Who Says?

The internet age has put a powerful weapon into the hands of single interest groups, lobbyists and all the other flotsam and jetsam of political life. With websites, twitter, YouTube, podcasts and so on a relatively small group can co-ordinate national and even international support. The success of institutions such as a Taxpayer's Alliance is, at least in part, down to 21st century technology. 

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But all is not well in the interweb lands of single issue lobbying. With the disposal of conventional media the requirement to avoid provably false statements is also started to wane. If your giving an interview to a newspaper or political affairs programme you really need to make sure your statistics are supported, and your not sprouting gibberish. Unfortunately this safety net doesn't exist online.

I'm currently reading the final independent report of the Rail Value for Money Study (RVM), with a view to, at some point in the future, writing an insightful post on where our current transport policy is, and where it should be going. I'm not there yet. 

However, I also came across the Road Users Alliance (RUA) while looking for some statistics on the number of road users in the UK, and the total passenger-distance covered. Coming straight from the RVM's analysis on the costs of the UK rail sector, and with a practical understanding of the size and composition of UK government receipts, some of the more sensationalist claims from the Director of the RUA stood out as probably failing the "provably false" test.

As such I have just fired off an email to RUA asking them to explain these apparent inconsistencies, (coped below);

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Hi,

I'm in the processing of completing some research for my own interest into how the costs of the road and rail networks are provided for. In looking for statistics on road usage and costs I came across the RUA website. While looking at your website I came across the piece by Mr Tim Green, entitled Road Users Want a Better Deal. I was wondering if you could provide some answers to the questions I had after reading this article;

1.) At the beginning of the piece a figure of £47bn is given for the tax raised from British motorists - could you provide a source for this figure? From reviewing the 2010 Budget the predicted 2009/10 revenues from fuel duty and VED combined is only £31.9bn.

2.) The piece closes by stating that "Road users collectively pay £138 billion in road related taxes and vehicle costs." Could a source for this please be provided? The implication is that these are costs levied by, or on behalf of, government; not privately incurred costs. If things such as the price of buying or maintaining a car have been included this seems out of place if not deliberately misleading in a discussion of centrally funded road maintenance.

3.) Again, could a source be provided for this statistic; "While roads account for 92% of passenger travel most of Government spending has been on rail." Based on the Department of Transport's estimate that the average road user covers 6726 km/year, and the final report from the Study on Rail Value for Money's figure of combined annual passenger-kms on the railways of roughly 50bn this would mean there are approximately 85 million road users in Britain.

I await a response at your earliest convenience,

Thanks and Regards,

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When I get a response I'll post that up as well, though I'm not holding my breath (personally I think I'm going to get some form of "it's under review" response). 

This does however illustrate that even apparently reliable sources (such as the Directors of national campaigning groups) are not beyond toting patently absurd statistics as the truth if it will further their cause.

I'd like to close this (short) piece with a request to anyone and everyone who ever ends up reading this. Next time you come across an unreferenced statistic online send a query to the website or group responsible and call them to account.

Thanks,

Z