No, not the magazine, but an event organised by Public Service Events at the Barbican yesterday which I attended as it featured Sir Roy McNulty, Anna Walker (ORR), and Tom Smith (ATOC) as key speakers - but not politicians, the DfT, or Network Rail...
A flavour of the event as it unfolded can be had from the tweets at #rail11 and from the presentations
First up, Sir Roy McNulty who gave what presumably is his standard spiel about his eponymous Report His keys points were the existence of the 'efficiency' gap (30%?) which is 'not a cause for despair'; Rebalancing the roles of Government and Industry; and trusting the Rail Delivery Group to deliver... Naturally he denied that he had been 'nobbled' by ministers to take out anything contentious about privatisation.
The key slide from his presentation is Slide 28 - How will we know it is happening? - which takes me neatly onto Anna Walker, Chair, Office of Rail Regulation. Her surprisingly combative presentation focussed on the timetable for PR13 and the need to save £1 billion + per annum by setting the right 'incentive framework'... Interestingly, she kept referring to the need for a 'Greater transparency of information' from Network Rail and the TOCs. In the meantime, she promises three consultation documents:
* ORR’s role in relation to TOCS
* Fares and ticketing
* Localism
Wish her luck...
Perhaps the best presentation of the morning came from Douglas McCormick, MD Rail of the main sponsors Atkins. Basically he warned that companies such as his can deliver but NOT if they are seen as the easy touch in the drive to reduce costs.
After Masterclasses and lunch, Tom Smith of ATOC gave us his presentation Alas, he failed to rise to the bait dangled by Chair Paul Clifton in his introduction to the afternoon session and stuck doggedly to his brief... which was, of course, to say that Privatisation was a great success story / everything was fine when the SRA had been in charge before the Government decided it knew better / private investors were hungry to invest - they just needed to know the long-term prognosis for the industry etc etc.
His most interesting slide (6) was entitled The Initial Industry Plan response - Costs, revenue and subsidy requirement, England & Wales to 2019 which seems to show how the industry is going to drive down the subsidy requirement to £1 billion at 2011/2012 prices by 2019...
Unfortunately he couldn't stay for the Panel session, leaving it to Edward Welsh (his Director of Corporate Affairs) to continue the positive spin in the face of some doubting questioners.
Overall, a mixed bag of a day, the value of which partly diminished due to the absence of key players in the process. One final point. Innovation (along with efficiency and transparency) seemed to be a favourite word of the speakers. Funnily enough, at an evening event which moved onto, innovation was also much to the fore in the speeches. However, here, it was innovation as practised by the late Steve Jobs at Apple: ranging widely for inspiration and refusing to be siloed.
Is there anyone in the UK rail industry who can fill the Steve Jobs role and lead the industry to providing real value for money through innovative thinking? One can only hope so...
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