Q201 Chair: Mr Dalton, I am going to interrupt you. It has been used in Europe since 1996. That is 15 years of usage. You have trialled it since 2003. You signed this contract in 2009. It beggars belief that you could not take advantage of the experience in Europe and your experience here, however slow you were at getting off the ground, and save the taxpayer up to £1.1 billion.
Graham Dalton: We have worked closely with Europe, especially with the Dutch throughout the time. I think it may help if Ginny explains what was being used in Europe.
Ginny Clarke: In 1996, which was when the Dutch and the Germans tried this first, they tried it on two-lane motorways and on relatively low flows compared with ours. They were flows in the range of 20,000 to 40,000, rather than ours, which is 140,000. We also have three lanes. They did it as a research project, on a short section outside Utrecht. We looked at it, and they were doing it on the basis of trialling it on the ground. They did little preparatory work for it, and they did it on a section of motorway where they had technology and control systems in place. We did not have that. That is how it started. When we were looking at it in 2000, which is the study noted in the NAO report, and when we identified the need to do a trial section, it was on the basis of that learning experience. It was not the system that is actually being used, and was potentially considered in 2004-05, when this contract was put in place. The evidence that we now have is much more substantial than we ever had at the basis. In the progression from 1996, with those trial sites on short sections in Utrecht and Germany, which had very different characteristics and were on a type of motorway that did not exist in this country, we have caught up with the technology that is available. We have related the results of what the Germans and the Dutch have learned into using it on larger motorways with much higher flows with a variable system of control.
Q202 Chair: You wasted £1 billion.
Ginny Clarke: No, I do not think that we wasted it. At the various stages, we tested it against the knowledge that we had at that time.
Q203 Chair: It seems to me that you refused to use the knowledge from Europe, although the systems that you have in place use the technology they use in Europe, as Richard has told us.
Ginny Clarke: Effectively, ours is more advanced than what is used in Europe. We leaped from their knowledge.
Q204 Chair: At a cost. At an opportunity cost of between £400 million and £1.1 billion on this bit of motorway. If you had done it earlier on the rest of the motorway, the benefits to the economy would have been greater.
Graham Dalton: We wanted something that worked. The German trial in 1996 involved putting a sign up at the side of the motorway saying, "Use the hard shoulder between these hours."
Q205 Chair: Some 15 years on, the Germans have presumably moved their technology on.
Ginny Clarke: Yes they have, but effectively they are picking up on things that we are doing, which they were not doing. The important aspect about how this learning has happened over that time is that as it has changed incrementally as each country has tested different things. I accept that we've all learned from that, but the basis is that we have operated a system under active traffic management that ensures that we can deliver the 80% of the benefits that the national study showed for Ministers in 2008. The value of what we have done is that we have got more benefits out of the systems that we are using. I say again that the PFI was about buying the benefits as well as paying the cost for that.
Q206 Mr Bacon: Ms Clarke, may I ask a quick question? Your CV says that you are responsible for technical services procurement and network performance and planning, that you're board champion for safety, that you've been in the road workers' safety forum and that you were the delegate to the World Road Association for seven years. It says that your job title is chief highway engineer, but it does not say that you're an engineer.
Ginny Clarke: I am a chartered engineer and have been for 30 years.
Q207 Mr Bacon: That is encouraging. Can I encourage you to include that in your CV in future?
Ginny Clarke: Certainly. I probably just didn't want to tell you my age.
Q208 Mr Bacon: We don't like to assume things in this Committee.
Ginny Clarke: Sorry for omitting that. I should have said so.
Q209 Chair: A final question. Reflecting on this contract, are you proud of it? Are you satisfied with it? Do you wish you'd done it differently?
Graham Dalton: The most telling thing is that, unlike some earlier PFIs, we have a lot of visibility in respect of what goes into the contract and we can put a lot of pressure for performance on an important piece of the network. Connect Plus for the contractor means having to work hard and it looks like it is working hard to comply with conditions of the contract. It is not finding it easy to comply with all conditions and give the performance we expect. From that point of view, we think we've contracted something that they are having to sweat to deliver and that is good.
Q210 Chair: Are you proud of it?
Graham Dalton: Yes.