 Mae'r ddechrau fynd i gweithio'r cymdeithasol ddiogel i fynd â gael pethau a cyd-investigoriai. Mae oedd y celf ieentwy o'r ffwrdd o aelodau mawr i ddyn nhw dyda i ddesgrifau rhaid i rhaid ffyrdd y cyfrifiad. Dafyrdd chi'n ddefnyddio cyfrifiadau yn eenblogo'i hwna wnaeth, dwi'n gallu sut i gydig ychydig i'w ddychepbwysig at gydig. Dyna ddim yn gweithio'r ddysgu yn ei osad iawn sy'n mynd i ddim yn ei bach pob mwynddiol. The only item on the agenda today is for the committee to take evidence on its freight transport inquiry from a number of transport representative groups. Can I welcome David Whitehead, director of the British Ports Association, Chris McRae, head of policy Scotland at the Freight Transport Association, David Spavin, Scottish representative of the rail freight group and Martin Reid, director Scotland and Northern Ireland of the Road-Hallage Association? Welcome, gentlemen. Perhaps I could kick off by asking you to provide the committee with an overview of the sectors that you represent and their significance to the Scottish economy. Mr Whitehead, thank you very much for the invitation. Thank you very much also for taking interest in freight. It doesn't always get the attention that it deserves, so I'm delighted to give evidence. First, to say a little bit about the British Ports Association. As it suggests, it is a UK organisation, but within that we have a very successful and active Scottish Ports Committee, which represents pretty well every port in Scotland. Just a little bit about the size of the industry, ports in Scotland handled or handled in 2013, 72 million tonnes, which may be a rather meaningless figure, but to put it into context that's certainly more than the whole of the Republic of Ireland handled. It's 15% of the UK trade and the UK has the largest ports industry within the EU, so it is a very substantial sector. The growth area in ports is handling of unitised freight, that's containers and row-row freight, and they are the particular elements that put pressure on the transport system. If you look at overall volumes for ports, they have declined because of some of the decline in the oil industry, but that doesn't correlate to any decline in pressures on the transport sector. Just a little bit about ports, public policy for ports. The public policy is very much a hands-off policy. The ports industry has a small number of business models within it, but essentially it is a private sector industry. There is no systematic subsidy of any port in Scotland. They are there to react to the market and to serve the needs of users. Generally it's fair to say that there is good port capacity in Scotland and throughout the UK. If there's need for more capacity, generally those needs can be met through developing existing facilities. On the specifics of freight, it can get quite complicated, because freight has different demands. For example, connections to the islands is a particular issue for Scotland. Connections from the west coast to Ireland as well, movements internal to Scotland, movements to the rest of the UK and movements to the EU and then internationally. All that has to be delivered within a low-carbon framework. One of the things that I would say is that it is quite complicated decisions on freight in this country. If we compare with a country like Belgium, for example, it has a short coast, it has two major ports and a huge hinterland. You know pretty much where the freight is going to go, where it's going to come into, you know where the road developments need to be, you know where the rail developments needs to. It is more complex in Scotland with different and competing demands. I think also a lot of the conversation and discussion tends to be rather passenger focus. Quite understand that and sometimes passenger transport and freight transport is complementary. Sometimes it isn't, but that's one of the dilemmas that has to be resolved. We have no doubt, I mean we read obviously Scottish government statements about transport. There's a clear commitment to transport to investment, transport, clear recognition of the importance of transport. We have no problem there. But I think that there are probably three particular layers of transport investment we are interested in. First is within urban areas and the efficiency of the transport links within cities, within the larger towns and cities. Then connections between those urban areas, absolutely vital. Then it's connecting the major international gateways. Of course ports represent the main international gateway for Scotland. So three elements that have to be looked at. It's not all about building big motorways or even necessarily dualling. Some of the projects, we gave an indicative list to the committee. Some of them are quite modest in a way. It's about relieving congestions within towns, for example, therefore making the links to ports easier. So it's a real mixture of high prestige projects, if you like, but quite modest ones as well. Sometimes perhaps the modest ones tend to get a little bit overlooked. Also perhaps to stone a last remark, it's also very much about maintenance. The Institute of Civil Engineers came up with a nice, convenient figure of £1.5 billion needed just to repair the network and maintain the network, let alone invest in anything new. So there's a real need there for funds to be available. So I think it's about recognising freight as an issue within that sort of context. I have to say it's about finding the funding. I suppose most transport discussions come back to the money, where it's going to come from, who's going to pay and the fairness of that. So it has to eventually be a discussion about that, I think. Thank you very much. Who's next? If I go next, please. I'm Chris McCrary. I'm head of policy in Scotland for the Freight Transport Association. The Freight Transport Association is a UK-based trade association. It's one of the UK's largest trade associations. Uniquely it provides a voice for the whole of the UK's logistics sector. We have over 14,000 members, and essentially our role as a trade association is to help these members enhance the safety, the efficiency and the sustainability of freight movements across their supply chains, irrespective of whichever mode of transport they're operating in, and our members operate in all modes of transport, road, rail, sea and air. On the road side, our members operate over 200,000 goods vehicles, which is about approximately half of the UK operator-licensed goods vehicle fleet, and also some 1 million livery vans. In addition, our members consign over 90% of the freight moved by rail, and over 70% of freight moved by sea and by air. FTA's role very much is to work with its members to influence transport policies and decisions taken at a local level, at a national level, including within devolved administrations, at a UK level and increasingly at a European level to ensure that they recognise the needs of industry supply chains. Broadly, we welcome this enquire. We think it's very good that there's this enquire and this interest being shown in the freight transport industry within Scotland. As we'll probably come on to pick out in issues that we've put into our submission, Scotland faces some very unique challenges in terms of geographical peripherality. The challenge of the freight and logistics industry is to ensure that that geographic peripherality does not translate into an economic peripherality, and therefore what is important for industry and what is important for government is to have in place policies in terms of transport infrastructure and transport connections that help Scotland to compete in UK, European and also global markets in terms of its exports, but also to source the products that its domestic economy needs again from across the globe and from across the UK and have them efficiently transported within Scotland. Thank you, convener. I'm David Spave and I'm the Scottish representative of the rail freight group. We represent users and suppliers of rail freight throughout Britain. We've got around 120 members and they range, as we like to say, everyone from MERSC to Marks and Spencer's. The latter you know, the former you may not know, MERSC is the largest container shipping line in the world. So a wide range of members, including Scotland, some of the major road hauliers like WH Malcolm and Russell's, port authorities as well because they have an interest in multimodal transport. So we like to think we have a broad perspective about rail freight is our key concern. Rail freight is relatively small but could be much larger part of the freight scene in Scotland. We handle something like 14 million tonnes a year, got something like a 10% share of the market. The key markets where rail operates, you won't be surprised here, is movement of coal. Coal has been a traditional rail commodity since, well almost 200 years ago when the railways were first invented, although in some decline now. The other long traditional rail market has been the movement of deep sea containers to the big deep sea ports in England and Coatbridge freight liner terminal since 1970 has been an absolutely key hub for Scottish exports. Not terribly well known and that's what I think one issue about freight generally tends to be rather hidden away. Freight trains tend to run at night so it's not terribly obvious but absolutely fundamental the role of rail and deep sea exports. More recently rail has been very successful in developing domestic intermodal, that's container traffic and in essence that has been supermarket supplies coming from national distribution centres in the west midlands of England up to the central belt and also secondary distribution onwards from the central belt up to Inverness and Aberdeen and I'm sure many of you will have heard or seen of the Tesco train that runs to Inverness and there's an equivalent for ASDA runs to Aberdeen. So a big role in markets that might traditionally have been thought as too difficult for rail but rails prove to have 95% reliability in that sector. Rail has got its strengths, it's also got its weaknesses, we need volume on rail and that's one of the key on-going issues, how do you aggregate enough volume, very often you need road hauliers to help with you to create that critical mass. Government has a key role I think rail freight meets many of the Scottish Government's objectives both in transport terms and in its wider policy terms. Key issues for us are a level playing field with the other modes of transport and I think this may come out in the discussion areas where we feel the competition is not fair. Rail's got a lot of potential in terms of its economic benefits, it's contributing to resilience of the Scottish economy, contributing to climate change. The issues I think and again will probably come on to this, a lot of it's to do with the capacity and capability of the network and also to do with Government grant schemes, how they work or don't work and the scope not least for some more innovation in the industry. Thank you. My name is Martin Reid and I represent the Road Colleges Association. Quite simply, 85% of everything that gets delivered by road. Our members are a resilient bunch, they take from point A to point B depending on what the contract is. The RHA is a UK-based organisation but we have a strong presence in Scotland. We share a number of members with both the FTA and the rail freight group and David mentioned Malcolm's and Russell's there. These are the larger end of the market but around 27% of our members own one or two lorries. Traditionally, these have been the guys that have been the most difficult to engage with and the guys that are at the bottom of the supply chain, if you like. The industry is coming out of recession like many others and is emerging as a compliant forward thinking and nimble industry. Margins remain tight and driver shortage remains a key problem for the industry but these are things that we're working with Government on this side of the border and the other side to overcome and, as I said, we remain a nimble and forward thinking and compliant industry there to meet the needs of the nation and its economy. Okay, thank you very much Mr Reid and thank you gentlemen for setting the scene for us this morning. Mr Whitehead, you talked about the challenges around repairing the network and Mr McCree talked about geographic peripherality and ensuring that that wasn't translated into remoteness from key markets. We will touch on each of the individual sectors in turn but can you say a little about the current infrastructure surrounding the industry and what the particular challenges are for each of your members? From the ports industry. Absolutely. Well they are a mixture of challenges as I said we put in not an exhaustive list but an indicative list in the submission that we made and that is a mixture I think if you take somewhere like a city like Aberdeen, a city such as Edinburgh particular issues there are congestion within the cities so that it's the last mile issues of getting goods in and out of the port that are a particular problem for those. Then for others, dualling the road from Inverness to Aberdeen for example I think that's earmarked for completion by 2030 which is a long time away so this connecting urban centres seems to be in the plans but not particularly seems to me to us ambitious targets to complete those. I mean obviously Scotland will always have its issues with peripherality. We're never going to solve those but I do think that more investment in the infrastructure system would assist and one of the things we would like to see, I think one of the gaps that we have although we will talk to Transport Scotland about a lot of things we don't formally ever speak to them really about the needs of ports and as I mentioned earlier ports are private sector they're not part of public spending so there's always a risk that we get a little bit marginalised from the discussions on public spending. The road guys will sit there of course they will because they're very much part of the system we're a little bit outside of that maybe it's our fault but we are outside of that so as we put in our submission I would hope that one of the outcomes of this inquiry is that there's some formal route for us to have a conversation with Transport Scotland to present the needed investment that we have to talk about future growth and so forth and formalise that process. Why hasn't that happened to Deed? Well it probably does but in a rather patchy way and in fairness to Transport Scotland in fact at the end of last year we had a meeting involved us and the Chamber of Shipping to get a group of the maritime sector together and it's maritime sector which is the key player here and maybe through that that is the opportunity to start to have this conversation but it is a gap at the moment. Anyone else? I think the points that my colleague makes that are very valid ones particularly in relation to the ports sector. We mentioned about Scotland's place in the supply chain and effectively its routes to and from global and European markets effectively those tend to be via the south of England haven gateway ports and therefore infrastructure links to and from those whether that be road or rail or in the case of the maritime sector coastal feedering shipping is very important. It's because of that that cross border road and rail links and investment in that on the Scottish side to complement that going on on the English side of the border remains very very important for Scotland in terms of allowing it to compete in global markets and also to source and feed its imports coming in via the south Midlands distribution centres. I think Scottish Government in the form of Transport Scotland has got very good links with the freight industry through the Scottish freight logistics advisory group which a number of us or colleagues of us are members of. There are also specific sections within that looking at ports and harbours and ports and harbours issues as well. I think that it's very important and that's why this inquiry is so welcome. It's very important to keep an eye on the voice and the issues of the freight industry and the logistics industry and how that can help with national improvement within Scotland. Come in after Chris and echo what he said about some of the consultation that's been going on as well as this inquiry. Scott Flagg is proving a useful forum and this committee and rail freight group around a year ago had quite a lot of concerns about the way the strategic planning process is working, not very fairly in favour of rail freight compared to sea freight for example. There's now a subgroup being set up of Scott Flagg to look at the issue of the relationship between freight and strategic planning and I think that's a very welcome development. We also have Transport and Representation on what we call the Scottish freight joint board, which is a railway joint board of rail hauliers and the big logistics players as well. There's now a rail freight strategy being developed by Transport Scotland and there's been some very good consultation there and I must say a great openness to new ideas which is very welcome. I would echo what Chris has said about the international links. I think that there's quite a distinction between the Anglo-Scottish links and the internal Scottish and if you, in terms of rail freight, the key route is the west coast main line from Graingemouth, Copebridge and Mossend down through the west midlands to the deep sea ports, which Chris referred to. While there is pretty good capacity and capability on that route, we actually could have greater capability for the tallest and widest of the modern generation of containers. There's also an interesting conundrum that's been developing for some time in that we run a mixed railway that's passenger and freight trains. When you have 125 miles an hour passenger trains and freight trains that have got a maximum of 75 miles an hour, there's an issue of finding capacity for the freight trains. You very often have to pull into loops at the side of the main line to allow passenger trains to run through. The most cost effective freight trains are big, long trains up to 775 metres long. A lot of the loops aren't that long and this is equally true going north of the central belt. It's a problem getting passed to Aberdeen because of short loops. There are also big problems because of a single track. Two thirds of the Perth Inverness route is a single track. There are still single track bottlenecks on the routes from Central Scotland to Aberdeen. At a time when all trunk roads are dual lane and many are dual carriageway, there really is an issue about the relative competitive capabilities. For example, we have a big worry that the competitive situation will get even worse up to Inverness because of a fully dual day nine with a predominantly single track Perth Inverness railway is not a level playing field. I'm sure we'll come on to some of the detail of that, particularly around any costings that you have undertaken in terms of what would be required to address some of the infrastructure challenges. Mr Reid, did you have anything to add? Most of it has been said, I have to say, but for the road haulages side of things, that we are very happy with the level of engagement that we have with Transport Scotland on a number of different levels. A number of the groups that were mentioned there that we are part of as well, but I would echo what David said at the beginning, that it's not necessarily the trunk roads that are the problem, it's the last mile getting to delivery. So sometimes the roads that come under the auspices of the local authorities tend to not match the standard of the trunk roads in terms of the state of repair. But other than that, I think that we can look at some of the things as we develop the arguments, but most of it... The only other thing that I would add is that I think that the engagement that we have with Transport Scotland through the various groups that we were talking brings together an idea that we need to come up with a holistic approach to how we look at transport. Although my reason for being here is to represent the road haulage association, I don't think that it's necessary that the road haulage area should benefit of the detriment of some of the other modes of transport. I think that there's a holistic approach that we could have that looks at transport in general and moving freight around the country and to Europe and beyond. Thank you. Mike, did you have a question? Thank you for doing that, yeah. I think it's been long acknowledged that the link between growth and freight volume or weight has been kind of long established, but in recent years there's been a suggestion that that link has become kind of decoupled and there is no longer that clear relationship. Do you have any thoughts about that and the implications for freight in general and our approach to it? If I may, there's been a trend through all sectors of the freight industry, I'm sorry, I'll rephrase that, through all modes of freight industry to ensure greater efficiency in the delivery of freight and that that very much picks up on the point that you've made about a decoupling between actual economic growth and the amount of actual freight movements, where there's been an emphasis on having more payload over the years carried on lorries, longer and heavier trains, larger and bigger ships moving around the world. That leads to greater economic efficiency. It does, as colleagues have explained, put strain on the transport networks because it means, for example, a very large ship calling at a south of England gateway port. Effectively equivalent of five days' work is to be done in three days by the road hauliers of the rail freight companies to actually deliver that volume from that ship. Putting 775 metre length trains on the railway network has obviously infrastructural constraints and requires investment, but allows for goods to be moved more economically efficiently. The economic growth of which you speak and its relationship with freight volumes is a very important one. To allow for increasing efficiency in the freight industry, it's not just about the freight industry investing itself, but it's also about government assisting with infrastructural improvements, which we may come on to talk about a little bit later. If I could just turn on the back of that because it's a kind of macro level kind of question that's a similar point in a sense, and the point really is maybe we're always prepared to fight yesterday's battles, but never tomorrow's battles. In Orkney you may know that there's been a fairly longstanding proposition to use SCAPA flow as a container port, and more recently a fairly, I think, or certainly in some quarters, what seems to be a credible proposal to have a floating container port. And a lot of that thinking is about the shrinking of Arctic ice and the opening up of that northern route. And therefore, I just wonder if how you feel about the possibility of a kind of game changing set of circumstances that means that the way we think about freight at the moment, and I take it your submissions are based on that, may change fairly profoundly, fairly radically, and do you have any thoughts on that? The proposal is a very interesting one, and for that to go through, and it would be great if it did go through, a unique commitment from the shipping industry, and I think the shipping industry must be one of the most conservative industries in the world. It never really wishes to change where it goes to, and it wants the easiest routes all the time. And of course, the container business, has made, has suffered terrible things over the last seven or eight years as well, so it's not quite a sort of fashionable thing at the moment. But yes, it could possibly happen, but it would need quite a reconfiguration of current trends, and things don't change really overnight. And I think what I would say more generally for planning in Scotland, the thing to be aware of, is this growth on the mainland of unitised trade, and that's a 50% growth since early 2000s, and that is really more lorries on the road, possibly more trains as well. Now when we had, last time we had forecasts, I think we did them around about 2006, 2007, these are UK forecasts, and we were looking there at plus 4% for containers every year, plus 3% for railroad traffic. Now obviously, after 2007, there was a bit of a dip there, but it's starting to come back. But I think the reality for planning, and in the future, is I'm convinced, we are convinced that unitised trade and the pressures that they will exert on the transport system will be the big feature of the future, and there will be significant growth there. I think it might be worth adding that when there was discussion about the Orkney proposal, there was a similar proposal for Hunterston, and as David said, the shipping lines were not willing to commit to a major change like that. I think Hunterston was interesting because obviously, it was a landfall as well as a seafall, so you had the opportunity for road and rail distribution from there as well. And I wonder if with the trends in coal, and Hunterston being primarily a coal port, I wonder if with the trends in coal, that may open up opportunities where people are holding so on. Hunterston may be looking to develop that kind of issue. In terms of game changer, a number of things have been going on. It is a very dynamic industry, and to keep up with it can be hard for all the players, but we're seeing more now of what's called port-centric development, so instead of a container coming into Felixstho and being roaded or railed up to Birmingham for a major distribution centre, we'll be located in the port. Now, whether that's got direct implications for Scotland or not is another matter. It tends to be the big ports down south, but my feeling is from the point of view of the Scottish economy and the benefits we can get, we should be port neutral, and we should be mode neutral. We should just think what is the best overall cost-benefit balance for Scotland. I think one of the issues for game changing is one that the rail industry needs to think long and hard about, and it's about innovation, and the rail industry has sometimes not been as clever on innovation as the shipping industry has at times in Scotland, but that may depend on encouragement for, for example, rail hauliers to work together. We've got a situation that won't work. We've got four or five rail hauliers operating in Scotland, so it means that if two or three of them are running to one location like Aberdeen, the offer is spread quite thin, whereas if there was co-operation together, perhaps on the back of providing a pool of special low-deck wagons to get the biggest height containers of the hauliers we're working together, perhaps we could get an interesting new dimension there. There's also issues in which I think the Scottish Government could help. We may come onto this under the heading of innovation. There's a number of interesting things that have been kicking around the rail industry for some time about technical innovation to help the freight offer, but they have not been able to make their way through a somewhat conservative framework, but we could perhaps develop that later. Thank you. We could move on. Alex, you've some questions. Yes, I was going to talk specifically about the roads issues. You've said some things already about roads and the fact that the infrastructure is fairly strong. It's improving, but there are, of course, still bottlenecks in the road network. I wondered if you had any views on what the priorities needed to be with these few issues that still exist in Scotland's road networks. Well, I guess when you're looking at the pinch points, then each one has to be looked at individually. There's an argument there that, certainly for delivering it into city centres, then perhaps some sort of consolidation centre on the outside would help. The issue is that we've got more and more road transport and less and less space on the roads, so there has to be something done about it. As far as the hauliers are concerned, then there are issues for us that could be helped, not just consolidation centres, but separate places for rest and breaks, which means that the guys would be off-road when they're taking these. The lay-by situations on most of the trunk roads are not suitable for that kind of thing, so there's a holistic approach there. In terms of you're looking at low emission zones as well, in certain ones of the pinch points as well, most of the city centres are now looking at these low emission zones, so we engage with them on a number of levels there to try and work out the best solutions. But if it gets to a stage where you've got consolidations on the outside of the centre and then you've maybe got vans taking things in where applicable, then that would make a bit of sense and it would also reduce, it would comply with the low emissions zone stuff as well. Another important issue picking up on that is the issue about the timing of deliveries, particularly into urban centres. During the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, because of the sheer volume of spectators coming into Glasgow, re-timing of deliveries had to be looked at as well because of certain of the route restrictions that were put in place. We were certainly very successful in working with Glasgow City Council in putting in place a code of practice on night-time deliveries, very much copied from this dev idea and the experience of London during the Olympic Games. But that type of fresh, out-of-the-box thinking in terms of when goods could actually be delivered to minimise urban congestion, warrants being looked at further across the other cities of Scotland in terms of how to make deliveries into urban centres and minimise the traffic impact. It's also, of course, on that important point that goods vehicles operate at their most efficient when they're actually moving into constant speed, not when they're sitting in a traffic jam. I know that perhaps it's stating the obvious, but the danger of having so many vehicles in the city centre during day times because they're maybe not allowed to deliver at night does tend to push them into operating in a not terribly fuel efficient and therefore carbon and emission efficient manner. There are some initiatives there that can be looked at and copied more widely in the cities of Scotland. I'll get into what Chris was saying there. Taking the Commonwealth Games as an example, the way that everybody worked together and pulled together on that meant that for the entire period of the Games we never took one negative phone call from a haulier saying that they couldn't get access, they were stuck in traffic, that there was a road closed, that we didn't have one single aspect of that, and I think that's because of the joined-up nature of things, which sadly was a one-off rather than the norm, unfortunately. The other thing to take into account is that, certainly for the road haulier side of things, we can deliver whatever time anybody wants, but we need somebody at the other end to take the stuff off the lorry. In order to look at a shift pattern, most of the guys already operate shift patterns anyway, but it's the end point of the delivery that can often be the problem in terms of taking that forward, where the people receiving at the other end don't have anybody in at the time that we can deliver to. I'm picking up a very clear message that it's the urban environment that's causing the biggest problems to the road haulage industry at the moment, but before we leave it entirely, is there anything on the trunk road network that you feel still needs to be addressed? Well, as I mentioned before, rest stops are a big problem for us. You know roads that require upgrading that are not on the programme to do that? I think that the A1 could do with it. I think that you would agree with that, Chris. The A1 could do with development. Obviously, England and Wales have announced a programme of road improvements, and they're going to dual it all the way up to the Scottish border, so we need to match that, I think, up here. David mentioned that the west coast is a key operational route, but for the east coast it's all the A1. We need to match that down there. The A96 is being looked at, I believe, for Transport Scotland, the development side of things there, and obviously the A9 is on-going. That would take care of the majority, because what we've found, certainly when we're looking at freight moving round Scotland, then it tends to move in an anticlockwise manner, so it will go up the east coast, and down the A9 rather than up the A9 for the majority of the freight that we've found. That rectangle, essentially, is essential. Are there any specific issues, for example, regarding access to Cairn Ryan, or the West Highland routes? The A75 is always a problem, especially when there's adverse weather. I only heard yesterday, that this hasn't been confirmed, but I've heard that the road that they use for stacking and winter resilience down at Cairn Ryan is about to go under a bit of development, which means that there will be problems should stacking be required there, so that's something that needs looking at. The A82 is a perennial problem, and so is the A83. People forget about the importance of the A83 to those that are down in the west tip of Scotland. But, essentially, that runs from Oban all the way down to Macrahanish, essentially. That's an essential point. When you look at the amount of trouble that they have with land slippage there, then that sticking plasters don't work on that road. It needs major investment to be done on that road. That's a particular issue for us as Cairn Ryan, as it wasn't on our list that we submitted, but it will be on another list. That's a good example of where improvements are needed, and they've been known about for many, many years, but they just haven't been delivered yet. As I said earlier, I think that the overall problem, I think that all the plans are there. It's just a very long-term programme to improve the trunk network, and I think that that is a big issue. May I just add a very quick point on the A1, please? That is that David spoke earlier on about the development of port-centric logistics, and a key port that is doing that is Teesport. It's for that reason that it's very important that there is consequential investment in upgrading the A1 to effectively make the A1 not only a viable alternative to the routes in the west, but also so that traffic to and from Teesport can actually effectively be developed. That is happening on the railway side. There's joined up investment across the border from England into Scotland on gauge-clearing the network for rail freight across the border from England into Scotland on the east coast. It's important that that's matched by consequential roads investment to give a viable option in terms of road freight, road freight 2. Could I perhaps follow on from that? Not surprisingly, perhaps, a slightly different perspective. My view is that these key corridors that we're looking at should be regarded as transport corridors. We should be, in a sense, mode-neutral and we should say what's the best solution in terms of the market and in terms of policy outcomes? What's the right balance between road rail and other modes on a particular corridor? I think one of our big concerns is that the process for looking at different modes on a particular corridor are really quite isolated. If you take the A9 in the Highland Main Line as an example, two entirely separate appraisal processes have been going on, one of which is leading towards full dualling of the A9 at a cost of £3 billion, the other one perhaps leading to a maximum of £600 million to be spent on upgrading the largely single track Highland Main Line. Our view is that there should be a cross-modal appraisal which says what's the right package, what's the right mix of road and rail improvements to get the optimum outcome in terms of policy outcomes, value for money for the taxpayer and meeting market needs? I don't think that's happening at the moment. I've mentioned the A9, Chris has mentioned the East Coast Main Line. Again, I would say a cross-modal approach is important. We are seeing clearance of the East Coast Main Line for the tallest of containers, which is very welcome. That's coming in next year, but there's still this issue of getting the long loops so we can get trains down to Teesport and further south more quickly. The A82 was mentioned. There's a railway parallel to there, which carries some freight, but not enough in the West Highland Line, very constrained by issues around the railway infrastructure. They're extremely constrained, very short crossing loops. Freight trains have to slow down to a snail's pace over some of the bridges. Now, there's an issue in there. Can we afford the investment to upgrade that railway for freight? Is it worth doing it? I don't know the answer to that, but also, perhaps more importantly, is there an opportunity for some kind of innovation in there in terms of rail operations? Can we run a lightweight freight train, for example, that might need a bit of pump priming from Scottish Government in terms of a new development to tap into markets that rail is not perhaps being very good at so far? I would emphasise the importance of trying to be cross-modal in all those corridors. One of the issues when you're looking at that side of the country is the timber transport side of things. They found it increasingly more difficult because of the state of the roads in that area, particularly when adverse weather kicks in or when areas where there's land slippage and things like that. It completely isolates. The timber transport side of things is a very important aspect when it comes to the Scottish economy. I'm thinking still about roads. Is there anything in terms of policy and regulation that could be improved to make road haul easier in Scotland? It comes back to the issue of who looks after the roads. As I said, the trunk roads are of a definitely different standard to those under the auspices of the local authorities. Are you suggesting that when you drive from a trunk road on to a local authority road, you can feel it through the wheels? You may think that, but I couldn't possibly comment. The last question that I wanted to ask is a specific one for the road haul industry. We've seen the recent increase in the speed limit for HDVs on the A9. I wondered if you had any feedback on that from your members. Yes, it's a simple answer. We've had a fair bit of feedback. Hauliers almost universally think it's been great. Journey times for the majority have dropped. I don't think it's the same for cars, but certainly for HDVs, then the journey times in a lot of cases have dropped. One of our members did a test out with us. It was nothing to do with us. It was with transport news, and they drove up the A9 the day before the trial and drove down the day of the trial, and there was more than a 30-minute difference. The increase in the speed led to using an extra half a gallon of diesel, which equated to £51 cost for the efficiency side of things. I've met Transport Scotland, and they've recently published some of the statistics, which I would say are encouraging. We are aware that this is a trial, and it's a trial for a three-year period, so we don't want to get too excited too early in the process, but I think what we could safely say is that it's a promise in start. We do have concerns about cross-border issues now with England and Wales moving without trial to the new speed limits. So there'll be a bit of confusion there when they go cross-border, but we're absolutely behind the terms and conditions of the trial, and we fully supported it. Can Dras just come in there, although it's a road issue? It does have relevance for rail. Martin mentioned the lower journey times for HGVs. That immediately has a competitive impact on the average of two freight trains a day running to Inverness. The railways are not in a position to up its speed limits without investment, so we've got a situation where road haulage economics have been improved, but rail can't be increased in the same way. The worry is, and this leads on to the concerns of A9 dualling, that instead of this leading to a shift of freight from road to rail, which is government policy and has been for a long, long time, we could see a shift of freight from rail to road, which is the opposite outcome. So, again, the lack of that cross-modal analysis of the outcome of a specific road measure is the sort of concern that we have. I was just going to add that FTA certainly fully supports that the trial and the evidence gathering that that trial can give on the A9 of the higher speed limit for heavy goods vehicles, but it is, of course, only an interim measure until the completion of the full dualling of the A9, and we mustn't obviously take our eyes off of that. I would echo the point that Martin made about the fact that, while this has been being done, the DFT has decided to raise the speed limits for heavy goods vehicles on single-carriage railroads and the dual-carriage ways in England and Wales. I think what we would like to see is that the evidence of what is being done in England and Wales can perhaps be examined to see whether there can be any benefit of that in Scotland, because obviously having differential speed limits between the two countries and either side of the border, it is not just a matter of confusion and enforcement, it is also a matter of economic competitiveness, and I think that we would want to see a resolution of those issues longer term. I think that the other point that I would make, just to pick up on David's point, is that we represent rail freight into two, and we obviously very much support the investment in the Highland main line and work that is being done by the Scottish Freight Joint Board to ensure that particularly more retail freight can travel up the Highland main line. I think as well as the point that David has made about cross-modal approaches being taken along transport corridors, what is also very important is that whether it is road or rail freight, that when investment is being made there is a whole systems approach taken to look at the network-wide benefits of improvement of a particular network, be that road or rail, not just for freight or passenger, but for all the users of that network together. Too often on the road network and certainly on the rail network, there are investment decisions made in isolation about will-it-benefit rail passengers, will-it-benefit car drivers, will-it-benefit road freight or rail freight, where there is actually, particularly in railways, it has got to be done in an integrated, whole systems-based approach. If I could add one other thing there to the question of the A9, is that the safety element as well, the hauliers feel that the safety element has improved by reducing the differential from 20 miles an hour to 10 miles an hour between what cars can do and what ACVs can do, has meant that there has been a palpable drop in driver frustration. The flip side of that is that we made it very clear to our members and to hauliers that are not our members through the wider press that the responsibility, there is a very strong responsibility on the driver there. Transport managers needed to monitor their driver's behaviour, so we had minimal chances of what they call elephant racing where the two lorries tried to take miles to overtake each other, but the fact remains that because they are going 50, there is no opportunity for them to overtake anyway. It also means that they can engage their highest ratio gear, which makes it far more economical as well and therefore helps reduction in emissions as well. As I said, universally, or almost universally, the haulage industry has welcomed the trial and is encouraged by the numbers that Transport Scotland has produced. Thank you. James. I want to ask a couple of questions about the freight grants schemes. I see and written evidence that you are generally pleased that the modal shift grants were retained in Scotland, but can I ask, are these schemes working and helping to move freight off the roads and on to more sustainable modes of transport? Respond from Port Sector, yes. I mean, it's true. We do have the freight grants modal shift schemes. I think in terms of shifting goods on to water, the schemes are a little bit different from schemes to favour the rail industry. So there could be an equivalent there. That might be an objective. My understanding for the water scheme is it's just conserved with capital costs and not with operating costs, so there could be room for some expansion there. I think there's a little bit of a dilemma about these modal shift schemes and value for money. Of course, if they are there on offer, we will gladly take them and try and use them in as positive a way as possible. I've seen latest figures, but sometimes the take-up can be quite low. And I suppose if you're looking into the future and where money is best spent, there could be an argument, I consulted my members recently, there could be an argument to say that any money spare should just be put into the kind of developments we've talked about, the trunk roads, urban schemes and so forth. So I think it is a bit of a dilemma here, but we've got what we've got and it could be a bit better, I think, on the modal shift. Could I say that, yes, I think it's been very useful having the various grant schemes and they have benefited both rail and sea. In fact, sea has had something like £24 million in capital grants since 1997 and about £3.5 million of revenue subsidy as well. Even more recently, a £200,000 euro grant towards the recise of the Brugge ferry, which we could perhaps come back to. In terms of the system works, if you speak to civil servants at Transport Scotland, they have a degree of frustration about trying to spend the money on rail schemes because it can be quite difficult to get commitment. Typically, the Government is looking for a three or five-year commitment in order to award the grant. That can be difficult. A very good example is the case of Coatbridge Freightliner terminal, which I mentioned has been around since 1970. It is an absolutely key hub for Scottish exports. Coatbridge has got six gantry cranes. They all date from the late 1960s and the early 1970s. Freightliner, as a company, has been unable to make a business case to replace these cranes, as the margins, as Martin talked about in the wider context of road knowledge, are very tight in intermodal transport. It has not been possible for Coatbridge to get freight facilities grant to get a commitment from customers. Virtually all of Freightliner's business now is spot business. It's not contract. They have over 200 customers and the idea that you can get commitment from 200 different customers that, yes, I will use rail for the next three or five years, it's just not going to happen. I do think that there's a case for reviewing how freight facilities grants work to see if it can better fit the reality of the modern supply chain. If I may add on that, we do actually still have freight facilities grant within Scotland. In fact, it's actually been removed in England. In fact, the UK Government has actually handed back the permission in respect of England, so only actually now is held by the UK in respect of being awarded within Scotland. I think our experience of Mojave grants is that the system is not perfect for reasons that colleagues have outlined, but it does help inform model choice in terms of movement to less polluting modes of transport. There could potentially be some technical improvements in the Mojave grants regime to make it perhaps a bit more mode blind between rail and water freight. There are particular issues at the European level with the working of the water born freight grant scheme in terms of state aid approvals where that means that potential grants for coastal shipping have to operate on a different basis from grants for rail freight within the UK. There's a more detailed work that needs to be done there. Overall, yes. Mojave grants serve a purpose and serve a function in terms of assisting with informed choice about model shift away from road to less polluting modes of transport, where that's cost effective and where that's technologically possible. I think we could perhaps also look at some of the experience elsewhere. The freight facilities grant and mode shift revenue support and the water born freight grant are all to do with environmental benefits and are all measured by the same formula. As Chris said, freight facilities grant isn't applicable in England anymore, but there is something called the regional growth fund in England which is to do with economic development and that is funded three rail freight schemes in England in the last five years or so. That's based on economic benefits and I do wonder if in a review of how these grants work maybe it's worthwhile to look at not just environmental benefits but the economic benefits as well. It's quite an interesting area in transport because quite rightly there's a move to transfer to rail and to water but if you look at the figures and these are figures for the whole of the EU since 1993 and if you look at the shares of freight handled by road, rail sea and aviation they are exactly the same now as they were in 1993 in spite of all the efforts that have been made grants and so forth which really suggests that there is a transport market of course there is and you've got three main modes there and the freight movers and forwarders choose the mode which suits them and until you actually pay someone to choose a particular mode for environmental reasons you need to actually give them money I generally think nothing will really change because the market will make its choices so I think any sort of public policy to change mode it's got to be a very substantial policy if that is the objective otherwise the market will decide. Martin, do you have any view on this? I don't wonder but I'm quite happy with them all going by road. I probably just wanted you to put that in the record. No, as we said at the start or as I said at the start I think a holistic approach benefits the entire transport network so I was being a wee bit glib there but I'm aware that a load of hauliers are already utilising the railway network for terminal terminal work so where it's applicable and as Chris said where it's economically viable then we're already adopting some of that and there would be no issue from the road haulage industry at all in terms of trying to expand that because at the end of the day we're trying to improve the service that we provide for our clients and also be as compliant as we possibly can. Can I just ask in practical terms the members' experiences of applying for the grants how easy is it the sort of hoops you've got to jump through etc? It's difficult and it's not easy now it's right that it should be difficult because this is sorry, I'll rephrase that it's right that it should be rigorous because it's obviously public money and taxpayers' money that is being spent so it's absolutely correct that there's proper rigor within the system I think that there are examples and there's quite some detail on that where members do feel that perhaps that rigor can be perhaps a little excessive at times I think that there is also different experience of dealing with the different administrations within the UK on grant issues because while it's the United Kingdom that holds the grant approvals the actual administration of them is devolved to the devolved authorities in terms of Scotland and Wales but for England it's held by the DFT and experience is different around the different parts of the UK there are some differences I think in application as well in the different parts of the UK and that can cause some issues I think perhaps one of the bigger bug bears particularly on the rail freight side is things like capital grant which traditionally has been given for things like cranes or physical infrastructure at terminals could that not perhaps be given for specialised railway wagons that allow the increasingly common 9ft 6 deep sea intermodal containers to be taken on specialist wagons rather than have to do infrastructure work to bridges and platforms and things to actually allow that train to run that would certainly help and assist in modal shift arguably it could be cheaper for a government to spend money on a fleet of wagons like that than actually physically doing things to tunnels to actually run trains it might actually work cheaper in the long run but not really allowed under the current interpretation of the grant rules so it's complex and it's difficult there's been a whole review of that recently as part of the UK's re-approval of its state aid permissions with the European Union but on the whole which have grant you a good idea I would just add one thing David mentioned at the start there that we've got a number of members who operate intermodally and one of them would be WH Malcoms who are probably the biggest in the country if you were looking to look for first hand information on this I mean for example WH Malcoms have developed their own trailer which could be directly lifted off a truck and put onto a train so you know they're experimenting in those areas there if the convener or the committee were of a mind to do this I could organise a visit if you wanted to see this first hand and see how to go to it You got there before me that's fair enough It would be very worthwhile if you have the time to go and have a look at Coatbridge Freightliner terminal I was there recently and it is a revelation to see so much with so little but could do a lot more Our thinking is also an alignment with yours on that Could I also just echo what Chris said about this issue of fixed equipment as opposed to wagons I think there's some interesting possibilities for wagons I think the concern in the past has been well if you granted wagons well they could end up going anywhere well with computerised systems you can ensure they don't go anywhere that they stay within Scotland Can I maybe just add to that convener that the importance of Coatbridge as an iddlin freight terminal for Scotland can't really be overestimated it effectively is Scotland's inland port in terms of distribution to and from the south midlands of England and the southern gateway ports It also is an interesting case study to look at in terms of the issues we've discussed or Martin's discussed I think about last mile infrastructure in that while it's near an excellent trunk road network to access that trunk road network or to get from the trunk road network to Freightliner Coatbridge obviously takes you across local authority maintained roads and in England with the recently published road investment strategy one of the new policy developments there is that perhaps for last mile infrastructure where investment is required even though it will be over a local authority network central Government can take control of the funding and the delivery of a project like that and in many cases that's crucially important in terms of access to a container port access to a place like Teesport in terms of port centric logistics in the Scottish context access to a place like Freightliner intermodal terminal so this last mile issue and who controls and looks after investment of the infrastructure connecting ports and rail terminals to the trunk road network in Scotland I think it's worthy of further consideration Thanks very much for that Can I just ask there's been a lot of ideas I've already come out in the discussions but do any witnesses have any further ideas about how the schemes might be developed or improved to help generate that modal shift that we're all after We'd like to see an initiative to do with innovation because I think that's going to be one of the keys There are a couple of interesting examples both of which I mentioned briefly in our written evidence One is particularly interesting because it's an innovation that was developed in Scotland Quite complex to explain without any visual aids but I'll do my best but it's called the non-intrusive crossover and in essence that's a bit of kit that allows you to put in a siding off the main line without spending a lot of money on signalling and a lot of physical infrastructure and a huge assembly unit and it could have particular applications for the likes of the timber market that Martin mentioned because a lot of our peripheral railways run right through the forests and the ability to put in a siding cheaply in the middle of the forests could be enormously beneficial both in commercial economic and environmental terms This non-intrusive crossover which was developed in Glasgow has been struggling over the last 10 years to get approval from Network Rail It's been used in the time in we're metro Cades and has worked very successfully It's been used I believe in Holland as well Network Rail can be a risk averse organisation and I've not been willing to back this the operation of this which I think could be a great experiment in terms of the Scottish context for a variety of markets Another innovation where I feel maybe the scope for a new innovation fund that might assist I talked before about how the most successful trains are the big long and heavy trains that's the way you get your unit cost down Now that in turn becomes a weakness if you're running along a transport corridor where you don't have vast aggregations of volume it's difficult to put train load volumes together Around 10 years ago there was a trial with what's called the freight multiple unit which is very much a lightweight freight train a wee bit like the idea of a passenger train in that would have engines underneath the train or at either ends so you could conceivably run shorter trains at passenger trains speed so it might be an answer for example to the West Highland line where it's difficult to build up the volumes but for one reason or other this has not been pursued and again I feel that some kind of innovation fund it might just enable some of these schemes to become commercially viable and as a result to benefit the Scottish economy For thoughts I think another look at the sort of equivalence between the rail scheme and the water and the coastal shipping scheme to make sure that they offer the same benefits and have a reasonable similarity between them Okay and lastly outside of the access to freight schemes is there a drive within the sector to move more freight off the road and if not why not I think there is very much a very real commitment certainly amongst our members particularly the larger shippers who are senders of goods who are very much all households of names and major retailers to look at that as part of their carbon agenda and corporate social responsibility agenda and FTA's role very much is about helping our members to make those informed choices but I think we have to come back to the commercial realities that that such modal shift can only take place A where it's physically possible and B where it does make a reasonable business case. I think large retailers for example and large manufacturers would not necessarily expect to shift to a different mode of transport and save money but they certainly would be looking to not be majorly out of pocket as a result of that because obviously they've got duties to their owners and their shareholders the freight facilities sorry I'll rephrase that that's where the mode shift grants and that regime both in terms of freight facilities and in terms of mode shift revenue sport is so vitally important because it very often can make the difference between a modal shift scheme that would not be economically viable and one that actually would wash its face in terms of its business case for those that are actually doing it I think we are great fans of those ports we want roads, we need them they should be invested in we're not looking to shift from roads really because if they work well we appreciate that that might reduce the scope for coastal shipping but that's a consequence of it so I have to say we wouldn't sign up to anything really that shifts off roads we want the money to go into roads I'll also add to that that in a lot of cases the road hauliers are not expected to operate on a just-in-time basis so a lot of the delivery process that goes on is pick up a phone, we need it done yesterday now the flexibility of the industry allows us to do that so modal shift would suit some contracts but not all of them I would echo that in a sense that there's no point in the rail freight sector pretending that it can do everything a road haulier can do but we're down here at one end of the market and there's scope for us to push out and in terms of what is or isn't achievable in some cases to get the prize of rail economics the customer has to slightly adjust their systems to go with the grain of rail because it's not exactly like road haulage and I guess you would see that with the likes of W.H. Malcolm and Russell's that they recognise rails to capture rail strengths to some degree you have to fit with rail it's not to say that rail can't be very flexible and responsive I mentioned earlier you know the supermarket supply is 95% reliable and rails can do some very innovative things but it can't be all things to all people but we can push the boundaries further out than they are at the moment okay thanks Adam thank you I want to ask about obstacles to the free flow of rail freight in Scotland and thank the rail freight group and others for the details written evidence that you have submitted now you've already mentioned some of the specific infrastructure obstacles like the lack of long loops you've also given us a nice little diagram here about the loading gauge map of Scotland which shows particular parts of the track where you can't run containers on railways and that's an obvious obstacle to the free flow of rail freight can you maybe just run through for us what you think the main obstacles are in terms of the infrastructure and I'll go on to other matters later that could be addressed and which ones how would you prioritise it because obviously we've got limited budgets here if you could just give us some insight please thank you yes as I mentioned earlier I think one has to draw a distinction between the Anglo-Scotish routes and the internal Scottish routes there's more capability in the Anglo-Scotish routes at the moment but there's more than can be done in terms of the loops that I mentioned and interestingly and it's not in my paper we're getting the maximum universal gauge coming up the east coast mainline next year but the west coast mainline is not quite at that position yet so west coast mainline always has to have a degree of priority looking elsewhere in Scotland to Inverness and Aberdeen I think are crucial routes you mentioned the question of the I think committee members may have a copy of this map I'll circulate copies to my colleagues here as well I thought it would be useful to use this and to show you this in visual terms because it's a complicated situation and don't worry about the fact this doesn't look like a map of Scotland it's highly diagrammatic not a great map it has to be said but in essence what you're seeing here is there's a great variation in capability within the rail network now some of this doesn't matter the fact that we can't carry tall containers to Helensburg essential or East Kilbride is not going to lose many people much sleep but if you look at the right hand part of the diagram you can see you've got fairly good clearance the red line coming up the west coast mainline from Carlyle to Mossend and to Coatbridge needs to be pushed further on towards Grangemouth so we get the full clearance which is a key multimodal location sea rail and road and I think you can also look at the patchwork there heading up towards Inverness and Aberdeen a patchwork of clearances and what interesting just to reflect a little bit on what happened in the what's called the load engage clearance for taller containers from Coatbridge and Mossend up to Aberdeen and Elgin Scottish executive as it was then about 10 years ago spent £4 million to create clearance by lowering track so that we could get taller containers through the bridges but part of the freight liner tell me that part of the deal was they supported this fairly modest very modest investment on the basis that there would also be investment in a fleet of the low deck wagons that Chris referred to earlier well the gauge clearance went ahead but the low deck wagons didn't come along so we have a situation going up to Aberdeen I would hate to present to you the list of all the permutations of wagons and containers that can or can't go together on different Scottish routes it's horrendously complicated whereas for the trucker it's basically straightforward there's very few height limits you can just get out there on the trunk road network and go where you like so that's a big issue and I think the other issue tied up talking about Inverness and Aberdeen is the capacity issue as I mentioned earlier two thirds of the Perth Inverness is single track the crossing loop some of them are very short they're all a variable length and Escotrain for example is limited to 20 containers going up to Inverness if we could get more consistently long loops or ideally double track we could be running 28 containers now that's a major increase in productivity that the rail industry would like to take advantage of so I think these are illustrations there are many detailed examples but I think these are perhaps the key ones I would refer to okay thank you you also when we're talking about infrastructure developments to prioritise on a cross-modal basis you indicated that there was a lack of cross-modal analysis we're not talking about a level playing field here in terms of development of different modes why is that? why don't we have if you're looking at these transport corridors that I think you mentioned that we don't why don't we have this road and rail or other mode modal analysis done it's a very good question a lot of this and we haven't mentioned the word politics so far I think a lot of this comes back to politics there are quite a lot of votes in new roads and therefore I think the pressure is on to say well if we dual this road or dual that road accidents will improve the economy and it all seems fairly obvious whereas in fact a more dispassionate evidence-based analysis looking at all the modes looking at economic factors, social factors safety factors might come up with a different solution not as black and white I think it's always easier to sell a black or white solution than it's shades of grey and I think there is shades of grey in all this all the modes of transport represented around the table here are absolutely crucial to the Scottish economy and they all contribute in different ways to the Scottish environment but it's getting that balance right that's difficult and I don't believe the balance is yet right for I think broadly political reasons so you would advocate transport Scotland moves towards whole systems analysis of particular projects as opposed to just looking at the very narrow costs and benefits of that particular project very much so and while what is called corridor analysis goes on that corridor analysis needs to interweave the road and rail look at the packages that would go together I think it's fair to say that in the beginnings of the Transport Scotland's rail freight strategy consultation we're seeing an awareness that these issues of whether or not there's a level playing are important and we need to be looking at all the modes together which again of course is a point that Martin made earlier She also made a point in your written submission about the fact that there was no rail freight project as a national development within NPF3 and this committee has heard you before on that particular issue now why is that there was no rail freight development as a national development why are those perhaps two for sea traffic and the like why is it that rail has missed out on that If I'm blunt I think it's because the port sector has been bigger and more effective and earlier in lobbying the Scottish Government I think the proposals of three national development proposals came through a very very early stage and I think rail freight ended up being largely reactive and it wasn't sufficient to change the balance which at an evidence base level was extraordinary because two of the three rail freight developments by the Scottish Government's own internal scoring system didn't score any higher, in fact scored exactly the same as the rail freight development we proposed and therefore the evidence suggested rail freight should be in there but the practical reality was that the three port schemes, one of which highly speculative to do with the proposed new container port of Versaith were marked up as national developments now there was an acknowledgement in the final NPF3 document that the Mosse and Grangemouth railheads are really crucial to the Scottish economy as Chris and others have said but that's not the same as having a national development and everything that goes with it Are there any other policy or regulatory obstacles to the development of rail freight in Scotland? I think you mentioned this local planning as perhaps one area I think that's right there is an issue of the extent to which local development plans endorse the idea of protecting strategic sites that could be ideal for rail freight in the future and we've talked before about how everything goes on road at one stage or another but with major industrial developments if you can put a direct rail siding in there as in major steel works, power stations, paper mills etc if you can put a direct rail siding in and transform the rail economics because you cut out one of the road legs and we had a recent example that I refer to in my paper norboards at Dahl Cross beside Inverness are going for a major expansion of their board plant there the plant was deliberately relocated right beside Aberdeen Inverness railway had a rail siding about 20-25 years ago that came out for a variety of reasons in the processes within Highland Council while we would not expect Highland Council to insist that a company had to use rail that's not the way the market works what we would want to see is that the possibility of rail is protected and the whole question of passive provision is very important in large manufacturing and processing sites because while you can essentially put an access road in and wiggle it around here and everywhere even for a 44 ton truck if you're putting in a rail siding the geometry and the geography have got to be right so if you do your expansion in the wrong way there's no term possibility of rail and in the permission that Highland Council got they were they made no reference to a passive provision for rail freight access to the norboard expansion and there's another example which again I quote in the paper which I might illustrate Dundee is one of the largest cities in the UK that doesn't have any rail freight facilities now there's two options there you could get into the port of Dundee but you'd need to put in a new rail connection but there's an alternative set of sidings in the centre of Dundee sitting there operational that could be activated for less than a few hundred thousand pounds but the local planners don't like it because they don't think it fits with the surrounding development of a digital media park so we hit up we hit against the problem that road haulage can penetrate anywhere it likes in Dundee but for rail freight to penetrate we seem to be operating to a slightly different set of rules so how do you overcome all of these barriers regulatory or policy barriers my feeling is that the guidance from Scottish Government in terms of local planning and protecting strategic sites is now less strong than it was 15 or 20 years ago if you look at the wording it's fairly vague and I would like to see a wider acknowledgement that while rail is not going to serve every industrial location far from it I would like to see an acknowledgement that you should protect the possibility of getting rail involved I think too there's a question of early engagement and that might partly come through Scottish Enterprise I had a very revealing experience with my other hat as a consultant on about 5, 10 years ago I was called in to look at the expansion of the White and Mackay bottling plant in Grangemouth they were concentrating their activities there and the bottling plant was right beside the railway and so we went in there the problem was that the footprint of the new bottling plant had already been decided and instead of being like that in relation to the railway it was diametrically opposite so getting in there by rail was virtually impossible so rail wasn't considered early enough in the economic development process and if it had been cost to make it more receptive for rail so we could have now had a White and Mackay siding bringing in bulk spirit from Invergordon from space side directly into the plant there but it couldn't happen because of the lack of that process Right, final question I've got is as the convener indicated we'll be visiting some rail heads during the course of this inquiry would you say that the industry has sufficient terminals to allow full access to rail services in particular in the more rural areas of Scotland? No, I think the issue in Central Scotland is primarily to do with enhancement of what we've got already so it's upgrade to Colt Bridge also upgrade to the Moss End Euro Central terminal which was badly designed by Lanarkshire Development Agency and is not as efficient as it could be there are issues around development of other rail heads at Moss End and Greenchmouth where we can expand existing capacity there are gaps, there's a gap around Bathgate the centre of gravity for distribution by road within Scotland is pretty close to Bathgate there's actually a rail connected piece of land there that's just sitting there doing nothing at the moment it's all come about by accident so there's an opportunity there but yes, I think beyond the Central Belt there are gaps your own neck of the woods and air shower is a gap and we've had experience with trying to develop a terminal there and it's not been easy you need commitment, you need volume Dundee's a gap, Fife is a gap as well which could fit in with linking in the major whisky plant at Leven and the grain distillary at Cameron Bridge so there are a number of places where yes we need new terminals but otherwise I think a lot of it is to do with improving what we've got already thank you very much Mr Spavin, you just mentioned the Moss End Euro Central terminal and in your submission you say that recently EuroTunnel has substantially reduced transit charges for freight trains through the tunnel do you see opportunities there or do you think we've missed the opportunity no, we're in a dynamic market it's always changing that I think there are definitely opportunities there there are containers for the European market that might go from Scotland but they tend to be fed through a number of links they might go from Moss End to Davenry to Barking and then across the European mainland it's going to be more efficient to have a through train from central Scotland to mainland Europe perhaps the likes of Paris where a lot of our whisky exports go there's a grant scheme the Modeshift revenue support scheme which is around which could help that the problem is Modeshift revenue support is retrospective it's not prime a train up front I don't think any there's any doubt that a train from central Scotland to mainland Europe a container train will be viable in the medium term and long term I don't think there's any doubt but it's how we get there in the short term and this is where again we have an issue of competition whether it's fair or not because Scottish Government has awarded a 200,000 euro grant to the recites of the Broogaferry we've been going through a freedom of information process to try and find out the basis grant was made we've not had any information about how costs and benefits have been calculated there's been no evidence that the alternative of rail was considered it was assumed that if recites of Broogaf struggles and if the ferry indeed came off then everything would go to road well not the case rail's available so again I think getting through to mainland Europe is a key opportunity for rail but it will need some assistance initially from government in terms of the initial assistance and government as you characterise it and the pump priming that you think would be necessary have you done any costings on that? No, I haven't done any costings on that but I think it would be a relatively short term exercise might be for a year or something like that so not vastly different in principle from what happens with the mode shift revenue support but upfront rather than retrospective okay we're going to move on Mike you've got some questions I represent the Highlands and Islands there will be no surprise that I've got an interest in ports and sea transport and that interest included a one-time involvement with the last working puffer in Scotland including a memorable trip down to the Clyde where the skipper was parahandy personified but I'll go on to my questions given the variety of cargo that can be transported by sea I wonder if Mr Whitehead could perhaps touch on which areas you consider a success and which areas require improvement in terms of transport to the islands and sea generally sea transport generally well I think just starting with the public policy that the regime for ports is very much leaving them independent they make their own decisions we've got good port capacity in Scotland we depend on the it's relationship with the shipping industry we depend on them to make commitment funding of some of the ferry services is quite complex it involves some public funding and private funding as well some of the comments I had from members is about the capacity in the future that's available for links to the islands and particular comments from Lerwick as well about the capacity there to get freight back and forth to Shetland but I can't characterise this as being something we're constantly talking to Transport Scotland about as a particularly difficult issue thank you so what might be done then to encourage freight off the road and on to cargo ships or on to ferries what opportunities are there to see that kind of modal shift if you like well as I've said earlier we do have freight grants that could shift traffic from one to the other and we have always tried of course we always support schemes that reduce emissions and so forth and use the sea but I have to say it is extremely difficult to get the market to change in any fundamental way and that is the reality the reality of it are there certain sectors then I mean I was talking to BSW the timber company just recently and they were telling me that they were really pleased that they are now I think going to transport more of their timber out of Fort William area by sea and you know you have to you think we've been here before but you know other sectoral opportunities where you know some sectors timber perhaps important to the Highlands and Islands are certainly parts of it but any other sectors where you could see or foresee opportunities arising well there may well be sectors that I say that the ports themselves will always be looking for market opportunities and there are a lot of ports there in strong competition with each other and timber may be a sector that's particularly susceptible to that but I'm confident that they are out there trying to find those new opportunities so decommissioning for instance looked on almost as an economic opportunity in all industry we're hearing about the decommissioning there opportunity offshore renewables is a very new area of growth opportunity for many ports both in terms of construction operations and maintenance work and so forth there's a lot of competition between ports for that work but that's an example of something new coming along that's not to do with coastal shipping but that's another opportunity for which they compete If you only have a unique opportunity there I mean I'm thinking about offshore wind with the tendency towards ever bigger turbines and you know I could see real difficulties in service in that industry you know by road or indeed by rail you think sea transport has a unique opportunity opening up in marine renewables very much so and that's very much for the islands as well and certainly we're up we were in Auckland a couple of years ago and they've got a very advanced research centre there looking at wave power and technology and so forth I mean tremendous effort is being put into the research there and so we'll see what opportunities develop out of that and I can imagine therefore that you're encouraged by Scottish Government investment in pier, shore facilities, Hudson pier Linus pier and on Shetland again in terms of decommissioning some quite significant investment there helping the port authority There is some investment but as I say the vast majority of this investment will come from the ports themselves so the usual they'll have to borrow money to invest to produce the facilities for this it's largely a private sector operation in supporting the offshore renewable industry Okay and just shift and tack a wee bit there's only one cargo ferry operating directly across to Europe and this that requires a subsidy what could be done to make ferry operations from Scotland more sustainable and to increase cargo that's destined for Europe from leaving some Scottish sea rather than English ports Well I think that probably comes from something outside the ports and shipping industry which is just you need critical mass, you need volume of goods to go from Scotland to justify particular route out to the EU and at the moment one of the problems is and indeed one of the frustrations is we're talking about better links and then Frank gets whisked away down to England to use English ports rather than Scottish ports I think it does come back to an issue of sheer volumes that are needed to sustain particular routes and perhaps I'm quite right where I've reached that particular critical mass so far Thank you for that and can you identify any policy or regulatory obstacles to the free flow of sea freight in Scotland? I think a lot of your written submission concentrated on road infrastructure and that are there any other obstacles beyond road infrastructure limitations, policy or regulatory obstacles? No I wouldn't identify them in the way in which, as I say, public policy for ports operates in a way which inhibits them in any way. I mean we do depend very much on the efficiency of the marine licensing system harbour revision orders and so forth at their turn round quickly for new developments to reflect changes in the market and so forth and although that system can always be quicker, I wouldn't say it's a fundamental flaw in the entire system inhibiting growth I mean what is needed, as I say is good high volume of goods dependability of those goods and that will drive trade. And within the sector can you see short sea shipping as something that could be further developed? It could be but I've explained some of the frustrations of trying to do that. I mean there's no problem with capacity, there's no problem with people being out there in the market trying to get this business that I can describe to you and say well these are the changes that are needed we rely on the market to produce the goods here. Okay thank you very much. I just had a very quick point on that please because as FTA since the last number of years we've actually taken over running a body that used to be run basically funded by the British Government called sea and water. It's now called freight by water which we now actually managed and have taken over as a distinct membership organisation within FTA and its role is primarily to promote understanding of the opportunities for the use of water freight, be that inland waters which is predominantly England or coastal shipping which is obviously a whole Britain operation we've held various conferences we've launched guides on how potential users of water freight could use water instead of road for example but I would very much echo in that David's point that it is actually very hard work to actually get a flow starting by water that doesn't already go by water freight the points that David's made are absolutely accurate in our experience in terms of critical mass and volume but I think one place where Scottish trade has perhaps an advantage in this respect over English trade is it because of the greater distance from Scotland down to the south of England Haven ports for export worldwide or even to the likes of Liverpool for the Americas trade that does make certainly coastal shipping viable for things like container exports of whisky as a competitive mode to road or to rail because of the greater distance. I think that in England it's quite difficult to get feeders from Lits of Hampton to Liverpool or up the east coast, shorter distances like that but certainly for Scotland it's easier to have feeders down the west coast down the east coast to the southern English ports simply because the distance gives it a bit of an advantage I mean that stimulates another kind of question in as much as do you feel that because it's largely a private sector that imports that sometimes competition doesn't always produce logical results in as much as ports sometimes compete for the same business you'll be aware of the fact up in the north of Scotland a number of ports are licking their lips anticipating decommissioning work and given the infrastructure requirements is it wise for them to compete in that kind of way is it better to take a more strategic view and is that possible within this private situation? Well I would have thought it has to be healthy that people are competing for the same work from the point of view of the users of those who want those services to be provided I thought it has to be a healthy situation. The competition between ports, the structure ports, the fact that the government leaves them to get on with themselves is a policy supported by the industry we have no qualms about the rightness of that of course it does create tough competition between ports but I think at the end of the line it suits the users of those ports to have that competition in place we're getting philosophical here but I'm sure that is correct. Is then though this tendency towards deeper draft ships and so on bigger ships is that create a particular problem is there a possibility for instance that we may actually see reduced shipping flowing through Scotland because of that is there an inability to keep up to the requirement to be able to provide birthing and servicing for ever bigger ships? That is a real problem and it's a problem for the whole of the UK actually being able to accommodate enormous ships and to be able to dredge to the appropriate depths. Actually Scotland is blessed with a lot of natural deep water unusually in the UK unfortunately the ships don't always want to come as far as somewhere like Cromarty Firth which has fantastic deep water the English ports would give an awful lot to have that but yes you're absolutely right accommodating larger ships there are less ships around than they used to be and perhaps going back to earlier question thinking it through the short sea shipping it's it maybe one of the issues actually is that is the lack of suitable ships that can do that sort of work because they just not around in the same way that they used to be but yes it's a genuine problem. Thank you very much. I don't know whether I should go but could I ask a question? Yeah it was basically when we're talking about the movements of the shipping to my mind we've still got to see the full effects of the EU software directive and that's going to put recite that more of a disadvantage than those south of the border is that correct? Well yes but no one predicted what would happen to the oil price when all the discussions were happening on sulphur so it may be the case and we're just about to gather evidence that in fact the price hasn't been affected so far but it could be affected in the future and it's the price of marine fuel which is absolutely critical of course of running a service but I think the effect so far is neutral. Thank you. Mr Whitehead can I just ask you the British Ports Association in its submission very helpfully provided a list of suggested infrastructure improvements at Scottish ports and they arranged from a new port at Oben to widening of roads at Ullipool improved road connections at the port of Leith and freight priority lanes at Aberdeen. Have you costed any of these suggested improvements in the process of doing so? Not as the association I'm sure there are costs associated with that because there will be discussions with regional authorities and so forth but we can certainly produce some costings for you and in fact to full a list this was a fairly quick list to draw on that based on one fact that we discussed for Transport Scotland about seven or eight years ago we can certainly do that. I would certainly assist the committee if you were able to do that. So thank you. James. Thank you convener. A couple of questions around efficiency and carbon emissions. Can you identify the use of technology be it vehicles, transport information or logistics technology that could make freight transport operations more efficient, less costly and more sustainable? Good. Would you like to share them or are you going to just hang on to them? There's a fair amount of work being done in this area already. The Euro 6 engines and trucks now are far more fuel efficient than the previous generations. Work is being done on looking at hybrid engines and alternative fuel. These are still at the testing stages just now. The telematic side of things has made a big difference to how HCVs and lorries operate. The advent of route planning has been better. The knowledge of the best way to drive particular trucks and particular engines has been developed substantially over the past few years. The design of the trucks to make the more aerodynamic has been a massive engagement along those lines. You would have to say that the UK haulage industry is fully compliant with European standards now and is continuing to push the envelope. There are barriers to taking on the new technologies in terms of there's still evidence to be gleaned on whether the efficiencies would merit the payback time. We've certainly brought up the subject of a scrappage scheme. The industry would definitely benefit from that where you've got an option of taking the burners off the road to be replaced by the newer technology side of things. Again, that's a fiscal leap that I'm not sure the Government would be keen to take on but that would be something that we would definitely benefit. What we have to guard against and what tends to be just a case of basic economics is that the bigger fleets who use the newer engines put them on the longest runs. So they automatically put their most efficient ones on the longest runs and take their lesser efficient ones and put them on the urban runs which means that they're clashing with the new low emission zones that kind of thing. The ones that are doing the urban runs are the ones that we need to target more but there's been a massive amount of work that's gone into this already and I think you'd agree with that Chris. Absolutely. FTA runs a scheme which is not just for its members, it's open to all called the logistics carbon reduction scheme and I gave links to that within my written evidence. That's basically all about organisations that run quite large fleets recording and reducing their carbon emissions by their use of fuel which is obviously the main component of that. There are new technologies being developed certainly are members that run van fleets and increasingly using alternative technologies such as hybrid and electric power there are some issues which will be overcome in time I'm sure in terms of charging points for such vehicles in terms of the urban environment one of the major challenges on perhaps longer distance haulages looking at gas powered vehicles and having a national network of gas refilling points to actually make that more environmentally friendly vehicle more viable on longer distance operations Turning to the rail freight side there is currently a study under way by Network Rail across the whole of Great Britain so with the DFT and with Transport Scotland as well looking at potential for electrification of the rail network and building a business case for that and that includes for freight so there are some important developments there that over time should see a payback in terms of their environmental benefit Could I just briefly add that Chris is quite right to emphasise the importance of electrification but even without electrification the single simplest thing you can do to cut carbon emissions of freight is to shift from road to rail the sort of figures you normally see are that rail for an equivalent transit of 5% of the carbon emissions of road haulage I tend to use a rather more conservative figure of about a third because one has to recognise that quite a lot of the rail trunk hall will need to be complimented by road collection and delivery and you need to allow for that as well Not that we would try to defer any of our own responsibilities I think that one of the major problems you certainly when you're looking at the urban scenario comes from transit vans and taxis and buses more so than HDVs now To a great extent you've already answered this question but is there anything else that you can think of that would help the Scottish Government to meet their challenging carbon emissions targets from your sector from your understanding I know I've already said it but I would repeat it and that is I think that we've all collectively got to get a bit clever at looking at how particular urban deliveries and collections are made and that's going to become an increasing issue as society changes as people's working and living patterns change with a greater density of urban living and particularly in flats and how people get that service in terms of literally having their groceries delivered through click and collect systems that's going to become very challenging for the logistics industry and I think corporately we need to look more carefully at issues to do with out of hours deliveries, night time deliveries urban logistics issues in ways that are perhaps challenging but also commercially viable and I've said it before that one of the benefits that we saw during the Glasgow Commonwealth Games was the ability to deliver certain goods at night but hopefully that sort of innovative means of thinking and that's not just about haulage organisations but about regulatory authorities in this case local councils looking at ways in which that can be done very much as a legacy benefit to reduce the amount of emissions by vehicles literally sitting in traffic during peak hours I think there needs to be a much greater focus on that going forwards As MSP covers Hamden the area was affected quite heavily by that and prior to it I had an awful lot of complaints about the idea of it but after it the shopkeepers etc were quite happy with the way it worked Your option is one that I mentioned at the start it won't work everywhere but in particularly dense areas, dense urban areas where you've got the problems then consolidation centres might be an answer I mean we as I said it doesn't matter to the haulage industry where they drop the stuff off it's point A to point B and if for example there's a consolidation centre where applicable you could use electric vehicles to drive into the city or night time deliveries then that's something that we would welcome because one of the problems that our industry has and if we're talking about inefficiencies then around about 30 to 33% of all runs that are done are empty runs that's not efficient and we need to look at doing that so if you had a consolidation centre then you could organise drop off and pick up which would help and you could even pull it's maybe very blue sky thinking here but you might have a scenario where you've got two or three operatives that work together taking each other's loads back and forward so to minimise empty running but that's certainly something that the industry itself would look at isn't it it's not going to be detrimental to how we go about things because that as we've talked about the last mile, the last mile is always a problem and whether it's... you're going into an urban scenario where there's a low emission zone and only a certain amount of lorries will be able to go in or you need to have this particular badge or these various things a lot of that could be removed by having a consolidation centre on the outskirts of town where there are loads that are too big to go in transit vans we know that but where applicable for things like your food runs and things like that they could be done could I also add that there's quite a lot of experience of consolidation centres on the continent and in a number of cases they will also have rail access so you open up the opportunity of some of the trunking being by rail as well as by road okay thank you Mary thank you convener we've already talked at length about some of the issues that I wanted to specifically ask you about which is around government support and government policy and in relation to government support in particular to help with improving and developing inter-connectivity and we've touched on issues around connectivity about the need to take a cross-modal and a more holistic approach we've also touched on the pressures on funding for infrastructure developments but is there something in particular that you haven't already mentioned that you think the government should be doing infrastructure spend to improve inter-connectivity I've said everything that I want to say I thought that might be the case perhaps just say that two points there is a mature network in Scotland, the transport network and throughout the UK and I think a lot of it rather than grand schemes it's continually improving that network if you're going to spend money to do that you then have to get best value for money and we always quote the Rod Eddington report which was a UK report and came out in 2006 perhaps a bit forgotten about now but he particularly mentioned the value for money of connections to ports in that respect and international connections so I think there's some very difficult discussions around where best to spend money but I think there's some principles there about how to get the best out of this and I think we would also say I mean we are mode neutral as well in terms of we want lots of rare we want lots of road but we're not that neutral because as the community has said we're rather road bias because that colleague said that it is 85% in and out of ports by road so various factors here but I'm sure there has to be a very careful analysis of where you get the best value in developing a mature network there's other factors that have to be taken into account that are external with all the goodwill that we have around the table about working together there's one particular elephant when you're looking at shifting things between modes and that's the insurance side of things insurers are not keen for things to be swapped from one mode of transport to another down the line and they're positively against it so when we're looking at things like whisky where not only are the insurers on tenterhooks when it's getting moved HMRC are on tenterhooks when it's being moved so shifting that between different modes can often be problematic because the insistence is on the paper works side of things and the insurers demand regardless of the goodwill of the industries to move it Very quickly I think what I've said before I think for freight transport in Scotland it is just important to maintain an understanding of what the patterns of scotish trade are and the means by which goods enter to leave Scotland and keeping a clear focus on that and also cross-border collaboration with authorities in England to make sure that those routes to market are actually properly optimised and that there is joined up thinking between transport Scotland and its English equivalents in terms of DFT Having said that I didn't have anything more to say It's you that did it Mark and you prompted it This issue about insurance interesting point where rail has been established for a long time in certain export corridors and the insurance issue is not a problem because the vast amount of whisky and other spirits that move from Coatbridge to the five big deep-sea ports down south it's all brought in by road one way or the other so there's got to be a road and rail swap some of it's brought in by freight line in itself a lot of it by independent hauliers so that happens already so it's well established but it did also prompt me to recollect some of you will have heard of the trial train a year before last from Elgin down to Grangemouth primarily for the whisky industry called lifting the spirit with EU funding and local funding and that was a very interesting experiment at Scotch whisky association I think referred to it in their submission to the inquiry but one of the issues that came out there was the question of insurance and security because this was a new pattern of movement for the whisky industry so things came out of that trial that showed that things needed to be tightened up through a trial and then developing a system that works as it does at Coal Bridge okay, thank you, that was very helpful the evidence that we've received there's been a suggestion that the Government's freight policy needs updating is that of you that you agree with and if you do, what in particular needs to be changed in the policy who would like to start? nobody wants to go first was it 2006 the last freight policy I'm not absolutely sure but it's some years ago and I would think just because it is a very dynamic industry that you've heard and there's been changing external factors that yes, I would think an update is needed and certainly there's a new rail freight strategy being developed in conjunction with Transport Scotland so that should be part of that wider holistic perspective and I think that's the one comment I would make, it's terribly important that everything is looked at in a fair and equal way, recognising the strengths and weaknesses of the different modes and how they can work holistically I think that what it would need to recognise as well is that at the minute we have differences across the border in terms of operational stuff we need to try and pull together a system where things don't change when you automatically go over the border it just makes things more difficult that are moving things cross-border basically Chris? Yes, I mean, I understand there's been a refresh of the transport strategy going on and that like David said needs to take account of the improvements, sorry of the revisions of the rail freight strategy which Transport Scotland on undertaking to make sure that there are consequences of changing one part to effecting to effecting another so I think it is really just a question of making sure that it's kept up to date and kept up to date with developments as they occur a point that I think I've made before which I'd make again is about making sure that there is proper cross-border in terms of investment across the different modes and in the different transport corridors I think I mentioned earlier on that that is happening quite well between the English strategic freight network fund and the Scottish freight fund of Minister for the freight joint board for Scotland there's very good working between the two of them because Network Rail's obviously although it's devolved in Scotland and to regions of England it's one organisation that's working well where potentially it may not be working so well is on the roads side with the highways agency being set up as highways England which is actually a good move that's good from our point of view but it's about how that then works with Transport Scotland in terms of the trunk road network particularly as I think I mentioned before in terms of the A1 corridor and improvements in the north of England which are very important but the benefit of those is also carried forward across the border into Scotland as well because very much whether it's road or whether it's rail if you get a problem on the west coast and that gets shot for whatever reason whether it's the road or the rail network then road or rail freight hauliers have to look at the alternative and that's the east coast route the east coast mainline or in the case of road freight the A1 now while there are definite improvements in the version and equal capability between east coast and west coast mainlines I think on the road freight side we need to be looking at equal alternative capability on the east coast A1 route as opposed to the west coast M6M74 corridor I think that that really needs close looking at between Transport Scotland and what's currently the highways agency in DFT and will become highways England when the new statutory company gets set up in England David, do you have any view on the policy and whether or not you should be updated? No particular view and I don't know whether it's relevant but I was going to mention I think I said at the very beginning these discussions come back to funding and the future funding and what I would say and hope comes from this committee as well that there is a realistic debate about how these wanted improvements can actually be funded I mean we haven't mentioned tolling it's a terrible word and it's not politically popular but how are we going to get the system that we actually want so I think you can have all the strategies in the world that we know where the developments are needed it's a question of how are we going to get the money to bring the system up to scratch Chris, when you mentioned the refresh of freight policy is that something that your organisation should be involved in or is it something that you think your organisation should be involved in? It's something that we are as with other organisations involved in through the consultative processes with Transport Scotland and through its various consultative groupings and media such as Scottish freight logistics advisory group and we also sit in the freight joint board for Scotland and we'll be involved with the planning group and the Hodge Association as well I think it is welcome that Scottish Government and its agencies speak to the relevant trade associations and trade bodies and obviously our role as trade associations is to inform that debate and to lobby and make sure that those making those decisions are doing it on a fully understood basis of what those investments are that are actually needed and how the policies are and how the policies may shift and change over time. Do you think that the Government are having dialogue with enough organisations or are there any particular bodies or groups that would be beneficial to speak to in order to update the policy? I'm hearing all these groups I didn't know existed actually which is perhaps significantly itself. There's clearly a dialogue going on in some places replicated with ports unless I've been missing out on something I should have known of it. We wouldn't want you to feel excluded in any way. Perhaps we should engage in a better dialogue of course we play our part in that that's what a dialogue is. I think if I may one of the difficulties that always exists for Governments and their transport agencies be that Transport Scotland or any other agencies in the UK is not just to talk to those that are providing transport but to those that are actually the end customers of transport because they are the people that ultimately make the decisions about modal shift and what port we're going to use etc FTA obviously part of our job is to do that because we've got many members who don't provide transport like large retailers and manufacturers etc and we've got what we call a British Shippers Council and one of our roles is obviously to reflect that in our policy discussions with Government and Government bodies that's particularly a challenge I think in the rail freight sector where I'm not saying it happens but there's always going to be a danger that Network Rail as the network provider obviously as an immediate dialogue with the rail freight train operating companies naturally because that is who their client is that's who their business relationship is with but the danger is that they don't actually have the discussion with the actual end customers that use rail but could perhaps use rail more or maybe making decisions to stop using rail because of certain issues that they've actually had now I know Network Rail is trying to do that but I think that's a constant challenge that always has to be born in mind Thank you Can I just finally ask you about infrastructure schemes in Europe because it's difficult to look at UK freight and isolation we need to look to our European neighbours who may have better developed more innovative schemes is there anything in particular that you would highlight to committee that is a really good scheme or development that could be transported to Scotland? I think I'd probably answer that in a slightly more holistic way and that is to go back to the issue we discussed earlier on about last mile connections either from rail freight terminals or ports to the national road network or to the national railway network as the case may be although it's a generalisation on the mainland continent of Europe there does tend to be a more national approach to the responsibility of government and the state for ensuring those last mile infrastructural connections whereas certainly at a UK level and particularly experience in England has been that that is left by government very much to the private sector so what I mean is private sector may develop a new port a new railway terminal that's fine, that's what the private sector should do but then the private sector is also then lumbered with the cost of the connection of that to the national road or railway infrastructure and that certainly has killed off a number of potential rail reconnection schemes certainly in England that's been the experience with development at ports in England there's been cases where the upper of the port has been expected to pay for the consequential upgrade to the road connections to the motorway network and the rail connections to the railway network now all you might argue well why shouldn't they do that if they're economically benefiting from it sadly experience shows that's not always the most elegant funding model and mechanism and particularly at one port in England there's been a real issue with that in terms of rail freight connection where effectively through network rail you can effectively do that anyway I think what I'm trying to get to is the fact that on mainland Europe there's perhaps a more dare suggest mature more national sort of whole nation basis approach taken to those connections whereby although a private developer may develop the facility the actual business of connecting that to the national infrastructure if it's for the national good of helping the nation to trade is something that perhaps more lies with the Government of the State an element of that, the simple geography of Europe the connectivity of that land mass of Europe means that it makes sense for countries to work together to develop strategies to develop the freight in their country so everything does connect yes that's absolutely correct but the risk of overusing the wording I talked about peripherality earlier on that's an issue not just for Scotland it's an issue for the whole of the UK in terms of the geographical position within Europe more so for Scotland because it's the north end of the British Isles and I think that's why it's even more important that perhaps we can develop such policies within Scotland and the UK as well as a whole because it's about overcoming those challenges of geographical distance okay does anyone In that connection Chris is absolutely right in terms of ports ports are very much under public ownership in the continent and so there's obviously a much clearer and closer connection between them and government and then transport spending and they do have an advantage from that but we also have the trans-European networks scheme TNT which funds scheme at the moment and it's up to member states to put in bids for those funding there are two core ports in Scotland Clyde port and fourth ports and there are a number of comprehensive network ports and there is money out there available for them we work closely with the UK application we work closely with Transport Scotland and with Westminster to get the funding but there is an art to getting funding out of these schemes and we're not normally very good or haven't been in the past that good at getting the funding I have to say the response from the government has been really good this time I think we've got a lot more sort of commitment to do something there but there is money out there to connect the whole of Europe and that is something that we'll be working on Publicising that a bit better Well we've publicised amongst our members and we close crock and we go to Brussels we talk to the right people et cetera but sometimes the sheer weight of the for example the Dutch has got to come in put into that out does us so it's just something for the future it's something we can take about Bureaucracy What Bureaucracy here or No in Europe I'll find out one day how they managed to do it but they are very good at it and why shouldn't we be OK Could I just follow through on a couple of points raised by David there he talked about the trans-European network and we have this rather ironic situation in Scotland that virtually every long distance rail route in Scotland is part of the trans-European network but what it means in practical terms is absolutely zero because it hasn't brought through funds the focus tends to be on the main corridors not unreasonably like the west coast mainline east coast mainline but I think that is a frustration that it doesn't seem to be easy for rail to tap into some of these European funds whereas you'll find in the work the work of quite a lot of the regional transport partnerships in Scotland and Cestran being an example they spend an awful lot of their time and resource on EUC related projects simply because that's where the money is and at the risk I would say of sometimes leading to an imbalance and really too much emphasis on C on projects which are maybe never going to come to anything from the EU so you can do a study that costs about £200,000 and everybody's happy but in terms of actual concrete developments and development of the rail network we seem to be a little bit of a loss on the rail side there Okay Nothing to add to that Okay Just following on from my colleague's question about free infrastructure schemes in Europe are there any examples of international good practice that we could learn from as a committee now obviously the Scandinavian countries share a number of similarities in terms of the preferality from mainland Europe are there things that those countries perhaps are doing that we could learn from Scandinavia is interesting I went on a business study trip about 10 years ago in the context of looking at movement of rail, this was out of Dumfries and Galloway we were going to develop a rail head and the Swedes have done some very innovative things in terms of their engagement with timber and forest products generally and that was certainly an eye-opener it didn't lead to a development here unfortunately but I think in terms of forest products generally it's worth mentioning that this has really been a wasted opportunity for rail C has done a lot in forest products but the classic example if you're travelling down on the west coast mainline to Birmingham or London sometime and just north of Lockerby if you look out to your right you will see a major forest industry development site called Stevenscroft that was located right beside the west coast mainline because it wanted to have a rail connection and it still does not have a rail connection and that has been a frustration to partly to do with the structures of the industry, the rail industry has to be said they were looking for a champion in the rail industry 10-15 years ago and they couldn't find it whereas they were getting a very good service from all the road hauliers who were more than happy to champion developments but the rail industry isn't always very good at that that's ending on a negative note I shouldn't have done that should I anyone else Scandinavian system of running ports is very similar to ours actually and I think there's quite an equivalence between our standards and I think they have more labour problems I have to say in Scandinavian countries than we have which we don't particularly have I can give you lots of examples of bad port practice but certainly not in Scandinavia but just one thing people group Scandinavia together and Denmark is often compared but Denmark is not a peripheral country it's attached to a very large country with a huge market there so you have to be careful when you compare really some of the parts of Scandinavia for the markets but some of them are very extremely near The other point I would maybe make and it's perhaps a controversial one but of course in certain of the Scandinavian countries in the more northerly outline bits particularly for their timber and forestry trades they do actually have higher gross vehicle weights and different weights and dimensions for goods vehicles than we would be allowed in this country but that's all about economic efficiency and competitiveness of getting that product that product to market now I know that's a controversial issue within the UK about weights and dimensions of goods vehicles but you know what we as a mode neutral organisation would argue is that in the round longer term issues to do with that have to be looked at in exactly the same way as issues to do with longer and heavier trains equally are being have to be looked at it's right that we look at these things across all modes of transport James did you have a question there's been a number of suggested ideas about projects that could be put in place but given the Scottish Government what's under limited funds and needs to prioritise spending in terms of infrastructure what priorities would you give the Government for action? If you're asking us I'm asking you all yet. FTA I think we've put in a list of schemes with our written evidence we'd always support the contained investment in the trunk road network particularly investment of the A9 and then the A96 also the earlier schemes that had perhaps been mentioned earlier on today about connecting the Highlands in terms of its road infrastructure and the south west Scotland infrastructure also on the rail freight side contained investment in the west coast mainline particularly there is an issue that leading on from the development of the Highspeed 2 railway line network rail don't really have a grip yet on a proper looping and freight strategy for the northern part of the west coast mainline from the north of England across the border into Scotland and also we'd look at as David has mentioned earlier on investment up the Highland mainline into Perth and Aberdeen for rail freight to allow perhaps that to be more competitive for supermarket type traffic so I think it's more investment in this of key corridors which is going to bring a freight and a journey time reliability improvement for Scottish industry and the Scottish freight transport sector Thanks everybody else We submitted a list as you know which now needs to be expanded a little go out to members again and add some costings as well so yes we can identify very quickly what it is we'd like in an ideal world Well remembering that this is a limited budget that the Scottish Government has to spend so you have to prioritise So priorities as well Just to narrow it down I'll give you the narrowed down version and then a nice to have at the end of it I would suggest that we look at the 82 and 83 in particular because west of Scotland those roads or that road network is as important to that area as the A9 is to Perthdenburness basically The problems with those roads are manifold and the effect that it has on the economy particularly for that side of Scotland including the western aisles is massive and if I was to have my druthers as it were I would also suggest that they are generally spent on rest areas for the hauliers and that includes wash out facilities as well because a lot of these guys are treated like second class citizens when they stop off at petrol stations and try and use the wash facilities so that's a basic human right that one so I would like that added on to any infrastructure list that was on the go I think three key priorities from my point of view as others have said, looking at east coast mainline west coast mainline, getting these longer loops in and getting higher gauge up the west coast mainline Secondly I think we need to tackle this issue of the large amount of single tracks still north of the central belt on key routes like Inverness and even parts of the Aberdeen route and if we're talking about value for money to double a single track railway costs depending on the structures between 5 and 10 million pounds a mile I mean A9 duolings 30 million pounds a mile so it's a lot more cost effective to tackle rail that's routes. The third priority I would say is really we need to make more of Coatbridge freight line eternal it does a great job it can do an even better job okay thank you very much okay do members have any final questions are there any final points the panel would like to make okay I think we've had a very exhaustive hopefully not exhausting session this morning for which we're very grateful can I thank the witnesses for their evidence this morning and members may wish to note that the first of our fact finding visits as part of the freight inquiry will be on the 16th of February when we will visit the port of Grangemouth and the Malcolm group the committee will receive an update on the fourth road replacement crossing and also on EU priorities on the 18th of February and we will continue with a further evidence session on the freight inquiry on the 25th of February today's committee business and I now close this meeting of the committee