Welcome to this morning’s evidence session. This is the final session of our inquiry into joined-up journeys. Please could I ask you to all introduce yourselves, starting with the Minister?

Good morning. My name is Simon Lightwood. I am the Minister for Roads and Buses.

Hello, I am Conrad Bailey. I am the director general for public transport and local in DFT.

Good morning. I am Ben Smith. I am the director of public transport strategy and security in the Department for Transport.

Welcome. The Government’s Better Connected strategy calls itself the “Government’s vision for domestic transport in England.” Minister, could you briefly set out your Department’s philosophy of integration, the main principles that guided you as you developed the strategy, and the key things that helped you to decide what to prioritise?

Traditionally, we have planned and delivered transport in silos. That means that journeys are often a lot more complicated than they really need to be for people. Better Connected is all about bringing the system together so that it works as one, with central Government, our local authorities and transport operators all moving in the same direction against a shared set of goals. Ultimately, our vision is about a transport system that works for people—that is safe, reliable, affordable and, of course, accessible. Basically, it is about people being able to make the journeys they need to and get on with their life. What is important to say is that this strategy was not created in isolation; it was shaped directly with experts, operators, trade unions and, of course, members of the public from throughout the country. That included a call for evidence: we received over 6,000 responses from members of the public, which was great. We also embarked on an 11-stop roadshow across the country, and I attended one of those when it first kicked off. In addition to that, we established people’s panels with groups who are less often part of those conversations, such as people who live in rural areas and young people. That really helped us to define what has become our guiding principles, and that is, of course, people, place and partnership. We took a deliberate decision to root the strategy in the everyday experience of transport in people’s lives. That meant focusing primarily on domestic transport, rather than covering broader areas such as freight and international travel. Those principles of people, place and partnership really underpin everything that we are trying to achieve within this strategy, putting people at the heart of decision making, genuinely engaging with them to help shape transport systems around them, and using transport to create those better connected places by empowering local leaders and working in partnership across the sector. That can help us make better decisions and deliver better outcomes for people. If we get it right, I really think that we can transform transport across the country.

Does the Department have a theory of change for how to move the country from how people transport system is at the moment towards this vision of a more integrated model?

The strategy gives us a clear vision for a more integrated transport system that puts people first. It is a common framework, if you like. We are embedding those principles across the transport network and, as I said, giving local leaders the powers, the funding and the tools they need in order to deliver for their local communities. We are also driving practical improvements—for example, integrating tickets, better passenger information, and some pretty big bus and rail reform as well. It is important to recognise that integration will not happen overnight, that is for certain. It will come from everybody across the transport system working towards these shared goals but, crucially, also from allowing local areas the flexibility to do what works best for them locally. There is not a one-size-fits-all approach here. The elements set out in the strategy are formed around eight priority areas, and within that there are 40 concrete proposals. However, much of the change that we are seeking to deliver really comes down to local transport authorities driving forward and working with partners in their area and, of course, we are backing them up with that long-term, simplified funding.

We are going to come on to local implementation. I am going to move on to Steff and outcomes and metrics.

There is some transformative change set out in our vision and principles, and this will really provide those long-term benefits for people. We have those 40 key policy commitments that I touched on, and they will deliver really tangible benefits across the country. One of the areas where people will see a real difference is ticketing, which I mentioned just a moment ago. We are working across the board to make fares and ticketing much simpler; something that has come back loud and clear from the public is that it is too complicated. That will allow passengers to move seamlessly between different forms of transport. As I mentioned when I appeared before you about the Bus Services Bill—now Act—a key part of that work was around Project Coral. That is really there to provide the technology for integrated pay-as-you-go ticketing across the different operators in local areas. Basically, fares will be capped automatically, making things really easy for people. To bring it back to passengers, this means a much simpler experience: they can just tap and travel without worrying about buying the right ticket in advance, and they always know that they will get the best fare, which is incredibly important. We have already seen the benefits of integrated networks and ticketing here in London, obviously, but also in places such as Nottingham and in Greater Manchester, with the Bee Network. The Bee Network has been really successful in integrating Metrolink, bus, walking and cycling into one cohesive network and a single regime. They are also in the process of looking at how they can integrate rail as well. What I want to see is more places being able to enjoy that single, joined-up approach.

Absolutely; there are a number of areas. We are going to see real progress on better integrating timetables, particularly through the public ownership of the railways and bus franchising. You are reducing the number of actors that need to co-ordinate their timetables.

It means that when you get your bus to a train station, it will be easier for you to know when your train is going to where you want to go to, and hopefully it will be better aligned. That is often a very difficult thing to do, because often a bus may call at two or three train stations, and you cannot necessarily optimise everything. But with the advent of AI and with fewer participants, we believe it is going to be much more possible to do that. The way that that is going to happen is through things such as the use of digital twins, which will allow you to model this. It sounds quite technical and abstract, but if you are turning up at your bus stop, and you know when your bus and your train are going to go, it is just a much better experience. That would be one example.

We might have exhausted the T’s, I am afraid. This is about ensuring that public transport is an easier and more attractive choice for people to use in all areas of the country—in urban areas, suburban areas and rural areas. There is more that can be done, and the strategy sets out a range of ways in which we are going to make it easier for people to use public transport, whether they are using one mode of transport, but particularly if they need to use more than one. Take, for example, a rural area that currently has one train an hour from the train station and a bus service that takes people on to other locations. If we can do more to join up the timetables between those two modes and make it easier for people to pay for them, we can expect more people to want to use them and make it more attractive for them to use them. The moment that more people are using public transport, the revenue increases and the sustainability of those services grows. It is about making it easier, cheaper and more straightforward for people to access those services.

In terms of data, we are looking at more and more open data and pulling it together in a cohesive hub. You will see already that we have worked in partnership with Google, so that you can see the real-time location of 80% of the buses outside London. That gives real confidence across the network for people to be able to make choices: if the bus is late, they are not going to leave that pub or their house and stand in the dark or in the rain. That is really useful as well in terms of pulling all that data together.

It is really important that this document, “Better Connected”, is not just a statement of ambition. I obviously want to make sure that it is measurable and that we can be held to account on it. That is why we have set really clear outcomes across the eight priority areas we have touched on, to help us track whether transport is becoming more integrated and whether people are actually seeing real benefits. We are looking at things that, frankly, really matter to passengers: satisfaction with services, confidence in things such as travel information, ticketing and accessibility—obviously, you guys did an amazing job with “Access denied”—and how easy it is for people to get to jobs, education and different opportunities. In parallel with that, we are developing some robust monitoring, with an evaluation framework behind that, and that is important. That brings together a lot of existing data that we pull together nationally, because we do not want to add increasing burden to local authorities. Where necessary, we can commission new research to help guide that engagement and to understand where we need to do further improvements. Conrad has done quite a bit of work on the outcome framework, so it might be worth him touching on that.

Yes, it has to be.

Let me take it at two levels, the national level and then the local level. At the national level, in the strategy, against each of the eight priorities, we set out a number of metrics we would use to monitor progress. We also committed to publishing an update report on how it is going before the end of this Parliament. Clearly, some of this is going to take a while to embed and flow through, hence the timing there. Those datasets are largely existing datasets, such as the national travel survey that we produced; many of them are produced annually, and some are produced six-monthly, so it does depend on that a bit. As the Minister said, we are also looking at where we may need new tools or ways of having insights. Something we have developed in recent years is what we call the connectivity tool, which helps us know how connected a particular place in the country is. We are going to build on that to focus on understanding where there is transport poverty, and Ben and his team are doing a lot of work with academia and others to come up with a robust mechanism there. So there are some new areas, and obviously we will find other areas where we think there are gaps and we will do these things. Then we have the local level. At the last spending review, we provided about £21 billion of funding to local places in either our local transport plans or transport for city regions funding. That is backed up by a whole suite of outcome frameworks that we have agreed with places and, going back to your question about people, that is how people will be able to see what is happening at their local level in terms of driving those changes. It is a suite of measures, and we have quite a lot going on there.

Absolutely. First, just to go back to what the Minister said, we absolutely recognise that delivering better integrated transport across the country is not about a one-size-fits-all approach. It cannot be, because different places clearly have different needs and are, frankly, at different stages of development of their own integrated transport networks and approaches. We are working with the places and having the places drive this. As Conrad said, the funding has been made available to local places so they can design what they need. Many places will already be looking at and thinking about the future—what that means in terms of their population, the growth of their areas, and different aspects of development, housing and economic growth. But they will also be thinking about the demographics of the future and, importantly, the transport technologies of the future, which we expect will play a big part in delivering better integrated transport. For our part in DFT, one of the things we have done is make £30 million available for local authorities to work with us on digital twins, which Conrad mentioned earlier. This is about modelling and using the latest AI technology to look at transport networks in detail and to set up live models of existing transport networks. This will give operators or local authorities the ability to make changes and say, “What happens if we build a new development on the edge of this town and 30,000 more people are using the transport network? What would that do to the roads in this particular place? What would that do to the bus services?” It enables places to say, “What is going to happen in the future? How will the transport network respond? What will happen if we do not do anything? And what are the best interventions that we can make to ensure that any future”—

Does that not happen anyway in terms of the planning system?

It absolutely does. Digital twins is about using the latest technology to take that on to the next level.

Absolutely, they will need to. The outcomes frameworks that we have in place are where we are going to be monitoring how they are doing this, checking what progress they are making and thinking about what the right interventions that we may need to make are if we see that that is not happening in particular places. Through that framework, which requires twice-yearly monitoring as a minimum, we will be able to see what is happening and to decide whether it is appropriate for DFT to intervene.

To give a few specific examples, the national travel survey is how we look across all the modes—that, plus the trip chain analysis work that we have been doing, which we set out in the strategy, and which tells you how people make journeys, because, actually, what we are interested in is people’s journeys, not a journey on a little bit of transport. That is one way. The other thing we have done, through our bus funding, is make sure that all local transport authorities have to engage with the Your Bus Journey research that Transport Focus has done. That is going to give us a much greater insight into buses, for example.

That plus the national travel survey—it is a combination of these things that gives us that insight.

I would anticipate that the vast majority of those 40 commitments will happen within this Parliament, and we will commit to continuing to keep you updated on that. I am sure we can give you periodic updates, as well as an update near the end. I would really expect to be able to demonstrate against most of the headline metrics, and at a local level through the outcome frameworks. Again, most of the change will come in at a local level, delivered by local partners, and those outcome frameworks are publicly available, so you will be able to see the progress made in individual areas.

No, the outcome frameworks will be an annual process. Most of them will be published through the MHCLG website as part of an integrated piece because, again, integrating transport is not just about integrating the transport; it is about integrating it in growth and other areas. The other thing that will give you insights is our recently published strategic plan, which I know you asked our permanent secretary about previously. That includes a number of outcome data sources that we will be using to track progress, and that is published annually.

It is important to say that if we are not seeing the progress we want to see when we are doing these updates, it gives us an opportunity to look at what other things we can do or to change tack in order to achieve outcomes. We have to learn as we go, obviously.

Yes, of course. We are all in a common endeavour there.

Can I pick up on this issue about the national travel survey? Many years ago, I was randomly selected to be interviewed for that. I cannot remember, but do the questions ask, “If you take a journey, would you have done that journey in any other way? What would have made you shift to that way of operating?” For example, if someone did not have a car, would they drive if they did have a car, or would they shift if it was cheaper, took less time or it was easier? If so, what would easier look like? If they do not travel at all, what would make them travel for different types of journeys? Are those alternative choices explored? The national travel surveys are quite detailed interviews.

You get some of that through the national travel survey—

But do you have the power to adapt it?

Definitely. The key with these surveys is that they need to be longitudinal so you get the real benefits of the learning, but my statistical colleagues are always looking at how we can improve them. The other thing we look at in this area is behavioural research, working with people such as Transport Focus, to really understand what motivates people and what people expect from a journey, which goes very much to your points.

We are coming on to behavioural focus shortly. Okay, we will move on to improving the strategy, with Alex.

In our most recent evidence session, some witnesses suggested that there were several areas in which the strategy could be improved. One of those were clearer targets. You have talked already today about metrics and commitments, but not specifically about targets. Is there a reason why Better Connected does not have targets in it?

It is important to say that since publishing the strategy we have continued to engage; it was not a publish and leave. There are 40 clear, concrete deliverables in there. Then there are the local outcome frameworks, which will outline how that is being delivered in the local area.

It might be helpful for me to say a bit more about how we are going to use the local outcome frameworks to do this. Alongside “Better Connected”, we published a suite of other documents. We published work on how we are going to help places collect better data, using data and AI. Critically, we also published the first update to the local transport plan guidance in well over a decade. That sets out statutory guidance on how we want local places to interpret Better Connected and take that into account as they produce their local transport plans. We have been working with places so that they can then reflect their targets that meet their needs at that local level. One of the more powerful things about doing it this way is that it means their local growth plans, spatial development strategies and local transport plans should be much more integrated. So this really drives that integration theme. I have talked about the outcome frameworks through the funding, and again that sets a set of targets that we have agreed with individual places to recognise their differences. That is how we will see this come through.

Is this strategy a one-off, or are you working on version 2? Is it going to last the test of time? What is the plan?

Well, I hope so. As I said, we have continued to engage with organisations since its publication. What we do not want to do is to constantly republish a long-term strategy. Having some stability is really important, as is having those measurables in there to demonstrate we are making progress. The response across the transport sector has been really positive, and we have had particularly strong engagement with our mayoral areas. Conrad could probably talk a little about some of the mayoral strategic conversations we have had.

Prior to the strategy, lots of places were saying to us, “It is very hard for us to approach integrated transport without knowing what you want to do as a Government. We know you are prioritising devolution. We know you are prioritising bus reform. We know you are prioritising rail reform.” That is very much why we have produced this strategy: to give them that vision. What we do to support that is that we have a series of engagements with all the main mayoral strategic authorities, where me and a team of colleagues—not only from the Department, but also from our agencies and the wider DFT family, such Network Rail and National Highways—will go and spend two days in a place to really understand their transport needs, what they are seeking to achieve and how we can support them. That is very much how we are trying to make sure that this translates into real change at a local level. What they have said to us is, “This is hugely helpful. It gives us clarity.” They are very grateful for having this guidance that backs that up, and they are now taking that away and aligning it with their plans.

You keep going back to local delivery agents, but this is a national strategy. While there were some positive responses to the consultation, there were also a lot of challenges for you, particularly on things such as clearer targets and timescales, and whether this is a vision, a plan or a number of nice ideas? Do you not think that there is an opportunity to improve the strategy next time round, or a subset of the strategy or something? You did get a lot of criticism about the vagueness of much of it.

This is a framework—it is a framework to build on—and we will continue engaging across the sector to learn the lessons and make sure that we are achieving it; if we are not, we will change tack. We will use the metrics to learn and develop. But it has only just been published, so we need some time for it to settle in—

Unlike a lot of Government policies, it was not published in draft. It is the strategy.

There had been an awful lot of engagement, though, throughout mayoral authorities. As I said, there were 6,000 pieces of input from the public, extensive levels of roadshows and so on. It was really important that we got in front of people to understand the real-life challenges that they face across the transport system. But, of course, we will continue to listen to feedback and how we can do things differently to deliver the change that we talk about.

A summary of what people have said is that it does not include detailed, specific action plans for how each of its commitments will be implemented—

Well, every area is different—

—or timelines or milestones, plural, and they are different. There are a number of different elements, but that was a summary of a lot of the overarching criticisms from people who wrote to us, who will have also written to you.

I accept what they are saying there, but every single area comes with different challenges—different social, economic and geographical challenges and different services that they have inherited. Therefore, they come at this in a slightly different way, at different speeds. That is why we try to measure that success through the outcome frameworks, which were negotiated with local areas to take that all into consideration, so that we could map each individual area’s progress in delivering a more integrated experience.

Yes, but, as I say, it is a national strategy.

Going backwards a little, I was on the Railways Bill Committee and the buses Bill Committee, and I know you faced a bit of challenge, particularly in the Railways Bill, about the fact that the strategy came after the legislation. Conrad, you have explained that you have done all this connecting up, but it felt very backwards. I just wonder whether you would do it differently if you had your time all over again, because frankly it felt quite ludicrous to sit through all that Bill Committee, creating Great British Railways, when the integrated transport strategy had not been published. It was quite unacceptable from our perspective. How do you feel about that? It is great that you have spoken to all these mayoral authorities, but what came up time and time again in the debate around both the buses Bill and the Railways Bill was that this is not just about mayoral authorities; it is about the rest of the country. What you have done is created a strategy, after the horse has bolted, that does not actually talk to the whole country, but just to these big jigsaw pieces. I just wonder if there is any reflection on whether you should have got ahead of this, rather than putting it in afterwards.

When the new Government was elected, we were given some very clear priorities: drive forward on rail reform, drive forward on bus reform, and deliver an integrated transport strategy that really had people at its centre. That was the logic; otherwise, there would have been a very long period where progress had not been made on all these vital issues. In terms of developing the strategy, we have spoken mainly about mayoral areas so far, but I should be absolutely clear that those outcome frameworks apply to all local transport authorities, not only mayoral areas. We spent a lot of time talking to people like ADEPT, who represent all the local transport authorities, and we held our roadshows all over the country, not only in mayoral areas. We did need to take that time. Of course, we have been working to support Ministers’ ambitions, to make sure that what we do is a very coherent piece. Would it have been lovely to produce a strategy and then do everything else? I suppose it would, but we are never starting from a point zero in time. We actually benefited from being able to learn from what we were doing on bus reform, and the strategy was developed in parallel.

I would agree in terms of the parallel. Most people would admit that having one train operating company rather than 17, and having the ability for more areas to franchise, makes integration a much easier prospect.

We are talking about the integration of all modes, though, aren’t we? What we found in the Railways Bill is that we did not get to talk about that integration, because the strategy was not there. Time and time again we hit a point where we could not get the answers that we wanted from Ministers because the strategy was not in place. Although that was the Government’s aim, effectively that means it is Ministers’ fault that we have not ended up being able to look at this in the right order. It was just interesting because I sat through all those Bill Committees for many hours, and it was quite frustrating actually.

As a little local example, will it be too late if a bus franchise has just been let where there is no flexibility? Alex, did you want to pick up on integration?

This is really about integration and passengers. We had some evidence earlier on in the sessions. Fundamentally, if you are a passenger at a station, they sometimes hold the train because the one behind has been delayed for some reason or other. When we asked the bus company, “Is there ever an occasion where you might hold your bus because the train is delayed?” they said, “Absolutely not, because there are disincentives to do that—you might get fined by the traffic commissioner.” Can you envisage a world in which buses wait for trains, and trains wait for buses? How would you make sure that that integrated set of things happened at the national level?

The ability to be more integrated is important, and using things such as AI is also important. You are looking at a big national network and then local bus services. It is really complex to try and—

Actually, that is about behaviours. The examples Alex gave were about whether there is that flexibility in the day-to-day reality? That is not AI.

You need to be able to manage the data, which is really complex. AI is a critical tool to be able to look at the art of the possible. What happens if you hold the bus? What is the ripple effect of that decision?

Let us say that AI has said, “Look, the train is late. If only this bus would wait for five minutes, everything would be much better for the passengers.” It still involves someone having the ability and confidence to make that decision, and knowing that they are not going to get into trouble for making the decision, which is the situation at the moment. What are the Government doing to enable that to happen?

It is around people coming together, isn’t it? It is about having those discussions, and looking at a cohesive, integrated network within localities. It is not easy. There is ripple effect. If you hold that bus back, are you preventing those people from getting to the hospital or to their job on time? There are impacts of doing these things. It is the butterfly effect: if you stop this bit, what is the impact? It is complicated.

In my example, holding the bus for five minutes is genuinely a good thing; it is actively good, according to the whole suite of data. Further down the line, those benefits are good too, according to AI.

I am not saying we should not, but again that bus might be five minutes later getting to the stop, which may cause somebody to be late. There may be other things that add on to that. There is a bigger impact, potentially. Again, having bus franchising helps with making those decisions, rather than having five different bus operators trying to align with railway timetables. Having that single guiding force in places—like the Bee Network—will help people to make those decisions.

One of the things you will see when you have a single national rail operator and a single local bus franchise is that the local control rooms that places run will be able to take those judgments based on the best available data. The thing that would worry me is when you have held the bus because the 3 pm train is late and is going to get in at 3.10 pm, which means, further down the line, that the bus is not collecting the children at the school bus stop at 3.30 pm, so there is an issue there. That is the kind of reason why you need a lot of insight to get these things right. That is where things such as local control rooms can really help.

It is all down to Hope Valley. Is everyone aware of Hope Valley?

It is the mini-Switzerland.

That rural demonstrators is really valid.

Some of the responses we have heard to the strategy have flagged that it does not contain a fully thought-out approach to integrating shared mobility, such as car clubs, micromobility, and park-and-ride services, with the wider transport network. Can you tell us what role you see these services having in an integrated network?

Obviously, we want to make shared mobility, such as car sharing, a bigger part of our transport network—I know you challenged on that before—and to give people more opportunity to use that affordable way of travel. Obviously, that helps reduce congestion as well and has the added benefit of cutting emissions. Later this year we are publishing new guidance for local authorities, encouraging them to support car sharing through their local transport plans, as well as exploring ways to make it easier through things such as dedicated car parking spaces for car clubs. The strategy sets out shared mobility options and how that could be used as part of an integrated transport system in urban, suburban and rural areas. On micromobility, again, that can play a really important role in the menu of options available to people. We are giving more powers to local areas through the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026, in terms of being able to manage shared cycle schemes. Again, that is bringing those things together. We have also committed, when parliamentary time allows, to regulating e-scooters, but we will be consulting on proposals within the next year so that when that parliamentary time becomes available we are ready to hit the ground running on that. The other thing it is important to mention is that we want to make sure that everyone can travel easily, independently and confidently. On the back of the excellent work that this Committee did in “Access denied”, we have commissioned a review of powered mobility devices. That is the first time in 40 years that that has been looked at, so that is a really important piece of work. The other bit was park-and-ride. That is obviously really important. I saw that in York and other places. That really helps, particularly in suburban and rural areas, or in tourism hotspots. York is an example that I visited. Again, local areas are best placed to make decisions on that and on how and if they expand those facilities. The other bit that we are exploring is the national parking platform that we have pulled together. Obviously, we are encouraging more local authorities to take that up. We are looking at how we can make park-and-ride journeys easier, so that we can knit together, say, rail services with that, to get the same kind of ticket, if you like.

In a hypothetical-ish scenario, with changing local government, you potentially have a railway station that needs to expand its services near where there was going to be a park-and-ride in a new town that is now no longer going to be delivered. How do you judge local authorities on that? There is a new town in my constituency. Park-and-ride was part of it, with a slip road going on to the A38. That has been taken out. The park-and-ride is not going forward. I have introduced the mobility hub idea that we have talked a lot about in Committee, just as a way of showing the public that there is some option for them to do this, but how is the Department, in particular, with all this devolution, going to actually hold local authorities and transport authorities to account when it is multimodal like that? You may have a station on the other side of the road that needs expanding, plus this kind of road ability to go in on the bus? It feels to me that there are still a lot of big holes that could be fallen into with this join-up. Ultimately—call me a bit naive and a bit optimistic—an integrated transport strategy tells me that the Department is making sure that those bits are joined up. How do we ensure that you can do that, and how do we hold you to account as elected Members?

Can I pick up on a couple of other gaps? An awful lot of people drive a car as part of another journey. Also, people who are members of car clubs are more likely to use public transport for their other journeys than people who own and drive a car, for obvious reasons. Zipcar got out of London, and it was all over London. We asked it, and it said that there is no policy in London and no policy in England—there is no Government policy on car share schemes. Why have them if they are not actively encouraged by the Government? Park-and-ride has worked long term in Oxford and York, and yet there you have an example of it being possibly removed because of other pressures on the land or whatever. Other examples we have had in other sessions and different inquiries include pick-up and drop-off at stations, for instance. Those things are not seen as important in the planning policies or, if they are, they are so far away that somebody with mobility issues has a heck of a long way to walk from the vehicle to the platform. We may allow taxis, as in black cab taxis, but there is no space for the increasingly growth area of app taxis, such as Uber, Bolt and so on. They are seen as pariahs, whereas in other jurisdictions around the world there is a place for Uber, Bolt and so on in pick-up and drop-off, as well as the other kind of cab. With kiss and drop, or pick-up, you are pushed further and further away from the station or whatever the interchange is. There are still an awful lot of gaps in policies for those journeys that are part car, or car for this journey but not other journeys, yet these things are not touched at all in this strategy.

Some of this is local decisions, and quite rightfully so because—

But it is led by national policy—the national planning policy framework.

In our local transport plan guidance, we have clear guidance to places on shared mobility. We are producing more detailed guidance—the team is working on that at the moment. We include guidance on micromobility and on park-and-ride, precisely for this point. We would expect that to be integrated in the local transport plan.

Not pick-up and drop-off, not car clubs.

Well, the shared mobility is the car club element there, so that is very much set there. The other thing that I have seen happening is that the railway, working with local places, such as Darlington, is having a much more engaged discussion about how that station works within the community that it is in. That goes exactly to your points about dropping off, parking—given that it serves a rural hinterland—and those kinds of things. That is coming, and that is where that partnership between GBR and local authorities is really critical.

The mechanisms are there, but the overall national planning policy is not. Planners generally think public transport; they do not think car as part of an integrated journey. They have been hardwired; I used to be a planner and a planning committee member. I think others would agree with that. There is a national planning policy framework; I accept that is not your Department, but this is about joined-up Government thinking. In terms of the person on the ground trying to make that journey, use their car less and reduce congestion, I use public transport whenever I can, but if I have a really heavy suitcase, I get a lift or a cab. If I have small children—not any more—the options are different.

Just going back to the point about the mayoralties versus everybody else, I get the mayoralty piece, and that is great—it is going to work really well—but everywhere else is on a timeline of however many years until that gets delivered. Devon did not want a mayoralty, because of transport issues, which now means we are right at the back of the queue. I had breakfast this morning with a constituent who described not being able to find parking in Totnes, in the neighbouring constituency, because the local council’s parking prices are now potentially slightly more expensive than those in the station. If we do not have that accountability and that ability to be able to go back to somebody—at the moment, it feels like it needs to be Government Departments, because devolution has not happened—where do we do it?

We are going to come on to devolution.

I will leave that with you; it will come up later, but I think that is important.

We are going to come on to government. There were a couple of other specifics, Rebecca.

Championing data and technology is one of the strategy’s main aims. At our most recent evidence session, witnesses noted the absence of autonomous vehicles in the strategy. What will their place be in an integrated system?

That is in the strategy, although I do not think we call it autonomous vehicles; I think it is referred to as self-driving cars. It is in there, and obviously that should complement existing transport networks and be considered as part of our vision. It highlights automated passenger services and the permitting scheme that we are working on, and something like £150 million is going into that through our Connected and Autonomous Mobility pathfinder programme. I am genuinely excited about the potentials here for automated vehicles and what they can bring to the mix. They are going to be an important part of our vision. I do not think they will replace existing transport, but they could potentially strengthen it and add to that menu of options for passengers. That is why we are trialling those commercial pilots of automated passenger services, so that we can build that evidence and understand and develop the right regulatory approach. It is important to point out that the roll-out will be gradual as we test those new services and how that interplays with the rest of the menu, if you like.

The strategy applies only to transport in England. How are you working with the devolved Governments to ensure that the UK has a nationally integrated transport network? For example, how will you ensure that cross-border journeys between England and Scotland or Wales will be integrated as well?

You are quite right: this strategy applies to England, because many transport powers are obviously devolved to other areas. We have worked, and are working, closely with Governments in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales to make sure that people can travel throughout the UK. Officials have engaged extensively with their counterparts in the Welsh and Scottish Governments, particularly during the development of this strategy, and we will of course continue to do that through the implementation. We have backed that up with cold, hard cash as well. That includes six new stations on the south-west main line, £302 million on rail enhancements over the next four years and £48 million on the Core Valley Lines network. We are also working with Welsh and Scottish Governments on rail reform, investing nearly £8.5 million in a feasibility study for the A75. I am having that conversation with the Scottish Transport Secretary. Fundamentally, all our Governments share the same goal: to get better connections, better journeys and a better experience for everyone.

There are probably a few things we can learn from them as well.

Yes, I agree.

The framework brings together all the right people. We are maximising the opportunity for that to happen through bus franchising and the work on rail reform. Obviously, we have things such as the Bus Centre of Excellence, so we can learn from each other as well. We have backed that up with multi-year funding: £3 billion over the next three years for buses and so on. They can spend that in any way they see fit to improve services. I would encourage creative thinking around that. I would certainly support thinking outside the box.

The mini-Switzerland example is an opportunity to see what works and then to share some of that best practice. There are pockets of really good practice in rural areas in many places. One of the things we are trying to do is work with Transport East and the rural transport centre of excellence to really make sure we can share that best practice between places and encourage the sort of ideas you may be talking about. A number of people have come to us saying, “Are there ways we can better integrate our demand-responsive transport with our bus services, like they are doing in the south-west?” It is about all those sorts of things. Let us share that best practice. We are very keen to support that. Ministers have recently provided some multi-year funding for that.

That is where we have things such as Thomas Ableman’s work on mini-Switzerland—I think he was one of your witnesses. There is some work in academia. We are all keen to work out how we can improve rural transport, because it is a challenging area, as you are saying.

Delivering good integration will rely on collaboration between Government, local authorities, transport operators, providers of infrastructure and services, and probably many more people. What role do you plan for your Department to have in supporting this collaboration and ensuring that it supports the ambitions set out in your strategy?

Our job is to set a clear direction and make sure that those local leaders we talked about have the powers, funding and tools they need to deliver. Local authorities told us clearly that they want that clear national vision to guide that delivery. That is what Better Connected gives them. That is why our new transport plan guidance has aligned with this strategy as well and gives those local councils more advice on collaborating and consulting with partners and the transport sector. However, as we have said before many times, the truth is that transport works best when it is shaped locally. As we said just a moment ago, what works in a big city will not necessarily work in a rural or coastal town. Local leaders are best placed to make those decisions, which is why we are putting more powers and funding into local hands so we can get those better connections to jobs, housing and so on. It is also important to say that, crucially, we have been moving away from that short-term competitive bidding process we had under the previous Government, so that local areas can really plan with greater confidence into the future.

If you have given areas powers, tools and funding, does it not all just rely a bit too much on good will?

No. You have the outcomes framework as well in order to hold them to account, to make sure they are delivering what they said they were going to deliver, based on the conversations and insight they have given us to set those parameters.

What would you do if you thought a local area was not delivering what the Government thought was a desired outcome?

There are options there in terms of future funding. We can look at that. Crucially, how can we support them in achieving that? I would rather support than penalise.

Can I just quickly talk about cross-borough issues? In my neighbouring constituency, there is a train station, and the borough boundary goes through the middle of it. I also currently have an issue where TfL buses are going into Kent county council, and there is an argument going on between the two. Where in the guidance does it deal with jurisdiction and how such issues should be resolved between different transport operators? In that case, it is TfL and Kent county council. Equally, going back to the planning guidance, you can have a train station that is in two local authorities?

The expectation when we are talking to TfL or places, and indeed in the guidance, is that places work together to resolve issues for people. With those boundary issues, wherever we put the boundary, it is going to be wrong. It sounds like, in the example you are talking about, that it is particularly wrong if it is right across the middle of the station.

The ticket office is in my borough, but the platform is in the neighbouring borough.

We will encourage places to work together. Sometimes we will convene places on a more regional basis. To give a different example, there is some of the work we are doing on Northern Powerhouse Rail, looking at what the needs are of the different areas. These are difficult issues, and I am afraid I do not have the answer on your specific planning point.

But they are hugely common. In Rebecca’s example, you have a whole new town. That could cover more than one area. Sometimes these issues cover regional areas. It is all very well having a strategy and leaving a lot of it to local decision makers, some of whom get it. But to sort of go back to my previous question, is there not an opportunity for these great aspirations to feed into more statutory provision, such as the national planning policy framework, which then filters through to regional and local? Then they become material considerations against which applications have to be considered.

We are absolutely working with MHCLG. Its consultation on the national planning policy framework ended at the end of March. We have been working very much with it to make sure that the transport aspects and needs are reflected and reflect this strategy.

Obviously, in the interim, there are things such as the bus service improvement plans and local transport plans. There is very much guidance there. You should be looking at cross-border issues and encouraging people to collaborate.

Apologies for jumping ahead, but the other organisations that have been apparently left out are GBR and National Highways. They both have critical roles in delivering. They have big budgets and are big organisations that have far more power and clout than many local authorities to deliver opportunities for integration. Why are they not more strongly referenced in the strategy?

We have the absolute expectation that agencies and all the other companies at the Department absolutely will be engaging as part of that.

There is an expectation, but there is no particular directive in the strategy?

We can direct them—

You cannot direct them, but the Government—

We can direct them, they are agencies; we can direct them to do that, obviously—

You can direct them, and we have got—

We will be directing them as part of the Government—

We have the Railways Bill going through Parliament. We have highways agencies that direct-report to you or to your colleagues.

My colleagues and I spend a huge amount of time with National Highways, with Network Rail, the DFT operator and the companies within that, and with places to make sure we are properly having that discussion about how you make sure this really joins up. In your example, you cannot possibly think about developing a new town without thinking about how it links to the national rail network, the strategic road network and integrated local transport. You need all three of those.

That is entirely fair enough, unless a new town is already being built and then they are changing the goalposts along the way. New towns take 20 years, so we are—

That is why you need that continuing dialogue. That is my point.

It is to get some clout in the statements. This is not so much integrated transport, but I have just had a reply from the Secretary of State on the removal of a motorway service area from the lower Thames crossing, despite the pressure on HGV safe parking and services in that whole quadrant of south-east England. Her answer is, “There’s no requirement to provide one; therefore, we don’t need to.” This is exactly the kind of example where, if there is no requirement, local authorities will not insist on it in their decisions, National Highways, GBR or whoever will not provide it, it will not feed into the requirement of a franchise for a bus company and so on. If there is not some level of directiveness, as there is in Switzerland, are these not just worthy words that will be picked up only by those who get it in the local area?

I cannot comment on the response from the Secretary of State, but I hear what you are saying. That would relate to the DCO at the time.

Okay. I used the example not because it was relevant to integrated transport, but because of the importance of, “We’re not required, so we won’t deliver it.”

Again, we said we would constantly look at whether we are achieving the metrics we set out. If we do not, we can look at other ways. If we need to do more stick, if you like, then we can look at that.

As we have discussed, many of the strategy’s aims are dependent on local delivery. What are you doing to make sure that local authorities have both the funding and capacity to deliver transport integration?

That is important, obviously. We are not only backing local leaders up with that assurance of multi-year funding, but also moving away from that short-term competitive nature. Some £21 billion going in over the spending review period is nothing to be sniffed at. We have also published the local transport plan guidance to help councils build a more joined-up transport network and make the most of that investment. However, as you said, funding is only part of that picture. We are also helping them to build the skills, capacity and expertise they need in order to deliver. That is why we are supporting things such as the Bus Centre of Excellence and the work of Active Travel England, which is helping local authorities to learn from each other, skill up, and access practical help and support. There are also other organisations, such as the UTG—the Urban Transport Group.

That is helpful. That capacity point is really important. Every time I speak to my local council, it tells me about its shortage of planners. I know that some of this is MHCLG’s responsibility, but it is really crucial for delivering the aims of this transport strategy as well. Maybe you could speak specifically about that shortage of planners and what the plan is to deal with that.

I cannot talk about MHCLG planners, but I know that on buses, for instance, we made sure there was enough funding for at least one extra individual, if you like. We know it takes human resource to deliver things. On planners, I would have to pass on to MHCLG.

We have tried to do a number of things. First, when we were in discussions and working with the Treasury and MHCLG in the context of the spending review, we tried to make sure that that £21 billion includes resource funding so that you can employ people, going back to what the Minister said. We have had lots of discussions, both through the Urban Transport Group and organisations such as ADEPT, around what places need and the support they need. Sometimes we are directly funding posts. We are trying to use centres of excellence to share best practice and toolkits. We have the Bus Centre of Excellence. We have talked about the rural centre of excellence. We have tried to make sure there are common analytical tools that people can draw on, datasets and things like that. There is a connectivity tool, which can be really helpful for transport planners. We have tried to lift some of the burden. The final thing I would say is that in some cases we also use secondments and try to target things. I was in Bristol last week, and the combined authority was saying how much value it had had. We had managed to second someone from Active Travel England there to help it think about its active travel work. It is about that suite of measures. This is a common challenge that we are working on with MHCLG and with places, because we recognise that this is difficult.

Active Travel England does that because it is an integral part of its funding mechanism with local authorities to provide that capacity building, as well as the actual money to implement the schemes. I do not know how far that philosophy of funding goes, particularly as we have had so many cutbacks in specialist transport roles in local government over the last 15 or more years. Does that way of working that Active Travel England uses also roll into other areas of support from the Department?

We are doing it in a different way on buses, but we are trying to provide that support. Critically, we are providing them with resource funding so they can try to rebuild some capacity and capability.

That is on buses, but not the concept of local integrated transport as a specialist area of transport policy and delivery.

I agree. It is definitely not just an MHCLG problem; it is really relevant to transport delivery as well. On the funding, Minister, you were talking about this £21 billion that has been made available. Do you think there is sufficient autonomy at the moment for LTAs to make their own judgments about how that funding is best utilised?

Yes, I think there is, and we agreed the frameworks working with local areas. If you think there is not, I would be interested in hearing more about that.

For example, if an LTA wants to deliver a tram line, it would be helpful to understand in future—I know it is a broad question—what the role for Treasury and the DFT would be in terms of finding the capital and delivering the scheme? Are there new arrangements being put in place?

There are certain thresholds where it becomes national. West Yorkshire would be an example of where the scale of it means it is overseen by the Department. I do not know if you can speak a bit more about that, Conrad, in terms of when that threshold is met.

We have just increased all the thresholds as part of the outcome from the last spending review. If you are a mayoral combined authority area, the threshold is currently £200 million, which is the point where we look at whether we need to put things through an approval process in the Department and the Treasury. It is £50 million for other local transport areas. That is not an absolute; there is then a judgment on the complexity. The thing that mainly drives us to focus on particular interventions is whether they interact—going to something the Chair said earlier—with the national road network or national rail network, so that you end up with that integrated system. The requirements are actually the same for business cases, whether we are involved or not. That set of requirements is set out in the Green Book, and the Treasury did a lot of work last year to try to simplify those and make them more streamlined for places. That is an area where, again, we are very interested in how we can help people develop those business cases for the biggest and most complex schemes.

I have constituents who work in North Manchester hospital, and at the moment, due to the lack of integrated transport, they cannot reach their employment. Obviously, integrated transport to work should not really be a “nice to have”; it should be available. How are you going to ensure that local authorities collect appropriate data in a suitable format, partly so that we can identify acute local need?

In terms of having data to ensure consistency, we have set clear requirements to local authorities through a memorandum of understanding that governs the consolidated funding package we talked about. That includes local transport outcome frameworks, which have the key metrics we talked about, the majority of which are national datasets. We are going to standardise that process, capturing that data through a new digital hub. That is the plan for local authorities, alongside that financial reporting. We recently published the transport data action plan, with a view to creating that clear and consistent view of data standards.

Will there be additional funding for local authorities to help them collect that data?

The way we have designed the portal is to make it much easier. Previously, we collected data and people did it in lots of different ways. We have tried to create a single portal and use much more national datasets that do not require them to do as much. It should be a lower burden, for better integrated data. That is at the local level. In terms of the other thing we are doing, we currently have what we call an open data marketplace for both rail and buses, and we have committed in the strategy to turn that into an overall integrated open market database, which should allow people to better understand some of the elements. Of course, our connectivity tool will allow you to look at a particular location and understand its connectivity. That is a real tool for local partners.

The collection of data in a more standardised way through that portal will hopefully be helpful for local authorities and easier for them to manage and work with, but also helpful for us as we hold local authorities to account through the outcomes frameworks. That more consistent data will enable us to spot where there are the sorts of issues that members of the Committee have raised this morning, particularly cross-border issues. We will be able to look at this, identify where there might be an issue and consider whether we need to take action with the authorities involved to move things in a better direction.

Just pushing on local delivery a bit more, it feels like there are lots of moving parts in Government at the moment, and that is understating it—I am talking specifically about transport, so let us ignore everything else. I appreciate that I come across as quite cynical, but that is because I have sat on these committees and heard it all. Alex shares with me this need to push a lot on the non-mayoral authorities; we often ask questions around that. Obviously, LGR is trying to replace two-tier systems, but we currently still have two-tier local authorities. Forgive me, but it sounds a little like the Department keeps pushing back, saying, “It’s fine because it’s all going to be done at a local authority level.” However, ultimately, what a mayoral authority can do versus what one of four potential councils in Devon can do is going to be very different in terms of staffing, capacity and capability, particularly taking in the Network Rail, GBR and highways piece and having to think about those really big-ticket items. Buses are the easy bit, because they already do that, but when it comes to these other big pieces, how are you as a Department going to make sure that everyone across the country can keep up? When do we actually expect to see this rolled out across the whole country? Time and time again, the big cities come in and show us what is working, which is brilliant—they are doing a really great job—but it feels a lot like we are in danger of the rest of the country being left behind. So, first, how are you going to provide support in that transition time? Secondly, when are we actually going to see this delivered? What is the aim for that end date?

You have still seen increased funding and more consolidated funding across the board, not just in mayoral authorities. Obviously, things such as the Bus Centre of Excellence are an example where we are helping to skill up and share best practice across the board so that all areas can benefit from this.

That does not answer my question. Does somebody want to answer the timetable piece and how we make sure that everybody keeps up? We talked about buses again, but it is about—

Everyone comes from a different place. I cannot give you a timetable for every place in the country. That is why we have an outcomes framework.

Is the Department going to essentially walk this walk with different parts of the country as they go through it, or is it just a sort of, “Off you go. We are going to push you off from the riverbank, and you just have to paddle your canoe until you make it”?

As you say, there are lots of moving parts on devolution, but my sense is that this is about us having the right partnerships with places to support them. As the Minister says, they are at different places on their journey. Recognising the points you make, in our funding outcomes from the spending review, we fought, and the Minister fought very hard, to make sure that we had funding growth for those places that were not mayoral combined authorities, and that they had resource funding, because a lot of this goes down to the people. That gives places more freedom and ability to meet requirements. I am sorry to mention buses again, but in some cases we have factored rurality into our funding solutions because that is absolutely vital. We are funding ways of creating communities of practice through things such as this rural centre of excellence. So this is very much about us going on a journey with places. One of my teams is a partnership team, and we work with different places around the country. An example would be that one of my colleagues has spent a lot of time working with Plymouth, as it is thinking about how it wants to develop its transport in the context of its growth plans. That is just one example.

Which is not finalised because devolution has not happened yet.

It absolutely is not, but in terms of whether we are there working alongside them—absolutely. That is really important to what me and my team are there for.

That is a helpful example.

I do not know the geography, but that is a travel-to-work area, not just a—

Exactly. Devolution and LGR are going to have a massive impact. They are trying to deliver better in the city centre, but they could well be taking on rural villages that are going to be expecting integrated transport based on this strategy.

One of the things my colleague is helping with is making sure that we are thinking about that overall piece, including how it integrates with the strategic road network.

Forgive me for mentioning something else on buses, but I am the Bus Minister, and I cannot help myself. The franchising pilots we are doing are specifically to support rural areas and the non-mayoral authorities to recognise the possibilities that franchising could bring.

I am going to suspend the session for five minutes to let everybody go and stick their heads under a cold tap or something. Sitting suspended. On resuming—

Welcome back.

The strategy sets out several case studies, but they are all from the UK, from our shores. Did you draw on good practice internationally when devising the strategy or explore approaches to integration being taken in different countries?

Absolutely. In the published strategy, we intentionally chose examples from around England to share best practice, but the team producing the strategy spent a lot of time engaging both internationally and, critically, with academic papers and other things that gave international insights. In terms of the sort of things we learned from, we looked at places such as Dijon and Freiburg and how transport, planning and development have been really effectively brought together. We were trying to understand the French model around how, in a devolved context, mayors are able to really drive that integrated planning. We looked at the reliability of public transport, interchanges and those kinds of areas. We concluded, as you would expect, that there was not a single model that we could just take from one place and copy. When I used to work on rail, we often looked at the Japanese example, or at Hong Kong or Singapore, as really good examples, but you could not just lift their models, because they had different histories and contexts. However, there was definitely learning that we could take from that. Just to give some more specific examples, in Dijon you have that real sense that people had a hugely integrated journey in a small city. If you look at the work we drew on in the strategy based on Switzerland, that is another really key example for how we might tackle some of the rurality challenges we talked about. On top of all that, more generally in our work, when we have been looking at bus reform, we have looked at the model in Jersey. We have talked to some of our operators that also run concessions in places such as Australia, to learn from what they have been doing. My colleagues who work on rail have spent a lot of time looking at European rail examples, including how you really integrate that. Indeed, our Secretary of State is just back from China and Japan, where she was looking very much at how you can drive integrated transport. She visited a number of integrated transport hubs. That is very much in our thinking and work.

It is good to hear that there has been that international insight. I would like to just push you a bit further as to why the document was so domestically focused. Yes, everywhere has different context, but you could say that there is not much point including best practice, because different parts of England are different from other bits. We are not an alien species here in Britain. A lot of people we have heard evidence from would say that we are not necessarily awash with good practice in this country on integrated transport. Did you not miss an opportunity to put a bit more in there about international good practice?

We took a very deliberate decision to focus our case studies on England and the spread of different transport experiences in England. Could we have included international case studies? Yes, clearly we could have. We certainly learned from them in producing the strategy.

Many of them come from different cultures and organisational set-ups. However, one of our witnesses said that, in the context of rail and bus companies, we are set up with the Competition and Markets Authority, and companies are expected to compete against each other. In Switzerland, where you have hundreds of private companies providing public transport, they are expected to collaborate and integrate. Is there not an opportunity there?

There is an opportunity there. Actually, public ownership of the railway, plus bus franchising, will get us almost all the way there. As to whether there is still a residual issue, we will need to see and work that through; if there is, we may need to look at that. Certainly, we have not had difficulties that I am aware of that have come up in this space when we have been looking, for example, at integrated ticketing trials.

Elsie and Daniel, did you want to pick up any specifics on local examples and local opportunities—subsets of the MHCLG transport interface?

Can I just pick up a couple? Sorry, but these will be London examples. I just need to say that I was a consultant on this scheme, and I accept it was a previous Government, but the new station at Beam Park was across two London boroughs, Havering, and Barking and Dagenham, so it needed the integration of TfL and both those boroughs. The train station was built, but then the—I accept—previous privatised train operator said, “We’re not going to provide train services here.” First, I would like to understand how it works when you have that cross-borough arrangement and train stations and so on are provided. Secondly, on the new towns, one of them, again, is in my neighbouring borough, in Thamesmead. Clearly, I accept it is a devolved matter to TfL, but the DLR will terminate there, and there will be an additional stop. We will have a new northbound service, but not a southbound service. You will only be able to go north from the new town by train; you will have to try to find other means to go south. What kind of advice and integration is offered, first, with those kinds of planning applications, where there is more than one planning authority, but there are also other providers, and, secondly, where there is that kind of planning on new towns, where you will be easily able to get out in one direction but not so easily in the other.

I cannot comment on the details, but it is important to say—the Chair touched on this earlier—that there is a real expectation that National Highways and GBR will work with local and regional authorities, and indeed—

But it is an expectation, not a requirement.

Indeed, the Secretary of State sets out an annual letter to the chairs in which she can explicitly make that clear, going back to your comment there, Chair, absolutely. We have already seen what can be achieved when we bring those organisations together. If you look at Manchester, for example, there is the Manchester taskforce for transport. That brought together the Department, Network Rail, rail operators and local authorities to look at those real performance issues within Manchester. Conrad, I do not know if you want to talk about the specific examples, which I am not familiar with.

I am not hugely familiar with them, but I can talk to both. Beam Park is a good example of where you are building a new station, and by putting that station in you are going to impact the rest of the rail services on the line, but also potentially revenues. One thing that we need to work on in the context of GBR is that when a new station is built—sometimes it may need some initial operating funding for a few years, and then it may actually drive up revenue—how do you work that through so that it works for the place? That requires you to have Network Rail, the operator—it will be GBR in time—and the local place, or places in this case, working together to find a way through that. I was having very similar discussions in a different context in the west of England about some of their new stations.

But it is based on voluntary relationships at a local level. There are the bits on the edge, or the areas that do not want to play games and to have a politics of the car is king or whatever, but there does not seem to be much in the strategy that creates more powers. There are expectations, but not more powers.

It is also that cross-interface, is it not? I will not go too much into it, but you have two planning authorities; one consented and one did not, but it got approval in the end. The houses are built, people have moved in, and then the train operating company says, “No, we’re not actually going to stop here.” You have 3,000 homes and the train operating company says, “No, we won’t stop.” How does that interface and guidance work between MHCLG, the Department for Transport, those local planning authorities and the train operator, which I accept in due course will be GBR, to ensure that something actually happens?

If I take the example of new towns and Thamesmead, we are doing a lot of work with MHCLG and—

Sorry, you are doing a lot of work and lots of people are talking to each other, but is there anything in this plan or in your plans to strengthen the powers to make this stuff happen? That is a simple question. Yes or no?

Ultimately, it will be down to local areas. They have a democratic mandate from their local people to do that.

If they do not want to, they do not have to.

If they fail to do that, there is democratic accountability and they can be voted out, frankly.

We have spoken a little about behaviour and how that influences the modes of travel that people undertake. What insights from behavioural research did you draw on as you were coming up with this strategy?

We have said that putting people first is at the heart of this strategy—understanding how people actually experience the transport system, and using that insight to shape the decisions we make. That is exactly what we tried to do with Better Connected. As we were developing it, we engaged extensively with passengers, communities and experts, including trade unions and transport organisations across the country. As I said, 6,000 pieces of input came into that, and there were regional roadshows to really understand what the real, tangible barriers are that prevent people from having those joined-up, seamless journeys. Conrad referred to this earlier, but we have drawn on a wide range of data and insights through the national travel survey, user research, behavioural insights and so on to better understand how different people experience transport in different ways. I do not know whether it is worth expanding a little on that. We talked about the personas. Ben, it might be worth explaining a little more about that and how that can be used to bring these things to life almost.

As the Minister said, this is about understanding more of the insight into how people will behave when making transport choices. I mentioned earlier the digital twins project that we are working on and making available to local authorities. That is an important element. Our work on transport user personas has involved the creation of a number of different personas representing different types of transport users. They span a range of age groups, have different levels of affluence, live in different types of places—urban, rural and suburban settings—and have different levels of education, and some are car owners, while others are not. We have been able to use them in some of our policymaking, thinking and decision making in the Department when we have been scoping projects and informing business cases, and in public messages and campaigns. This is something we are able to make available to local areas to use as a tool to understand behaviour as well. It is about taking the more hard-edged data that transport systems and operators produce, that digital twins produces, and putting more of that public, personal empathy around things and understanding how people in individual circumstances will actually behave and respond to transport interventions.

Another really tangible piece of work will be our work on the transport poverty tool. We spoke to people from rural and coastal communities, young people not in education and training, low-income families and so on to really understand how we can use that tool. We will continue investing in social and behavioural research as well to continue to push that forward.

The strategy says that you are going to engage more with behavioural insights to improve the effectiveness of integration, but it does not actually say how you plan to do that. How is the Department going to look at this going forward?

In two ways. It is through the social research we commission as part of our normal research work but, critically, it is also about working with Transport Focus as it evolves to make sure that it is really able to draw on the work it does around customer behaviours. It does that in a number of ways; some of that is surveys, but it also does lots of focus groups and those kinds of things, and we really benefit from those. In one of the supporting documents to the strategy, we set out a lot of the insight we had gained through that behavioural insight work. In developing the strategy, we will continue to do that.

It might be helpful if I add a little more on the transport poverty tool. This is really a new piece of work that we are working on at the moment. We have a tool, and we are thinking about the relevant use cases for it with colleagues in the Department, across the wider transport sector and indeed across Government, with colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions, Education, and Health and Social Care. In a nutshell, it enables us to look at an area of population in the country and at the characteristics of the residents—their income brackets and their access to different types of transport, in terms of what they need to do to lead their lives. That gives us an indication of areas where there is genuine transport poverty. In a rural setting, for example, if there is a lack of public transport or poor public transport, that obviously leads to people having to use cars. If we have people who cannot afford to use cars, clearly, they have a degree of transport poverty. In a more urban setting, you may find people who do not need to use cars, because there is a good public transport offering. However, the too helps us to map what people need in individual areas to access education, healthcare and employment opportunities. It particularly helps us to look at where disadvantaged groups might be being left out of those opportunities because they cannot access transport.

Would that come with increased funding? For example, if you have an area where you see that the bus services are not particularly great or there is not great rail connectivity? I know that the Government have looked at rurality funding for buses. Is that something you are looking at for other modes?

It will enable us, local authorities and others who use the tool to identify where there are problems. We then need to work on what the solutions are. Clearly, some of that might be about where funding is being directed, but the first thing to do is to identify where the issues are and then to work through with local authorities what the right solutions would be, involving us or other Government Departments as necessary.

The Secretary of State told us recently that the Department does not intend to measure modal shift as part of tracking the progress of the Better Connected strategy’s implementation. Do you agree that if you do not fully understand levels of modal shift, you risk not being able to understand the effectiveness of integration?

It is important to be clear that we are not in the business of telling people how they should travel. We want to make sure that people have good and effective options. For many people, the car will continue to be the right choice for some journeys, and that is absolutely understandable. Cars can obviously play a really important role in enabling people to access wider public transport—the Chair intimated that earlier on. That is why we are working to make parking simpler, with things such as the national parking platform. But I think most people would welcome having alternatives that are reliable, affordable, accessible, convenient and so on. If bus travel is reliable, the train is easy to use or it is safe to walk, wheel or cycle, people are more likely to consider choosing those options. That is really what our approach is about. Bus reform, rail reform and investment in active travel are about making it easier for people to choose from a menu of attractive options. Where people choose to drive, as many will still do, we are supporting the transition to zero emission vehicles, so that those journeys are cheaper and cleaner. Ultimately, it is about expanding the choice, not restricting it, and giving people more options to get around in an easier, more convenient way.

Does the Department have a hierarchy within the modes that it would encourage people to use?

We talk about the hierarchy in the highway code. The Secretary of State mentioned when she discussed it with you recently that we are working hard to improve the whole transport network across all modes. That means improving public transport, active travel and so on. As you will all freely admit, most people are not only drivers, only public transport users or only pedestrians or cyclists. Historically, much of the transport network has been designed around car use, and in some places there really are no other options to get around. Even in parts of towns and cities, sometimes it can be much easier to drive than to use another mode, so that is what people do, understandably. The reality is that a huge number of journeys are done every day by car, so we need to make sure that those alternative journeys are accessible and affordable. We must also continue to invest in our road infrastructure—hence the £7.3 billion we are investing in road maintenance. But we also have to acknowledge that increased traffic continues to cause problems, not least for the motorists themselves who are stuck in traffic. So sometimes we need to continue to enhance and fix roads, while also providing those attractive options.

Should there be guidance, therefore, on a hierarchy in areas that have a higher level of public transport accessibility? I am a London MP, so there is clearly going to be a much higher level of public transport accessibility in my constituency than in those of other colleagues. Should we be laying out a hierarchy for those areas that have that higher level?

It is something we have touched on within the highway code. It is something we are looking at more widely.

This recognition goes back to the conversation we were having about rural areas or other areas. Clearly, there is much higher use of public transport in London than in other areas, as you say. There is higher use of public transport in more urban areas than in less urban areas. That is why we are supporting places to put in place better public transport and better active travel options, so people have those choices, as the Minister says. We have provided them with that guidance around their local transport plan, so they can design what is best for their communities.

Your Department accepts a growth forecast of 10% for road traffic—I think that is annually, but it is a lot—and 12% on the SRN. In many parts of our country, the roads are clogged with traffic jams an awful lot of the time, which has a massive economic cost, as well as a cost in terms of pollution. For those journeys that could be done other than by private car, as a result of having better public transport, better interconnection and more joined-up journeys, is it not essential to have an expectation of modal shift in order to flatten the curve on the otherwise assumed growth in road traffic?

You are quite right that we are expecting road traffic to continue to grow but, as I said, our approach is not to tell people how to travel; it is to entice them by having attractive, affordable—

Are there not some targets for that?

—options there, as a result of investing in public transport and, at the same time, empowering local leaders to reflect the needs of their individual communities to get the right approach. If you look at Greater Manchester, it obviously has an ambition to improve its transport system. I think by 2040, 50% of all journeys in Greater Manchester are to be made by public transport. Ultimately, we need to improve the alternatives, rather than penalising people who often do not have those alternatives.

Are you saying that if there are any targets, it is up to local areas to have those targets? There is no national or even regional target?

There should not be a one-size-fits-all approach; it goes back to reflecting. Each area comes in a different place with different challenges.

In terms of the national road system and particularly the SRN, which you do have direct responsibility for, you are just going to accept 12% growth, and that is it?

No, Chair, what I have said is that we are going to continue to invest in public transport to make an attractive alternative for people, so they can trust that they can use alternative forms of public transport to do the journeys they currently do. But that must be attractive and affordable, and it must get them where they want to get to. We have to build trust in that, while continuing to invest in the strategic road network.

Do you mean expanding the capacity of the strategic road network?

A lot of RIS3 is around maintenance and renewal of an ageing piece of infrastructure, rather than expanding the capacity.

Not expanding. So we are not going to go back to predict and provide on our SRN?

You have seen the RIS3 in terms of what we are proposing.

In its “Access denied” report, this Committee called for the Government to publish a new inclusive transport strategy, a recommendation that the Government rejected. Some disabled transport users already feel like an afterthought when it comes to the way our transport system is designed. How do you plan to enforce the accessible travel charter, and what will the consequences be if it is breached?

Can I again commend the work on “Access denied”? It was a really stark moment of holding the mirror up to the current system. Accessibility has to be a golden thread that runs through everything we do. It cannot be treated as a separate issue, and it has often been an afterthought. If we are serious about creating a transport system that is accessible and works for everybody, that has to be built in from the start. That means ensuring operators meet their legal responsibilities, working with authorities to improve accessibility on our streets and transport networks, and strengthening accountability standards when they are not being met. As you talk about, at the moment accessibility enforcement in transport is delivered by a range of mode-specific regulators: licensing authorities and local authorities, rather than one single body. The Government set the overarching legislative framework, but responsibility for enforcement sits with the relevant regulator and authority for each mode. As I said, we are taking action nationally through rail reform. We are creating a new, stronger passenger watchdog to stand up for passengers. I know that that was something that was really highlighted in “Access denied” regarding needing that advocate for disabled passengers where services fall short. Members will also be aware that we have commissioned the Law Commission, on the back of your report as well, to review transport accessibility legislation and how it is enforced in practice, so that we can better understand those barriers and what can be done. Yes, of course, there is the accessible travel charter. We expect one of the charter commitments to be around measuring and sharing information on the changes that signatories to the charter are delivering. That will give greater transparency about how they are fulfilling their obligations under the charter as a signatory. As a Department, we will of course be publishing supporting materials for transport authorities and local authorities about the practical pledges. Transparency on commitments and progress is going to be really central in order to hold those signatories to account.

I know that you said you would be publishing further documents, but you must have some views now about how you plan to enforce the charter.

It is a voluntary charter. Enforcement comes from that transparency. In tandem, we are doing the work with the Law Commission to make sure the individual regulators are in place, where that is falling down.

Do you think disabled transport users can feel reassured that their experiences will be improved through a voluntary charter?

Yes, I think they can, in tandem with the Law Commission work.

Finally from me, will the Department revise the charter if it turns out not to be working effectively?

It would be my intention that we continue to learn. As I said, it is a voluntary charter. I would be very keen to continue that learning process and engagement with the disabled community, to make sure that if it is not working, we change the approach so that it is. I am absolutely committed. When we were talking about the last reshuffle, I said, “Please don’t move me away from accessibility.” I am absolutely passionate that we get this done and that people can really see and feel the difference. It has been a big frustration for me that, in the past, the Department has been guilty of looking at accessibility in silos. I was very keen, through things such as the charter, to have that overarching ambition and commonality of experience, if you like, and expectations across modes throughout the country.

Minister, I hear you say it is a voluntary charter, but the remit for some issues will lie with the Government or Government organisations such as Great British Railways. How do you envisage that joined-up accessible approach at railway stations? It may be between GBR and other partners. Equally, what about the joined-up work for disabled road users, the Changing Places network at motorway service stations, for instance—something I am passionate about—and how that then pans out? Also, how do you envisage the level of real-time information that will be provided to users? For most disabled passengers, it is not necessarily about the responsibility in the charter; it is about understanding whether that Changing Places in order, that lift is working and that accessibility provision is actually happening and working today. I know about that; I have had to carry my daughter in her wheelchair up escalators, up stairs and all the rest of it. If those things are not working, the whole system fails.

You are tempting me to relay exactly what is in the charter. We are still working on it, so I do not want to jump ahead there. However, in terms of places such as the railways under Great British Railways, National Highways and so on, there is not really going to be a choice about whether they are signed up or not. There will be an expectation that they will be part of this charter and leading the way. I absolutely accept what you said about real-time information. I was thinking about bus open data before, and whether there is the ability for us to say how many disabled spaces there are on buses as part of that data and so on. Real-time information is really important, of course.

Real-time information, such as whether the lifts or Changing Places are operating.

Exactly, so you know in advance, and people can be more confident about making those decisions. That is absolutely something that we consider.

What did we discover when we looked at TransPennine Express, which is a great project? The T-loops were not working. We were told, “The T-loops are working in the station.” No, they weren't.

I had the same experience in Wakefield the other day. Both lifts were off, people were there who did not know that, so they could not adapt. It is really important that we are able to let people know in a timely way, so they can adapt.

Let us move on now to governance.

What are you trying to say about the Treasury?

You are right: this is about more than just publishing a strategy; it is about making sure that we have the right people, the right governance and the right cultures in place. We have established within the DFT a dedicated team who look after each of the 40 firm commitments that we have made and hope to achieve before the end of this Parliament. Each of those has a named senior civil servant responsible for its delivery.

Yes, I will come on to that. I will let Conrad come in on the discussions he has had with other Government Departments. I thought it was important to say how we are leading and showing the way. It is being monitored through our existing governance, so there will be clear accountability for implementation. More widely, you are already seeing a growing presence in cities outside London, such as Leeds and Birmingham. That is also really important. More of our people are rooted in the communities we serve. But I will let Conrad come in on the discussions with other Government Departments, which, you are quite right, are an important factor.

My job was created a couple of years ago to put in place a much greater focus on public transport in an integrated way and on those local partnerships. One big aim was to spend much more time working with our colleagues across Government to make sure we create more of a single portal for people who need to work with Government; otherwise; it is hugely challenging. In terms of how we deliver Better Connected, Ben and his team are responsible for helping me make sure it gets delivered. We do the things we said we would do; we learn and we make changes where we need to. That work and our assessment of progress will report into what we call Placeboard, which brings together all the different parts of the Department for Transport, but also colleagues from MHCLG. It is very much a partner-led approach. We take a very similar approach on the work we do, for example, on new towns and house building. In addition, we have talked a lot within this work about outcome frameworks. There are collective boards, which are chaired by MHCLG, looking at the overall outcome frameworks. We have looked at a silo of them here—we have looked at the transport silo—but to really work, they have to be linked to all the other elements, so we do that with MHCLG. When we are looking at things such as how to help places develop their business cases and make strategic transport interventions, we work very closely with the Treasury and MHCLG on what we are calling a trial of place-based business cases. I am on the board to help direct that, along with Beth Russell, the second permanent secretary in the Treasury, who is based in Darlington. The best example of how we are trying to do things differently is the work we have been doing on the northern growth strategy and Northern Powerhouse Rail, where Tom Riordan has been appointed as the Government’s envoy, bringing together the senior teams across Government. It is very much a collaborative effort. Would I say that everything is now done and that it is straightforward and easy? Of course not. It is still complicated. We are collectively putting huge effort into this because devolution simply will not work unless the Government end of it is much more integrated and able to better partner places.

The Minister may want to answer that question. Our Ministers have put huge expectation on us under this Government to get our collective act together on devolution as the civil service. We are putting a lot of effort into that. That is about moving people out of London and making sure we have a much stronger regional footprint so that we understand the country. It is also about improving those ways of working between ourselves.

I would agree with that. I was going to give you a couple of examples of important parts of the Better Connected strategy, where we are absolutely working across Whitehall with other Government Departments. Last month, we published the third cycling and walking investment strategy. It sets lots of things, but one headline target is 55% of short-stage journeys in towns and cities to be walked or cycled by 2035. We worked very closely with the Department of Health and Social Care to understand what that would mean in terms of health benefits, as well as the transport benefits, and with local areas to understand what that would mean for them. A second target as part of that strategy, right at the top of the bill, is 60% of children aged five to 16 walking or cycling to school by 2035, up from 46% today. That is something we worked closely with the Department for Education to understand how that could be delivered and what the benefits would be. That is an example of a key part of Better Connected—active travel and encouraging places to focus on how active travel can be part of an integrated transport network—and how we have worked across Whitehall to deliver it. Personal safety on transport—particularly women’s safety, but also all sorts of other personal safety—is another important aspect. I lead the Department’s work on Safer Streets and the contribution to the Safer Streets programme that the Home Office leads. We work with the Home Office on that, and we are seen as an important contributor to it. Clearly, a lot of issues and concerns that people have about personal safety are ones they experience when they are on the public transport network, or when they are walking, in particular, or potentially cycling or wheeling. In the spending review last year, we were able to agree with the Treasury just under £17 million-worth of investment for Network Rail, soon to be GBR, to work with the British Transport Police to vastly increase the quality of CCTV coverage at stations. While it has been there for a number of years, the quality has not always been as good as it has needed to deter people and provide the police with the evidence they need. Those are a couple of examples of things that are very much part of Better Connected, where we are working across Whitehall to make sure they are delivered.

I think there has been a step change, which has come from political leadership, in breaking down that silo mentality. There was an ingrained culture within Government and civil service that meant they looked at these things in a very narrow sense. I think we have moved beyond that. There is a lot more collegiate, board-based working. You are seeing that in practice and in a very successful spending review. The settlement for us means that the Treasury absolutely gets the fundamental importance of effective transport in enabling all the other missions to be a success.

Some of the Department’s policies disincentivise integration. For example, the £3 bus cap encourages you to make one single journey by bus, not even changing to another bus, let alone a train. We also have a Bus Services Act that does not mention the railway at all, apart from rail replacement bus services. And we have a Railways Bill going through that does not mention buses. Does the Department, now that it has an integrated transport strategy, have a new integration test when coming up with new policies?

In looking at this strategy, we will be as mindful as we expect everybody else to be, and we will be playing our role in that. The Bus Services Act is a bus Act, and the Railways Act will be a rail Act. The integrated national transport strategy, Better Connected, is what binds it together.

When you have individual policies, will you be looking specifically to see whether they create a more integrated transport network?

I would see it as part of our role now. Obviously, we have a strategy in place, and we have done a lot of work to get it to where it is. It is important that we challenge ourselves when looking at future policy and ask if it is going to enable or to become a barrier, and then tackle that head on in future policy development.

The strategy sets out the Government’s view that improved transport integration can be a driver of economic growth, but it says little on how you are going to decide what transport projects will go ahead to increase productivity and growth. Can you say how you will ensure that integration will deliver economic growth?

I will start on what we are doing at a national level and then talk about the local level. At a national level, there was a review by the Treasury of the Green Book last year that made it both simpler and easier to engage with. It also really focused on making it easier for people producing business cases to take into account those wider growth aspects, as opposed to having a very narrow focus on the benefit-cost ratio. That is a big shift. I will talk a bit about what we are doing in terms of the trials of place-based business cases. We have a number of trials around the country, in Plymouth, Port Talbot, Liverpool and the Birmingham Sports Quarter. DFT is leading on one of those, which is focused around Liverpool Central. What we are trying to do there—this is very much a joint bit of work with the Treasury and MHCLG, but also our colleagues in the city region—is look at how you can take the station at Liverpool Central and use it as part of the wider ambition to regenerate the area and create growth around the station. A lot of the business case is actually driven not just by the transport needs of the station, but much more by what opportunities there are to create this new place—the vibrancy and growth opportunities there. We are still doing that work at the moment, but the aim is that we are going to use and learn from this. When I talk to places about their economic growth ambitions, transport is always part of it, but it is never just transport; it is actually about how you have those conversations about all the elements. It is very much the same when we talk about new towns. Yes, the transport is critical, but understanding what kind of jobs people are going to do and what opportunities are going to be created is very much part of the work we are doing.

In terms of those new transport projects, is there going to be a target for the amount of integration they need to achieve? Obviously, you have spoken a lot today about expectation, but is there actually going to be a requirement or target for any new projects around integration?

Given devolution, our ambition is that, where there are local transport projects, those business cases are developed by the places, but they should be informed by their growth plans, local transport plans and spatial development plans. That will naturally drive the expectation of integration. What we are not trying to do at the moment is add more requirements on places, because our judgment is that we have set out the guidance—and it is statutory guidance—on what they need to do, and we would expect them to do that. Ultimately, it is for local people to hold their local leaders to account. Clearly, when we look at a business case, we are going to look at it through that lens of growth, place, the impact on actual people’s journeys and how that integration is coming together.

The strategy sets out the plan to make transport more affordable. Picking up on Alex’s point, a lot of the measures that the Government are introducing at the moment—whether it is the rail freeze or the bus cap—are temporary. How are you doing that longer-term thinking to make transport more affordable over the long term, rather than having measures that we as a Committee think are a bit of a sticking-plaster?

That is why we are investing in reliable public transport and infrastructure. If we ensure that we have good-quality services, people have the choice to use them. If they do, that drives revenue and further reinvestment; it is a virtuous cycle, if you like, easing the pressure on household budgets, while also ensuring we deliver good value for money for taxpayers. We do that by supporting local authorities to maintain and improve local transport in their area. There are flexible options around DRT—demand-responsive transport—in providing that significant investment in bus services. Authorities can use that to provide fare discounts. In addition to the £3 bus fare cap, there is the £3 billion that goes to local areas, which they can use in whichever way they see fit to supplement that. It is £2.50 in West Yorkshire and £2 in Greater Manchester. That is much longer-term support. Overall, if we improve public transport, more people will use it, investment will go into it, it will get better and more people use it. We will then be able to drive down costs and support people with their travel costs.

I have mentioned it to you before, but my bus companies do not operate the bus cap, so my constituents do not feel the benefit of anything the Government have announced. Are you looking specifically at those areas where some of the affordability measures the Government have brought in are not being taken up?

Ultimately, as the system currently stands, they are private companies and can choose to take part or not. Because of the Bus Services Act, local areas have the power to decide to bring in franchising if they want to take greater control, or further improvements in terms of enhanced partnerships and local authority-operated bus companies. I cannot force them to take part, but I think people will vote with their feet. It is in their interest to take part; improving public transport more widely will make it a much more attractive proposition and more profitable, in order to then drive down costs.

Sticking with this topic of economic growth and the wider benefits for a moment, the example of Liverpool that you mentioned earlier was interesting. In my area, we have something called the Atom Valley Mayoral Development Corporation, which is really exciting. It is going to bring the jobs of the future and a lot of growth to my constituency and northern Greater Manchester. What are you doing at the moment to engage with mayors and the boards of mayoral development corporations to make sure that opportunities are not missed when it comes to aligning spatial planning, regeneration and house building, not just in relation to new towns? Local authorities, certainly in my area, have house building as a huge priority, so it would be interesting to understand a little about what is going on.

I am looking after this for the Secretary of State. I do not have that level of knowledge, but I know that Conrad can speak on that a bit more.

I have talked about these strategic conversations, and a huge part of that is not only hearing a place’s local transport plans, but hearing from their growth directors, chief execs and sometimes mayors what their ambitions are and how they are thinking about their mayoral development corporations, economic growth, house building and the like. What we tend to do is take those issues away. They give us the work for the year as to where we need to help partner them. Sometimes it is about specific support, sometimes it is about unblocking an issue and sometimes it is just about making sure the right people are having the right conversations. That is an ongoing piece of work that we do. We also work very closely with MHCLG, not only in engaging with places that have mayoral development corporations and the like, but also in making sure that we understand some of the challenges that house builders find when they are looking at the transport requirements from a planning application. We can just try to help grease the wheels and make things move faster. That is a big part of the work we are doing.

In an earlier question on the link between growth and delivering alternative forms of transport, other than the private car, I raised the issue of the brake on growth that congestion is. If you have those targets, it suggests that you might be considering targets on reducing congestion or at least ensuring that new developments do not add to congestion, as we have had for decades in London.

On the work we are doing with MHCLG, we are making sure that the new national planning policy framework reflects the approach we have taken to what we call vision-led planning, which is about making sure that when you are building new housing you are taking into account the choice people will want. You make sure that there are pavements, and that those pavements get you to the bus stop so you can get a bus.

It does not just mean new developments; we have looked at housing and, by implication, new places of employment. But it also means accepting the brake on growth that existing congestion is and, therefore, the powers to enable modal shift through better integration, in order to increase actual road speeds for those journeys that have to be done by a vehicle, particularly cargo freight.

My team have been working on the planning framework, because that is my area of responsibility.

To introduce this last question, I want to go back to some of the things you were saying about devolution. It is perhaps a slightly philosophical question. We have been talking about the balance between devolved Governments being able to wholly do what they want, but also contribute to a national framework. Is your thinking that, when it comes to integrated transport, or transport in general, it is entirely up to them whether they do some of this stuff and attempt to adopt a modal shift target? Or should there be an overarching set of national objectives that they are expected to contribute to, but they then decide how best they can contribute towards them?

We have set out a national framework—that national vision of where we want to get to—and are asking them to play their role in that.

In which case, would it not make sense to at least set some benchmarks or measures to assess how well they are doing that?

We will be doing that with the outcomes framework, which we have already discussed with them. It reflects their individual communities, geographies, social and economic conditions, and where they are in terms of how integrated transport currently is, so you can map their individual progress, as opposed to have one big measurement.

We have moved away from a world where we had funding competitions that led to quite uneven consequences across the country. We often focused on either the inputs or the outputs from particular bits of investment, and me and my colleagues spent a lot of time with clipboards checking that that had happened. What we are now doing is moving towards using outcome frameworks, which focus more on reflecting the vision the Government set out and seeing whether those outcomes are being delivered, but being much less intrusive about how places choose to do that, because they will have a much better understanding of their local needs than me and my colleagues ever will.

Thank you for clarifying that. Maybe I misunderstood what you were saying earlier on that topic. Turning to the last question, do you feel that integration is something that can be delivered by Government, local government and transport operators by doing what they do today but in a slightly different way? Or does it require a fundamental shift in how we plan and deliver transport in the United Kingdom?

There are strategies for improving things that we already do, but it is also about changing the way we think about transport. As I said earlier, for too long we have looked at individual modes in isolation, so we are very much trying to focus instead on the whole journey. That does not mean starting from scratch; there are already some great examples of good practice across the system. The challenge is making sure those different parts work together more effectively. I see an integrated transport system as a really important opportunity that can help people access the opportunities, housing and so on that we talked about. That will require investment over time, and different solutions will be needed in different places. What integration looks like in one place will be different to another. To deliver integrated transport in a cost-effective way, we will have to continue sharing the best practice and learnings we talked about from different local authorities. I do not know if we have mentioned this already, but the £10 million integration innovation fund is an example of where we are trying to trial solutions to identify how we can scale that up across authorities. Ultimately, the success of this strategy depends on national Government, local leaders, operators and the wider sector all pulling in the same direction. That is what this document is all about.

Any other questions? No. I am going to finish with a question. As you may have suspected from our questions—which are based on incredibly well-informed evidence, both written and from the witnesses at our sessions, the transcripts of which you will have had a chance to see in the public domain—our frustration, and their frustration, with the strategy is best summarised by one of our witnesses who said something to the effect that, “There is a lot of content on what good looks like, but generally the strategy is very weak on when, why, how, and who.” The criterion for measuring success is not really there in a comprehensive way. We have examples from other countries, yet they do not seem to fit into the strategy. Is there a chance that the Government could come back with a strategic plan for integrated transport that will cover some of these omissions?

I will take that away and consider it. Fundamentally, this is about partnership. As we said, it is one of the three Ps. It is that partnership between Government and local authorities—

Yes, I accept that, but it is about the overarching philosophy.

The timescales will be different in different places. Setting out an arbitrary national target would not necessarily be the most sensible way of approaching this if we are being realistic about delivering change that people can see and feel in their communities.

Witnesses said it could do better on the why, the when, the who and the how. I am looking forward to that. Thank you, Minister and senior civil servants, for your evidence and for the time you spent preparing to come to us today. If there is anything you did not get a chance to cover, or want to cover in more detail, please feel free to write in. That brings to an end our evidence on joined-up journeys in this inquiry. We will now reflect on what we heard today, in all our previous sessions and in the evidence we have received in writing. We will consider what recommendations we might wish to make in due course. That concludes today’s meeting.