll be exploring that interpretation and how it should be responded to.
For the moment just consider this. If it had been the intention of Louise Haigh and her ministerial colleagues to next review all those other massive policy areas, surely she would have prefaced her remarks in Leeds by saying so. But she did not, nor of course have there been any other signals to that effect since 4th July. This is where the absence of openness in policy-making comes back to bite governments who engage in that type of manipulation. And if a government hasn’t indicated in its first 6 months that such policy reviews will be a priority how likely is it – as ministers then find themselves down in the implementation trenches – they will subsequently be added back in, almost as an afterthought? Which brings us finally to what will be the attitude of the incoming …
TRANSPORT SECRETARY HEIDI ALEXANDER … to having this brand-new but also limited strategy redefinition apparently pushed centre stage in the foyer of Great Minster House just 24 hours before she walked in through the front door? So far she has confined herself to this tweet: ‘I will do all I can to ensure we have a transport system that drives economic growth, connects our communities and protects the environment. A mammoth task ahead.’
Her combination of previous transport track record (as London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s Transport Commissioner) and acknowledged delivery expertise are good signs, and whilst I can’t find online references to that talisman issue – her position on airport (and specifically Heathrow) expansion – the current views of her former boss Khan might be taken as a glimmer of hope (but no more): ‘Aviation is a major polluter, and all decisions about expansion must be taken with the climate emergency in mind. As other sectors de-carbonise, aviation will constitute an ever-larger share of total UK emissions, even without expansion.’ Precisely, as the second and third articles in this series will demonstrate.
CONCLUSION: Out of the blue, the former Transport Secretary was apparently proposing that the reintegration of public and active transport services should be the central concern of national transport strategy in the second half of the 2020s. Her speech however is significant principally because of all the big issues it left out. Nor had cross government policy support, particularly from the Prime Minister and Chancellor, been secured for its ‘direction of travel’. Keir Starmer in his perfunctory two sentence reply to her resignation letter, praised her for ‘lowering costs for motorists’ as if he thought that was a good or necessary thing to do; he probably does.
So if ‘integration’ is the theme, what is first required is the reintegration of transport policy-making within the DfT (and across to the Treasury, Net Zero & Energy Security department, and Cabinet Office) – rather than beyond its walls. That would then allow ‘integration’ to find its proper place within a geometry of other strongly shaping objectives and themes, and it’s those which will be examined in this series of articles. Heidi Alexander will no doubt proceed with the new strategy in some form but, as argued here, in isolation its actual impacts are likely to be limited.
Comments/questions about this article to info@transportnorth.org.uk
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The subsequent four articles in this series will be: ‘Transport eats the UK carbon budget’, published on 11th December; ‘CCC needs to revise the aviation emissions pathway downwards’ – 18th December; ‘Legal showdown: the DfT versus the Climate Change Act’ – 28th December; and ‘Six months in: the answer to our question is …??’, returning to the ‘test’ established by the title of our original report – 4th January 2025.