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Major new report on transport: Labour public transport spending claims called into question TRANSform Scotland are today (Wednesday 30th April) launching a major new report, 'In Reverse', reflecting on Scottish Executive performance on transport over the past four years. The report aims to fill the vacuum of election coverage on transport issues. The report concludes (see also Executive Summary, appended)
that: Colin Howden, TRANSform Scotland Campaign Manager, said: "Given that the M74 has increased in price by up to £250 million since the '70%' figure was first floated in the September 2002 spending review, it is likely that figure is out-of-date and quite misleading. Labour's £1 billion road-building programme has already consumed an unacceptable share of the Executive's budget and is no solution to tackling traffic growth, let alone meeting Labour's key pledges towards public transport." "It is quite probably that the £250 million increase in price for the M74 means that, at a stroke, over 10% of the ExecutiveÕs 10-year spending programme for public transport has been wiped out. Given that the most of the rail projects have yet to be allocated annual funding streams, unlike the projects in the ExecutiveÕs roads programme, there is every likelhood that delivery of public transport projects will be squeezed out when other road projects similarly increase in price." ENDS Notes to Editors: (1) The report, 'In Reverse', is available as PDF (320K) at http://www.transformscotland.org.uk/info/docs/InReverse.pdf (2) 'In Reverse' - Executive Summary ÔIn ReverseÕ sets out how Scottish Executive transport policy failed to deliver during the first term of the Scottish Parliament. The report conducts a detailed critique of Executive policy - and how implementation diverged from this. The report reviews, against delivery, the 1999 pre-election manifesto commitments of the parties that made up the 1999-2003 Scottish Executive and the pledges made in the Partnership Agreement that immediately followed the election. The report also sets out an account of the new road-building programme, included because of its prominence in the ExecutiveÕs expenditure programme. The final part of the report (Section 5) sets out the challenges the incoming Scottish Executive must tackle if it wants the Scottish transport sector to contribute towards a more sustainable, and equitable, Scotland. Key findings In our analysis of the commitments made by Labour and the Liberal Democrats in 1999, it becomes clear that, once in office, the Scottish Executive did deliver on a number of these pledges, including enabling powers for road user charging (Section 2). Around a third of the manifesto commitments were delivered in full, and another third to some degree of success. There was also a significant additional commitment to stabilise road traffic levels in Scotland. What is of more concern however is that Labour and the Liberal Democrats also appear poised to deliver the 1999 Tory manifesto programme of more road-building and cheaper car use. Section 3 sets out the road-building programme that the Scottish Executive has put in place since 1999: this is in essence an expanded version of the roads programme inherited from the Tory Scottish Office in 1997. Labour and the Liberal Democrats would, of course, protest that they have increased levels of funding for public transport - and in this they would be being truthful. It would indeed have been difficult to invest less than their Tory predecessors in the Scottish Office had done. Yet it was understood that the defining characteristic of Labour and Lib Dem policies after 1999 would be that they would prioritise sustainable transport investment over the failed Tory prescription of Òpredict and provideÓ road-building. This has however not been the case; instead, we have a policy of Òmore of everythingÓ: certainly, there has been more funding for public transport yet traffic-generating and environmentally-destructive road-building still dominates. There now appears to be no chance of the transport sector contributing to, rather than undermining, the ExecutiveÕs climate change commitments. Study constraints The principal difficulty in producing this report has been the lack of transparency in presentation of Scottish Executive statistical materials. As such, the report is an attempt to set out our knowledge of what has gone on Ð against what has often been very confusing presentation of source materials. (3) The M74 Northern Extension (4) TRANSform Scotland is a supporting organisation of the 'everyone' campaign - an initiative from Scottish Environment LINK. Some 26 organisations with nearly half a million supporters are combining forces to push the environment up the political agenda in the run up to the Scottish Parliamentary elections on May 1st. For further information and background briefings go to http://www.everyonecan.org END OF NEWS RELEASE |