A sad loss

By Neville Smith

Friday 18 April 2008

THE death of Gwyneth Dunwoody leaves a considerable gap in the oversight of transport policy in the UK.

Not only was Ms Dunwoody a forceful personality unafraid to speak her mind on the issues, she was also an old-fashioned raconteur, politically astute enough to understand what audiences wanted to hear.

Her most valuable contribution in recent years was to provide, along with the members of the transport select committee, a robust and implacably critical position on the Galileo satellite navigation project.

Earlier this year the Royal Institute of Navigation bravely asked her to address a meeting on the subject and received an ear-bashing that was both erudite and very funny.

She could get away with it because the hard work had already been done. The sub-committee had again and again questioned the rationale for the project, excoriated its new funding structure and its assumptions of operational and fiscal payback.

Prove the operational need for Galileo and provide a rigorous cost-benefit analysis and we will leave you alone, its report implied.

TheUK space industry has been unable to do so, despite never denying that the future revenues from telematics should be lucrative.

One suspects Ms Dunwoody simply saw a simmering EU fudge factory that sought to satisfy national political interests under a banner of advancing European technology and space know-how.

The project now seems unstoppable, though most maritime people agree it is of limited interest to them. Other transport sectors must hope Ms Dunwoody’s successor is as rigorous as she was.

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