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INTRODUCTION
The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution's Eighteenth Report, "Transport and the Environment", was presented to Parliament in October 1994. The report highlighted the unacceptable environmental, social and economic consequences of the forecast growth in road traffic and proposed a set of objectives, targets and supporting measures as the basis for an environmentally sustainable transport system. The Royal Commission's Twentieth Report, presented in September 1997, is essentially a review of developments since its Eighteenth Report, prompted by concerns that the full extent of the challenge presented by the future of transport was becoming 'even more starkly evident' and that action had been too little and too slow to provide the prospect of a substantial shift in transport trends.
This document provides the Government's formal response to the Twentieth Report. The response is structured around what the Royal Commission regarded as its main conclusions (shown in bold italics throughout, with the relevant paragraph number shown in brackets). The Royal Commission's functions under its royal warrant cover the whole of the United Kingdom, and it described its main conclusions as applicable to all parts of the UK. This response, whilst focusing where appropriate on the situation in England, draws on the framework for the UK as a whole provided by "A New Deal for Transport: Better for Everyone", distinguishing, where appropriate, differences in legislation or policy across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Published 23 December 1998
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