Prof. Anable interviewed for BBC Radio 4

Prof. Jillian Anable was interviewed for the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme (2:33:30- 2:42:05) on 21/06/2024 with Mishal Husain and Justin Webb. Prof. Anable's discussion (begins at 2:39:00) with Justin focused on local transport with regards to the upcoming election and what the big parties should do when it comes to transport. Her interview is transcribed below.

Justin Webb: There’s a lot of enthusiasm for public transport isn’t there? A lot of interest for obvious reasons but it’s not talked about by politicians as much as it is talked about by us.

Prof. Anable:  It’s extraordinary, isn’t it? When we think about how at the local level for local elections and even by-elections, transport issues, whether they’re 20mph zones, bus services, clean air zones, ULEZ, road schemes can really dominate... yet as you say it’s absent from the national discussion at the moment.

Justin Webb: Yet the national discussion is important, albeit councils make very important decisions when it comes to all of these things and in a sense the council is the right place to go to vote on them... but [transport issues] do matter nationally too… The national situation sets the tone.

Prof. Anable: It does. What’s actually been happening is the parties have really competed with each other as which one will paint themselves as the most “motorist friendly” with a plan for drivers. A lot of the aspects around larger trunk road system, motoring taxation does get decided at the national level, but, what actually matters to us in terms of creating a sustainable transport system is how we fund and how we give local authorities certainties and longer term settlements for funding at the local level.

Justin Webb: What are the options that you would like the big parties to think about?

Prof. Anable:  Certainly much more discussion about how we’re going to avoid what has plagued our transport system for decades--having local authorities have to compete for fairly random funding pots…. [councils] are not having any certainty, spending an awful lot of money putting in bids without any certainty of getting any money; and then, those things are very piecemeal… sometimes they’re about buses, sometimes they’re about cycling and walking, and nothing gets joined up in the end. What we really need to talk about is the governance, the funding mechanisms, and the ability of local authorities to have more options to raise their own revenue and to do what they feel they need to do at a local level.

Justin Webb: Are the parties just playing it safe, because these things are difficult? They often get into clashes particularly with motorists and rather famously in a byelection that they don’t want to have…

Prof. Anable: They’re playing it safe. There are extraordinarily tricky issues that any government is going to have to face in the next parliament. For instance, we are seeing an annual reduction of about two to three billion into treasury coffers from fuel-tax revenue… This is because as we green the fleet, fewer cars are paying that revenue, the government gets about 25 billion a year from fuel tax and it’s dwindling, it’s disappearing. We have to have a conversation about where that money is going to be made up from... whether it’s motorists or its some other form of taxation where it’s non-motoring… this is one issue, for instance. The other issue is last month the high court ruled that the government’s net zero strategy for its carbon budget delivery plan is unlawful because of the risks attached to the proposed policies in the plan. 70% of the risk in that plan comes from the transport sector because we don’t have enough policies around transport.

Justin Webb: We will have the opportunity to bring some of this up in a few minutes... Thank you.