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#5 Part 2: Projects, Decisions, and Future Challenges with ORR
66 Plays1 year ago
In this special two-part episode of ‘Voices of the Industry’, we are joined by John Larkinson, the CEO of the Office of Rail and Road (ORR).
In Part one, we investigated the ORR's crucial role in monitoring and regulating Britain's strategic road and rail infrastructure and explored how it navigates current challenges.
In Part two of our conversation with John, we dive into specific projects, decisions, and future challenges that are shaping the rail industry.
We explore how key decisions, such as the future of the HS2 project, impact rail infrastructure. John shares valuable insights into the challenges and considerations behind such significant projects, providing listeners with a deeper understanding of the rail development landscape.
Missed part one? Catch up now - ‘Part 1: Challenges and dynamics of rail regulation with the ORR’.
Key takeaways:
- Major rail projects, including HS2, unravel the considerations, challenges, and decisions that shape significant rail infrastructure initiatives.
- Perspectives on key decisions influencing the trajectory of rail development.
- Upcoming challenges in the rail sector and understand the ORR's role in addressing these hurdles and opportunities, ensuring the resilience and sustainability of rail infrastructure.
Guests
- John Larkinson, a seasoned leader in the rail industry, John took the helm at the Office of Rail and Road in 2021, drawing on over 20 years of experience. From pioneering network regulation to safeguarding consumer interests, his expertise fuels ORR's mission to champion rail and road users. Whether ensuring fair access, holding Network Rail accountable, or analysing industry finances, John's passion for transportation shines through, driving efficient performance and safety across the rails and roads.
Host(s)
- Mike Goggin, Managing Director, Steer.
- Stephen Wainwright, UK Managing Director, Steer.
www.steergroup.com
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Transcript
Introduction to UK Rail Regulation and Infrastructure Projects
00:00:08
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Voices of the Industry, a podcast series bringing you leading industry voices who challenge thinking across transportation, infrastructure and cities. Welcome back, everyone.
00:00:29
Speaker
to the second part of our two-parter with John Larkinson of the Office of Rail and Road. We hope you enjoyed the first part. And in part one, we navigated through the intricate landscape of rail regulation. We explored the evolving role of regulators dissecting challenges and dynamics shaping the industry of rail and road in the UK today. Now in part two, we're delving into more specific projects and decisions that impact rail infrastructure. Get ready for a deep dive into the intricacies of rail development and regulation
00:00:58
Speaker
the second half of our discussion. I hope you enjoy it. Now let's get back to the chat with John.
Challenges and Reforms in the UK Rail Sector
00:01:06
Speaker
Yes, I suppose, you know, we deal with, or I certainly have dealt with, trying to help reform change processes in the UK rail sector. And, you know, those proposals just come forward from Great British Railway's transition team last week. I think it was put some ideas forward. And I can just imagine if your
00:01:24
Speaker
I don't know, working in a local authority part of local government trying to develop a mobility hub, which brings together different sustainable modes alongside the rail network. And you think, I've got a scheme with network rail to introduce this, create these things, but now I've got to talk to an energy provider to be able to get the energy to that site. You think, oh no, there's another set of processes that I need to go through. So I just wonder how agile the UK PLC will be in some form in picking up with some of these things.
00:01:53
Speaker
Yes, that's a pretty big question to speak on behalf of. I'm nervous if I speak on behalf of the whole UK PLC in that case. If you take it from the perspective of an individual company,
00:02:10
Speaker
It is sometimes, I think, quite easy to criticize a big company like Network Rail or National Highways. I'm not sure of people walking up to me saying, I tried to get Network Rail or National Highways or some part of Network Rail to do this, and they were wholly uncooperative.
00:02:27
Speaker
And we get quite a few friendly complaints about that. But if you look at it from a network rails perspective, sometimes actually people, organizations, want network rail to pay more into something. So if you look at schemes where I've been told, well, network rail just hasn't cooperated with this at all, sometimes they haven't. And I'm not saying network rail are perfect, they're certainly not. But often we find that they have.
00:02:53
Speaker
but they just haven't done what some people wanted them to do. So they haven't added some extras onto a scheme, which frankly, they didn't really have to do, but people wanted them to. And ultimately, as a regulator, we can't always be in the business of giving everybody what they want. Network Rail has a fixed budget.
00:03:11
Speaker
It has licenses, it's bound by license, it has targets to make, and it can't just be a general distributor of resources, no matter how popular that might be. There is just a bit of a balancing act here, I think, for Network Rail, National Highways, and ourselves. Understood. Understood. Conscious of time, let's turn to some questions which are definitely in your wheelhouse.
Williams Rail Review and Legislative Delays
00:03:35
Speaker
They were saying, so rail reform, John.
00:03:37
Speaker
The UK government proposed through the Williams Rail Review some significant reform of the rail sector. Most significant probably in the last 30 years because of its reported failings and weaknesses of the current structure. And I'm just wondering how much is the ORR a contributor to the challenge that the industry now faces? And what roles do you think it will play to support improvement in industry outputs and effectiveness going forward? If there is this major reform agenda underway,
00:04:07
Speaker
How do you see that the ORR will play its part in that? Yes. So, as you say, Mike, this has been in office for some time, the debate over rail reform, and particularly the introduction of legislation to set up a new entity, Great British Railways. And the idea behind that was to be effective, as the government said, to bring track and train together. We would have one organisation, an umbrella organisation that was responsible for track and train.
00:04:32
Speaker
Whereas at the moment, we were much more of a split between the infrastructure and the train operators. And as part of that, we did have a long discussion with government about what that would mean for the Office of Rail and Rail. What would that mean for us? What would we need to do differently? And so what was agreed at the time was that if this organisation was set up, Great British Railways, the government wanted to have our role expanded so that we were basically a regulator for the whole of Great British Railways.
00:05:00
Speaker
whatever Great British Railways did, one regulator would sit above it and say you'd have the government regulating Great British Railways. And that would require us to make some quite big changes. We would have needed to change some of our capabilities. We don't currently have. So we had an agreement to do that. But in practice, the legislation isn't going to be introduced in this parliament just to sort of
00:05:26
Speaker
to wider listeners. It may well be that it's coming, but in the short term, it's not. I suppose the only thing I'd add on that is that it does raise a sort of, in regulatory terms, what's often forgotten is which organisations are outside Great British Railways.
00:05:45
Speaker
Because as a regulator, what people want out of a regulator is that impartiality. They go to a regulator because they're looking effectively for someone who would take a sort of rational public interest view. And so I do find that sometimes it's presented as if every rail company or infrastructure manager or whatever in Britain would be inside Great British Railways.
00:06:06
Speaker
they wouldn't, or private freight companies would be outside of Great British Railways. And hence, from my perspective, it is what I can do to support the government in its reform, setting up Great British Railways, oversight and assurance around Great British Railways. But I also need to think about what protection do the freight companies need? Because from their perspective, they're just facing an even bigger monopolist.
00:06:32
Speaker
So if you're a relatively small company, you might reasonably ask, well, what's the regulator going to do for me? And that's actually some actually quite interesting challenges in terms of we have performance incentive systems in Britain. So if the instruction manager causes more delay minutes, the trade operators get payouts and things like that. And the government wanted to switch off those mechanisms of companies inside Great British Railways, which is fine. And that will be done. But actually, the freight companies outside of Great British Railways want you to keep them.
00:07:00
Speaker
because they didn't trust Great British Railways. Again, there's that sort of balancing act. We can't just look at it from one part of the sector. We have to try and find, in this case, a hybrid system where we have one system for companies inside GBR and a system for companies outside GBR. To me, that's a pragmatic way of dealing with an evolving situation.
00:07:26
Speaker
And you talked about the new capabilities, if you become that regulator for Great British Railways in due course, that new capability, which will be, I guess, looking after the GBR's role with regard to train operators. Do you see, I'm intrigued with going forward, going looking back.
00:07:41
Speaker
What else might change in the way the ORR operates, the way it addresses its mission? If the whole industry is going to be, the intention is to do culture change, adopt automation, deliver more seamlessly and better almost and be more strategic perhaps in the way it works. How does the ORR change the way it operates as well as its scope of operation if you want?
00:08:03
Speaker
Yes, we looked at this. There was quite a debate of what was called a sector target operating model. What would the whole rail industry look like after reform? And then for each organization, its own target operating model. So one of the things we did was to look at how we would organize ourselves. As you say, exactly how would we work? What would we need in changes in our culture?
00:08:26
Speaker
At this stage, because this reform isn't going ahead, that work's never been discussed in detail externally. It's effectively sitting there. I think it's probably inappropriate to talk about it until we know the reforms are going ahead, which we'll just have to wait for.
00:08:50
Speaker
shift in certain ways. We'd have slightly different relationships with government, probably. There'd be maybe changing some of the lines around accountabilities in certain areas, and that would drive different behaviours, maybe in governance, et cetera. So quite a lot of work did go into this at the time. And if and when it was required, this would all be rebooted, and we would be coming back to it. Understood.
Enhancing Rail Efficiency and Market-Led Initiatives
00:09:14
Speaker
Stephen and I both had a role to support Network Rail in some readiness, I guess, for the next control period, which we're just about to end. Yourselves, the ORR, gave your final determination at the end of October. Some people believe the determination is perhaps better than it might have been, but there is still quite a healthy challenge.
00:09:38
Speaker
to network route, to deliver efficiency and improve outputs, et cetera. And one of the aspects that they were looking at was market-led and whole industry initiatives to try and help them better, to improve confidence around cost efficiency and where savings might become. And I'm wondering how, when we don't know the answer, we are going to have to think laterally, radically, perhaps, or innovatively, creatively. How does the LRR support that creative agenda to try and realize the benefits?
00:10:06
Speaker
Certainly, in terms of something like whole industry performance, the split between ourselves effectively looking at rail's performance and government focusing more on the train operators, there is no doubt that we could all, including the IRIS, all ourselves and government do better in terms of joining up on that with or without railway form.
00:10:29
Speaker
This is a site such a danger that you sort of wait for something to happen. There's not a lot I can do until a railway form comes along. And this is not true. It almost allows you, it's a little bit of a cop-out. But if you've got an infrastructure manager on a five-year planning cycle and train operators on an annual business planning cycle,
00:10:49
Speaker
and you want to ask the question, how are we planning for year two performance? You've got a problem. But that's a solvable problem, in a sense. It's a solvable problem without legislation. And so it just comes back directly to your question. The thing that we particularly want to focus on at the moment is, OK, let's now go back to what we can do without legislative change. It cannot be that effective that everything has to stay the same as it is now. It just doesn't.
00:11:16
Speaker
And so, and hence in that whole industry performance area, that's certainly something which we believe we can do quite a bit more on with government that we're doing now. And we are reacting to discussions about that. So that's the number one priority of most users. The performance of the system, you know, in cochlear, it's usual train on time, yes or no. That's what people want to see us to do. And that's what I believe we should be focusing on.
00:11:41
Speaker
Stephen, any reflections from the whole industry market-led work that you were doing, and perhaps the one thing that you might say that were around might ask John, or if they haven't already asked, or anything that you think might be there?
00:11:54
Speaker
differentiated to unlocking things? It's a radical idea. I mean, you know, obviously, now we're out as very much being asset condition led, and this going to something which is more market led, I think everyone needs to recognize is, is a significant change. And it was what was driving that change was potentially different use of the network by the consumers by train operators. So, I mean, I think
00:12:23
Speaker
It's still a little bit early and I go back to one of john's points about five years now we're on one year trading operating business plans. I do wonder whether part of the answers is better alignment between those which would allow perhaps some of these concepts and new ideas to be investigated in a bit more of a joined up way.
00:12:46
Speaker
I think that's a really good point, that there probably isn't more work to do there, because I won't mention any names, but I did try a brief test on people about what do you think is meant by the market-like proposals? And I would say there was quite a wide range of answers in terms of what people actually thought it would mean in practice. Partly, depending on what they hoped it would mean.
00:13:12
Speaker
It is an area worth focusing on more because as a railway in Britain, we are short of money. We have lost close to something like £750 million in revenues from industrial relations problems since last summer. That is a phenomenal sum. Our revenues are way down anything they were in COVID. Hence,
00:13:32
Speaker
the idea that we shouldn't look at how to boost revenues on what is currently be wrong but what she means in practice and also the politics around it because sometimes what what depending on what your view these places are if you're saying actually we need more higher revenue generating trains on the network.
00:13:52
Speaker
and fewer, lower revenue-generating trains on the network. That's a profound political choice. I know that's not what always people mean about it. And some of it could just be about giving people more visibility. I remember, I know NetRel often say, well, this is partly just about making sure engineers realize that they're about to spend £40 million on renewing this bit of network, which generates
00:14:15
Speaker
literally a couple of million pounds in revenue a year or something like that. Is that really essential? Not that, don't do it. It might be necessary for safety reasons, but is it really essential? I think that's quite a good discipline, actually. It depends how far you take some of these things. Because if it's about which trains go on the network, well, actually, that's entirely, almost entirely under government's control today. Those decisions could be decided now.
00:14:43
Speaker
No legislation is required to do it. Franchisers decide, the franchise operators operate the vast majority of trains in the country and you could change that with no major structural change at all. I think that takes us to a point that eventually you go beyond analysis and these are really difficult.
00:15:04
Speaker
political choices. And in a relatively densely populated country, with lots of conurbations where people rely on networks, on the rail network, and also with increasing, you might say, interest at a more devolved level about relation to different parts of the country, etc. These are actually big political questions that they're way beyond just in ISIS. And I think the idea that if we settle
00:15:28
Speaker
a new Great British Railways company, you could just implement those sorts of changes almost without political oversight. I just find that, frankly, a little bit unlikely. Certainly, I have extensive dealings with MPs. I mean, as an independent regulator, we are ultimately accountable to Parliament. I can be called in front of parliamentary committees and I do get called in front of committees. I meet lots of MPs and at the local level, these things really, really matter.
00:15:57
Speaker
I think one of the challenges is how those are big questions that you certainly say, and they're probably multi-generational or multi-parliament perhaps. So how do we help decision makers navigate what are electrically sensitive topics and choices?
00:16:13
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. There has been some good work done in the industry, setting out some of those choices. If you don't put the options on the table, you're quite right. How would any politician know what they were choosing between? I do think some good work's been done there.
00:16:29
Speaker
And I know that more could be done, but generally speaking, politically in Britain, there's often quite extensive debate about relatively small variations in training services around the country. So it depends, I suppose, when people say market later, how big are you planning to go here? And going back to the point we discussed, what exactly does it mean? Is it indicative just trying to give you a pointer or actually saying it's a really big driver
00:16:58
Speaker
of strategic change. That's a different way of looking into it. It's a very good segue to my next question.
Impact of HS2 Cancellation on Rail Network
00:17:05
Speaker
I can't let you get past without asking your question about HS2. So the government has decided not to proceed beyond phase one of the new high-speed line HS2 and is cancelling phase 2A and 2B. So the network won't extend beyond Birmingham. Jon, what's the ramifications for you? You can express an opinion on the HS2 decision if you wish.
00:17:26
Speaker
But what's the ramifications for enhancement, development and delivery, perhaps on the conventional rail network, given that decision? Because it has ramifications.
00:17:37
Speaker
Yes, it does. The decision on HS2 is a critical choice. We don't have any involvement in those critical choices. I won't comment on that. It is a ramifications, which I think we do need to have a view on. It's interesting that a lot of people, perhaps naturally, have focused on what else could you do with the money in, say, building new stations or electrifying parts of the network
00:18:02
Speaker
or things like that. I think, again, there's perhaps some more public facing, frankly, sort of glamorous schemes. And I can entirely see why people are interested in that. But going back to, well, okay, and some of those, again, are political choices, but going back to what do you expect of a regulator here?
00:18:18
Speaker
We just need to get into a look at the existing network and where we find ourselves without going into detail or geography of this. Where we find ourselves is now we have a route running from London north heading up the central western side of Britain, heading up to Scotland, we've got a west coast main line in effect. You've got a sort of swing bit of that, which is going to have a high speed line running alongside it and then the rest of it worked.
00:18:45
Speaker
And that raises some quite big issues in terms of capacity as trains come off the high speed line and have to join what's sometimes called the conventional network or whatever you want to call it. There are now quite clear issues around capacity and depending on the level of capacity that can be generated choices. And that's an area where network rail now are doing along with high speed 2 and others.
00:19:08
Speaker
are doing, I think, some really important and essential work to look at that. Again, probably a bit less glamorous than some of the schemes people are talking about, but that's an imperative. Also, for us, what happens at Houston Station, there's quite a controversy about what exactly happens around the main station in London and an intermediate station at Old Oak Common, and quite what role these stations are serving
00:19:32
Speaker
in the new world and how they fit in with the conventional, to get old at common, how this fits in with conventional services. And these are real nuts and bolts stuff now for the rail network. So they're probably more of our area's interest than perhaps some of the big enhancement schemes you referred to. Yeah. I mean, do you think it has ramifications or repercussions for how you will monitor the beginning years of CP7, for example, that you might, that, you know, Network Rail may say, hang on a minute, we're not
00:20:01
Speaker
We shouldn't proceed with that renewal until such time as we know it isn't a hunting argument. At this stage, and it may be that I changed my mind over time, at this stage, I don't think so, not in the early stages, if only for the reason that it may take some time to get decisions.
00:20:20
Speaker
on what we need to do there. Because as you implied there, a decision is almost certainly going to work. It will cost money. And there are plenty of other claims on government funding. We've got an election next year. Almost certainly, political parties have their own political parties, while their own spending priorities. So I suspect there's some way to go there. And there's expectations that some money might be spent on other schemes around the country. So I don't actually think, we've probably even got to the starting line of that.
00:20:48
Speaker
debate. I just think that it's going to take some time. A lot of options have been looked at before, and I don't recall any of them being particularly easy as options. So I think we've got some way to go. And I don't at the moment see it having a major impact on the early years of the next
Funding Challenges and Risk Management in Network Rail
00:21:04
Speaker
control period. The only thing that's worth pointing out is that there's always an assumption, well, surely network rail could find the money from somewhere type question. Whenever you've got a big company, especially a company spending more than 10 billion pounds a year, there's some people who are sure that they can find a bit more money.
00:21:18
Speaker
One of the features of the financial settlement for the next five years is that the risk funding, not only has it been badly affected by inflation, as indeed has happened across the world in many sectors, but because of this fairly tight funding, the risk funding is actually quite low relative to the size of the business and spend, and indeed the risks.
00:21:38
Speaker
So there's not a big fund sitting there waiting to fund major works there. I think we're in quite a lot of analysis to be done. There's no doubt, as ever, quite tough prioritization to be done. Okay. Thank you. Before we go to some quick fire questions, Stephen, any reflection or question that you might have for John at this point?
00:22:02
Speaker
Yeah, I guess just looking forward with all the changes that have come in, what do you see as the biggest challenge going forward, John, in your role? The challenge, for my experience, and this is just based on my own personal experience, the challenge is always for the organisation to stay relevant.
00:22:23
Speaker
I think you could look at the sense of the economy where organisations have been perceived not to stay relevant in changing circumstances. I think we have demonstrated repeatedly and into the way we've changed our role over time, the way we've flexed. Not that many years ago, we were regulating a private company limited guarantee, then we moved to regulating a
00:22:45
Speaker
of actually a nationalized industry. So you have to adapt. You have to stay relevant. You have to look at the problems around you and be part of a solution to those problems, rather than just saying, well, we're the regulator. We do it this way. And good luck to everybody else. And certainly, while I'm in this job, I am absolutely determined
00:23:05
Speaker
that we will continue to change, continue to evolve with the aim of staying relevant so we can serve the public interest and hence the users and the systems and taxpayers. Right. Now, conscious of time, John, I've got some quick fire questions. I don't know where the answer is going to be quick fire or not, but let me try these. I've not done this before.
Regulation as an Art and Science
00:23:27
Speaker
Is effective regulation an art or a science?
00:23:30
Speaker
There's quite a bit of art to it, I think. But obviously, there has to be some science to it. But I think particularly when you've got a lot of a public sector environment, I suspect there's probably a slightly higher degree of art. What's the biggest evolution in rail regulation you've seen since rail privatisation?
00:23:51
Speaker
I think just in terms of the functioning of the regulator, it goes back to the discussion we had earlier about bringing together the health and safety elements of regulation with economic regulations. I know it's not something which permeates the public consciousness, I don't think, and there's a different reason why it should. But in terms of just
00:24:11
Speaker
I think that was pretty profound. The other one was when network rail effectively moved into the public sector. I remember people distinctly remember at the time some people saying, well, you know, it gets a lot of money from the public sector anyway. So now it's just sort of a nationalized industry. I can't see any change.
00:24:30
Speaker
What did it mean? It meant that Network Rail will be consolidated into the public accounts. As soon as you are consolidated into the public accounts for the government, your life changed dramatically overnight. You are subject to processes, procedures that you never saw before. Network Rail now run effectively as an extra set of accounts. That was one which I do think was massively underestimated in terms of the profound impact that that would have, and you still have into this day.
00:25:00
Speaker
I'd sort of share that. It was a decision, but I think it took two years before the narrative or the rhetoric about the change was realised. I think you're right. I was looking back about rail regulations since privatisation. What would be the one thing you'd like to see emerge from rail form? If legislation comes forward and the next government is up for rail reform,
00:25:23
Speaker
Is there something you'd have on your Christmas list? What would you like? I've stayed all the time on Rail Reform. We've tried a fairly careful line because effectively this is government policy. And so clearly if the government changes policy on Rail Reform or you've got a new government coming in with a different policy on Rail Reform, I just have to preserve the fact that we are an independent impartial regulator. We don't contest with government policy direction.
00:25:52
Speaker
Whatever happens, though, I don't think at the moment anything gets around the fact that we are at the moment in a constrained funding environment on rail. And if that's not going to change, then the need to prioritise will remain. And hence, the importance of, or it might call, well-informed prioritisation, people understand the choices that are being made and why. I just don't see that going away in the slightest. It's going to remain as a major issue.
00:26:21
Speaker
Right. Last one. You might play the same argument again. Given the National Infrastructure Commission recommendation that the government should replace TfL's annual funding with five-year settlements, would you like to take up a role overseeing TfL's efficiency and expenditure?
ORR's Expanding Role in Economic Oversight
00:26:39
Speaker
That's actually a really topical question because for the first time ever, a couple of months ago, we did provide a report to TFL, the Department of Transport and the Treasury in Britain.
00:26:55
Speaker
around the cost of the capital program next year. For TFL, we were asked to do this. The three organizations effectively asked us to do this. It's the first time we've ever done what you might call more of an economic role with TFL. We're responsible for international listeners. We're responsible for health and safety on pretty much every part of the rail network in Britain. TFL runs lots of tube trains, the underground trains, and we do health and safety on that.
00:27:22
Speaker
as well, but we've never had a role beyond that. And some of that came out of a more general discussion about the future funding framework for TFL. Because like all funding frameworks in any walk of life, these things are hotly debated. And the question has been some discussion about
00:27:41
Speaker
is that would TFL, the government in general, both will be better off under some kind of regulatory environment than the current environment? Would that actually be better for the organisations, for the end users of the system or not? And so we have had some conversations about that. It is really, really interesting because there's a different political structure for TFL. There's a separate mayor, a separate assembly. So there's different structure, but there has been some work done on that.
00:28:11
Speaker
And I think it was just interesting, this was literally a couple of months ago, we sent a report about our cost analysis for TFL and the government. So I don't know what's going to happen. And ultimately, it'll be a decision for the government and for TFL. But again, we're here to serve in that sense. And if we're asked to do that, do such a role, then obviously, we would do it. I suspect there's quite a long way to go on discussions like that.
00:28:38
Speaker
you'd end up picking up new capabilities for buses and cable cars at least. Well, indeed, one of the issues would be about when we say transport for London, do we mean all modes? If it's all transport for London, it's exactly what would it cover and so on. So yes, if that required whatever the decision would take, we would have to look at capabilities and also just a very different environment there. And also, of course, we have different models of
00:29:04
Speaker
what exactly do we mean by regulatory settlement? We have a different model for national highways compared to network rail and there are actually many different ways of cutting these models and something more tailored to those precise circumstances of TFL and what the government's looking forward to. It might be better than any of the current models.
00:29:22
Speaker
Okay, right. We are out of time, I think. Stephen, any last thoughts or reflection before we sign off? I think thank you to John and, you know, a reflection of how important the life and the role of the regulator is within industry, but also to each individual consumer uses the transport system really does go to the heart of that. Thank you. Yeah, certainly. I'm taking away, John, the important role of the ORR.
00:29:52
Speaker
is playing and wanted to continue to play as that independent voice for different users. But I'm also taking away some other things I've heard, which in our recent series that we were doing here in the UK on re-collaborating Britain's railways was changes possible and reform may or may not come. And Great British Railways may not be the panacea solution. So it's important that energy is sustained and changes sought now, frankly, rather than waiting. So John,
00:30:19
Speaker
Thank you very much for sparing the time. It's been a great conversation. I didn't think we would go as long as this, but we did. I could have asked more contentious questions of you, like, do you want to get back into health economics or not? I suspect I've left here a bit late now, Mike, and I do enjoy working in Railroad Road. I really enjoyed it. Thanks so much, Mike and Steve. It's been a really, really trusting conversation. So thank you. And you can find this podcast and other pieces of our
00:30:47
Speaker
voices of steer and voices of industry at steergroup.com. I look forward to engaging with you again. Thanks very much everybody.