TRANSPORT secretary Alistair Darling will be told this week that Scotland is facing "economic meltdown" and the loss of companies to England unless the country’s creaking transport system is modernised.
Darling will be given a grim warning that the country will find itself increasingly isolated on the periphery of an enlarged European Union unless companies change the way they do business.
He will be among those addressing delegates from top com
panies including HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Diageo and the Scottish Executive, but he will also be a target for those who want action to sort out the looming crisis.
Jim Lowe, a partner at law firm Henderson Boyd Jackson, speaking ahead of the event in Edinburgh, said the UK’s congested roads, high taxation and the costs of getting goods to market were resulting in Scottish companies relocating to England to be closer to their customers.
He said: "Scotland’s problem is that we are on the periphery of Europe and transport is a huge issue. We have to do more about congestion and about the environmental impact of road transport. How do we get customer goods from A to B in an environmentally sustainable way and at the right cost?
"Businesses are getting to a certain size and then relocating to the south of England because you have easier links to the continent." He added: "There may be an issue that transport costs are too low."
Lowe has organised this week’s meeting - Transportation 2010 and Beyond - which is being held at the law firm’s offices in Edinburgh.
Bill Burns, development director at Clydeport; Brian Kemp, managing director of haulage group United Freight Distribution, and freight expert Dr Alf Baird of Napier University are also speakers.
No one from the air freight industry, which accounts for around 5% of goods transported in and out Scotland, will be at the meeting, although Lowe said his aim was to bring together the different parts of Scotland’s transport industry.
He said: "From my point of view, I would like the transport industry to recognise that Henderson Boyd Jackson knows what they are talking about in transport law. [The meeting] is about creating an awareness of all the other areas of the transport industry."
Shifting freight off the roads and by sea will be one of the key topics of discussion.
Lowe is also head of the Scottish Shipping Initiative (SSI), a pan-shipping organisation that was launched in 2002 and which aims to heighten awareness and campaign on behalf of Scotland’s maritime industry.
The SSI claims that the UK’s seaways offer great opportunities to free up the congested road network, and has been lobbying the Scottish Executive, Westminster and the EU on this subject.
Baird, who looked at the case for the SuperFast ferry service between Rosyth and Zeebrugge, will discuss the proposals to develop more shipping routes from Scotland, including from Orkney.
Burns said yesterday he planned to talk about the progress being made at the Hunterston Terminal in North Ayrshire.
Clydeport wants to turn the deepwater port into a hub connecting transatlantic and European trade routes - including Asia-Europe traffic - as well as continuing to act as a coal import terminal.
Burns said lessons could be learned from Hunterston - where coal delivered by sea is then shifted by rail to the Longannet power station in Fife - and from Clydeport owner Peel Holding’s plans for development in Salford.
Peel has lodged a planning application to build a £150m terminal on the canal in Salford which will have transport links to the railway, road and water.
Burns said Scotland could learn from the "joined-up thinking" being used in Salford and that similar schemes might work north of the Border.
He said: "The basis of any economy is trade. We need a truly integrated transport policy, and the solution has to come from the integration of ports, road and rail. How do we create a seamless flow of goods and how do we reduce costs and improve efficiency?"
Brian Kemp, managing director of United Freight Distribution, will speak about the impact of the working time directive - which limits the amount of hours that one person can work in one week to 48 - on the haulage industry. The working time directive, which comes into effect next April, has been criticised by hauliers, who will have to employ more staff working fewer hours in order to meet the strict regulations.
Kemp said UFD, which turns over around £14m and employs 240 people, had heavily invested in IT and staff and opened depots in England so that drivers would not have to travel as far in one shift.
But he said that the majority of Scottish hauliers are struggling because of rising staff numbers and taxation, and that companies may go out of business.
He said: "The mood in the industry is pretty despondent at the moment. It’s the toughest I have seen for 25 years. There will be a big shake-out, not just in Scotland.
"There’s not that many companies who are making what I would say were decent profits. The whole industry is having to face these issues - people will stop trading and say ‘Enough is enough’.
"The big change is the introduction of the working time directive. This will have an impact on the way companies operate. We embraced it. But that’s not the way that the industry sees it."
