Q51 Chair: Who?
Graham Dalton: KBR-Kellogg, Brown and Root- was the original consultant.
Q52 Chair: Why did it take them so long? Three years?
Graham Dalton: It was one of the multimodal studies that the then Government undertook in 2000-2002. There were 22 multimodal studies as part of the then Government taking a fresh look at transport and moving away from just road-building. That study was done from 2000 to 2002.
Q53 Chair: Why two years?
Graham Dalton: Because it was a comprehensive study.
Q54 Chair: They were looking at a whole range of schemes, not just one.
Graham Dalton: They were looking at a whole range of solutions, not just road. They were looking far beyond road.
Q55 Chair: So they weren't just looking at the M25.
Graham Dalton: No, they were looking at roads, local planning, the need to travel, whether other public transport solutions could come in-it was much more than that.
Q56 Chair: So it was not just the M25.
Graham Dalton: Let Mr Capstick from the Department cover a little more of what was done in that report.
Martin Capstick: If I may help, paragraph 1.4 of the report gives a bit of a summary. It says that the report was looking at strategies including better traffic management-not just road-building-and a new approach to managing incidents and roadworks. It was particularly looking at alternatives to car travel, the opportunities for public transport, ways to reduce traffic levels, and working with employers on whether they could get their staff working flexibly.
Q57 Chair: But it is a study of the M25.
Martin Capstick: It is about orbital travel around London, of which the M25 is clearly the focal point. It was expected that the result would lead to-
Q58 Chair: Okay, this is a study of the M25 and, one assumes, the roads that lead into it, but I still think that two years is an outrageously long time to do a report.
Graham Dalton: It was one of 22 reports done at the time. It was a fairly major study.
Q59 Chair: It doesn't matter. These guys did a report. It took them two years. We will come back to your use of consultants, but presumably the longer they spent, the more they got.
Graham Dalton: They were set a brief on what they had to study.
Q60 Chair: And you paid them on time spent.
Martin Capstick: Actually, it was the Government office for the south-east that paid them, not the Highways Agency.