Department

Recommendations

Info

“There’s never been a time when transport and infrastructure have been more important to the government’s economic agenda,” he says. “Unless we prepare ourselves for the future and invest for it, we’ll find that we’re totally unprepared when demand arrives and we’re facing huge overcrowding.” High-Speed 2 is a good example of this long-term planning, Rutnam says: the projections show steadily increasing demand for rail travel, “and the best way to provide that capacity is through high-speed rail, not conventional capacity”. HS2 will “stand the country in good stead for decades to come,” he adds. “It’s very much about looking at the strategic needs of the country and referencing those to the demand there’s going to be for travel and transport.” Leadership is about responding to hard times, to challenging circumstances Is it possible to predict demand over that kind of timescale, or to know in advance the economic impacts of such a huge project? Forecasts are always uncertain, he responds – but typically, they err on the conservative side. “The experience in our country is that actually the benefits have tended to be understated beforehand, if anything, rather than overstated,” he says, pointing to the Jubilee Line extension – a piece of infrastructure, like HS2, whose benefits were fiercely debated before its construction. “Usage has turned out to be greater than predicted, and nobody is questioning the huge impact it’s had on the regeneration of Docklands and other areas of East London; the way it’s changed the centre of gravity of London,” he says. “Infrastructure can be a game-changer.” 42 | THE HOUSE MAGAZINE | march 2013 When the game is lost So the DfT is steadily forging ahead with a set of major transport projects, few of which attract much national attention as long as they keep ticking along. But, like a traffic jam or signal failure interrupting your daily commute, a big problem with an element of the DfT’s work can suddenly bring a transport issue into uncomfortably sharp relief – and in organisational terms, they don’t come much bigger than the department’s failure to properly let the West Coast Mainline (WCM) franchise. The catalogue of errors that culminated in Virgin Trains’ successful challenge to the DfT’s franchising operation has been exhaustively examined in recent months – not least within these pages (see p5, CSW 23 January). Reports by the National Audit Office (NAO), the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the Commons Transport Select Committee and the DfT’s own lead non-executive director Sam Laidlaw have savaged the department’s handling of the franchise, though the culpability of particular individuals remains unclear: the HR investigation, carried out by retired environment department official Bill Stowe, will not be published. What is clear, though, is that a number of contributory factors lie behind the failure of the franchising operation – meaning that Rutnam, who joined the department six months before the franchising process collapsed, has a lot of work to do. For a start, he’s had to unpick the new organisational structure imposed on franchise management during the major reforms that began in 2010: this arrangement “failed to set out roles, responsibilities and associated accountabilities clearly”, said Laidlaw, and Rutnam acknowledges that “it’s certainly right to say
that the structure didn’t help – in particular, the separation between the responsibility for developing policy towards franchising, and the responsibility for delivering that policy by awarding franchises and managing them afterwards”. The PAC pointed out that during a bungled handover between these two arms of the DfT, there was a three-month hiatus in proper oversight of the project; and Rutnam has now re-created a rail directorate to manage the whole process, led by a director-general. That’s just the start of his challenges, though: the separation of responsibilities “was one of a number of factors” that led to the failure, he says. “Organisational structures can help or hinder, but in themselves they can’t provide all the answers.” Getting the knowledge The DfT also suffered from a lack of skills and expertise – due both to the departure of many highly-experienced (but expensive) staff during the job cuts, and the fact that the department didn’t fork out for external auditors or consultants. Rutnam admits that the DfT itself doesn’t have enough financial expertise: “The use of external financial advisers on the West Coast transaction would have been helpful,” he says. “We’ll be using them on franchising in future.” So does the department’s failure to deploy external advisers on the WCM franchise suggest that the Cabinet Office’s spending controls, which require central sign-off for all significant spending on consultancy, should be loosened? “I’m not pressing for any change in the way in which controls operate,” he replies, pointing out that they allow departments to bring in consultants if the Cabinet Office is persuaded of the need for them. “I haven’t found any difficulty in getting our clear Photoshot/Niklas Halle’n march 2013 | THE HOUSE MAGAZINE | 43
Page 1 and 2: Parliament’s Magazine Guide to Th
Page 3 and 4: The House Supplement No.9 March 201
Page 5 and 6: It’s never easy to bring in behav
Page 7 and 8: In 1970, reflecting emerging concer
Page 10 and 11: Comment Livewire issue It’s fortu
Page 12 and 13: Three types of Transport Secretary:
Page 14 and 15: How it works 14 | THE HOUSE MAGAZIN
Page 16 and 17: If a sign of Downing Street’s app
Page 18 and 19: 18 | THE HOUSE MAGAZINE | March 201
Page 24 and 25: PROFILES Patrick McLoughlin Transpo
Page 26 and 27: previous Transport Secretary, who w
Page 28 and 29: Simon Burns Minister of State for T
Page 30 and 31: Norman Baker Under Secretary for Tr
Page 32 and 33: Stephen Hammond Under Secretary for
Page 34 and 35: organogram DfT Organogram Veena Hud
Page 36 and 37: INSIDER’S STORY High speed existe
Page 38 and 39: of rolling hills populated mainly b
Page 40 and 41: interview Taking 40 | THE HOUSE MAG
Page 44 and 45: The West Coast was not the standard
Page 46 and 47: Photoshot/Niklas Halle’n appears
Page 48 and 49: INSIDER II I worked for Douglas Ale
Page 50 and 51: Opposition to road pricing meant Df
Page 52 and 53: INFLUENCE The Department for Transp
Page 56 and 57: consultations 56 | THE HOUSE MAGAZI
Page 58 and 59: Consultation on the strategic road
Page 60 and 61: Dods People Public Affairs Director
Page 62 and 63: Ms Jennifer Heigham Deputy Director
Page 64 and 65: Group Human Resources Directorate M
Page 66 and 67: Mr Mike Fargher Director, HA Board
Page 68: Dods would like to thank the follow

Department

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?