The comments made by Stuart Andrew, the Housing Minister, on 12 April 2022.
Up and down the country, street names often form a key part of an area’s history, cherished by the local community for the memories they hold and the places they represent.
These proposals will strengthen local democracy by ensuring that councils in England get agreement from local residents in advance of any street name changes.
The speech made by John Hynd, the then Labour MP for Sheffield Attercliffe, in the House of Commons on 20 December 1967.
Unlike the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Webster), I rise to give my warmest support to the Bill. The hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Peter Walker) suggested that the Bill was the result of the thinking of an extreme Left-wing Socialist. He will probably be surprised to find the Bill receiving unanimous support on this side of the House from all sections of the Labour Party.
I support the Bill because it accepts many of the principles which many of us have been advocating for many years. It accepts the principle that we can no longer go on with our overcrowded roads, with their daily death toll, while our railways are under-used. It accepts the principle of reducing the unfair charges which the railways have had to pay for far too long. It does this by proposing to write off the debts which have been accrued by the railways, largely because of these unfair charges. It also accepts the principle of assessing the true costs of transport under the different methods which are available to us.
I agree with the hon. Member for Worcester that it is a pity that we have been given only one day to debate a Bill of this size. This Measure contains at least four other Bills. I do not know why he should complain about this, because for this problem to be tackled comprehensively, if this Measure had not been introduced, four other Bills would have had to be brought before the House. The hon. Gentleman seems to be complaining about my right hon. Friend’s productivity in bringing these four Measures together in one Bill so that everyone can balance one aspect of the problem with another when these issues are discussed in Committee.
Why is my right hon. Friend being so modest about road haulage charges vis-à-vis those in the great centres of private enterprise which are so often lauded by hon. Gentlemen opposite, for example, West Germany? Many of us would have liked to have seen a much more realistic approach, perhaps on the German lines, but no doubt this will follow the discussions on the true costs.
The hon. Gentleman repeated the usual charge that no such Bill as this should be introduced when the economy is in such a parlous state. It is just when the economy is in a parlous state that it is necessary to get on with reorganising the very basis of our economy, and in particular reorganising this great national service on which our economy and industry depends.
The hon. Gentleman also repeated, in slightly different terms, the charge made from the Front Bench opposite during our last debate on transport, that the Bill merely represented further nationalisation, and proposed substituting for a highly competitive industry a monolithic State enterprise….”.—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th November, 1967; Vol. 753, c. 750.] This is being said by hon. Gentlemen who represent the party which was responsible for the establishment of public ownership of London transport to deal with the chaos which existed then. After the 1951 General Election, one of their first acts was the nationalisation of MacBrayne Steamers in Scotland, part of the transport industry. Hon. Gentlemen opposite were also responsible for keeping the greater part of British Road Services nationalised, after their fruitless attempts to destroy it, and the reason for this was that our road haulage services had proved to be more highly efficient and effective than private enterprise had been, and even their own supporters demanded that they put an end to denationalisation.
The interesting thing to note about the phrase “substituting for a highly competitive industry a monolithic State enterprise” is that when the Conservative Party calls for sacrifices from the common people of this country, for one purpose or another, hon. Gentlemen opposite refer to us as a nation, but when they are opposing Labour or Socialist Measures they refer to us as a state. This is supposed to be an epithet, but it refers to the same thing.
The hon. Gentleman talked about a highly competitive industry. It is interesting to note that he did not say a “highly successful competitive industry”, a phrase which one usually hears from the other side about private enterprise. The reason for this is that it has not been a highly successful competitive enterprise in any sector of the national transport scheme.
It may be that the hon. Gentleman is too conscious, of the fact that the present situation is a direct result of too much interference and hesitation by Tory Governments during the 13 years from 1951 to 1964. The Tory Government were never tired of praising the efficiency and enterprise of the British Transport Commission, but the hon. Gentleman is aware that the British Transport Commission, and the railways themselves, were, for the first time, earning a profit in 1951–52, when the Conservative Government took over and started interfering with them? This is where and when the story of the growing deficits began, and hon. Gentlemen opposite know this only too well.
In 1958, hon. Gentlemen opposite were claiming that but for the temporary economic recession at that time the B.T.C. would have been “right on target”. Three years later, in November, 1961, they were telling us that despite the growing deficit in the railways’ accounts everything was going to be all right. They chided those of us who had been talking of transport as a social service with the fact that if such wild ideas were put into practice we might have vast deficits amounting to as much as £100 million a year. The Minister then said, “We believe we have got the balance right”. How did they get the balance right? The right balance, according to what was said in introducing the 1962 Bill, was a loss not of £100 million but £150 million, with an estimated £160 million for the following year, followed by a loss of £134 million in 1963 and £121 million in 1964—and now we understand that we are faced this year with a loss of £153 million.
The story of deficits in the railway industry began under a Conservative Government, and these deficits were maintained under Conservative Governments. We are therefore delighted that we are now reaching the point where we can say goodbye to this sorry story, which was described by a Tory Minister as “the right balance”. Incidentally, in 1961, after Dr. Beeching’s appointment, we were promised enormous savings to balance these deficits. During the six years since that time the savings arising from these wholesale railway closures have amounted to only £17 million.
Mr. Daniel Awdry (Chippenham)
The hon. Member is expressing delight that the railways will be relieved of this deficit. Does not he appreciate that the deficit is being wiped out purely by a currency device?
Mr. Hynd
It is an accounting arrangement, but when a continual deficit of about £150 million, year by year, is loaded on to the railways—a deficit which will never be repaid, anyhow—it cannot make any difference if the deficit is written off and the railways are given a chance to begin to earn a reasonable profit on their activities.
We have had ample opportunity to hear what many hon. Members opposite have been saying about the closures under the Beeching regime, and we hope that they will take this opportunity of following us into the Lobby this evening.
The interesting thing is that neither in the last debate nor in this have we heard a word about any alternatives from hon. Members opposite, although they have opposed everything the Government propose. Is it that they are satisfied that the present situation should be allowed to rip? Are they satisfied that we should go on with these great deficits—£150 million a year—adding again to the existing confusion on the roads? Do not they want to do anything about this confusion on the roads, which costs so much in terms of the daily toll of lives, to say nothing about the estimated £1,000 million cost to the nation arising from delays and accidents? What is their policy? So far as we can judge from what they have said during the debate they are happy to continue with the impossible situation that they created during their 13 years of office.
I speak for many thousands of railway-men and others outside the industry in giving a warm welcome to the Minister for her courage and her practical new approach, which seeks to bring an end to the confusion and disasters of the Marples regime and restore the policy of integration of our transport services which, right from the 1920 Commission, has been the policy advocated by every independent body that has inquired into transport problems.
A Bill of this size cannot adequately be covered in the time available to a back bench speaker, involving as it does a complete reorganisation of this immense and complex industry, and containing so many proposals and involving so many facets of the industry’s activities.
I confine myself to asking the Minister one or two questions about the details of the Bill. First, and probably most important, when may we expect to receive the results of the investigation into the true costs of road and rail transport, taking into account the £179 million annually loaded on to the railways in respect of tracks and signalling, for which there is no comparable burden on road transport?
Secondly, why should not all the pending and further railway closures be suspended until such time as this assessment has been made and the true comparative costs established? Until, for that matter, the results of the review of the Regional Economic Councils will be made known? It may prove, as it has in the past, that certain lines should not be closed. For example, under the Beeching Plan the railway line to Fort William was to be closed down, although another Minister in the same Tory Government was arranging for the building of a great new factory at Fort William. In the end, they had to cancel the idea of cutting out the railway line.
This could happen again. As a result of the investigation into the true costs of road and rail transport it could be that many of the lines and services which are now proposed to be closed down will turn out to be more economical than any available alternative form of transport.
Is my right hon. Friend satisfied with the set-up, and especially with the freight services organisation? Would it not have been a much more practical proposition to restore the old British Transport Commission which, during its lifetime, proved so effective as the blanket organisation for the sectors of transport which it then covered? With all the separate organisations which now exist, or which will exist—the British Railways Board, the National Freight Corporation and Passenger Transport Authorities, to, say nothing of British Road Services, the port authority and, even, now the air services—there are bound to be clashes of interest, and decisions will have to be taken, many of them quickly.
I do not see how decisions can be taken effectively and speedily by the Minister or by an advisory council. Many situations are bound to arise in which urgent decisions are needed at top level which cannot be dealt with promptly and adequately by a Government Department, and which ought to be dealt with by an overall body. I would have preferred to see the restoration of the British Transport Commission.
My next point concerns the separation of the National Freight Corporation from the railways. Sufficient has been said about this to make it unnecessary for me to go into details, but nobody has yet made the point that the Bill provides that the National Freight Corporation will cater for traffic originating by road and the railways for traffic originating by rail. Is the Minister satisfied that such a distinction can always be clearly drawn? Those with practical experience of transport know that it is not always easy to say where the traffic substantially originated. If a question of this kind arises, who will decide? If it is to be the Freight Integration Council it will not be adequate. It will not work speedily enough. I ask my right hon. Friend to look closely at this question.
I agree with what has repeatedly been said that the separation of the N.F.C. from the railways is taking from them one of the services upon which everyone had assumed they would largely depend for their financial viability. In the last year traffic increased by about 400 per cent., representing £2½ million. We understand that it will treble next year, if things continue as they are going. This must be a serious blow to railway finances. I do not understand the object of separating it from the railways, which are quite capable of managing the freight services.
Finally, there is the question of safeguarding the interests of both the railway employees and the public. It is true that the Bill proposes a certain extension of opportunities for appeals to the T.U.C.C.s, but most people who have had anything to do with those organisations are worried not so much about the opportunities for appeal but about their lack of powers and nothing in the Bill extends those powers to enable the councils to make more effective recommendations and take account of all the factors involved in considering whether a service should be maintained.
I know that my right hon. Friend fully realises the vital importance in this great new experiment of carrying the employees with her and bringing confidence into the ranks of the workers in the railways and elsewhere, but there is no clearly stated provision in the Bill about the rights of employees to full consultation up to the top level. What forms of consultation will be created—so far as I understand the Bill from a rapid reading, and no one could have done more in the time that we have had—are apparently to be left entirely to the Minister to decide later. She has not said on what considerations she will base decisions. This is highly important.
The unions are greatly concerned. They are already concerned about who will be catering for whom in these new centres where roads and railways will be mixed up and there will be freight liner employees, local passenger services and area passenger services employees, railwaymen, local authority employees and others. The delineation of some of these fields may be extremely difficult. It would reassure the workers affected by the Bill if the Minister made an early statement about what form consultations will take and about how the problem of who employs whom is to be resolved.
As so many hon. Members wish to speak and time is so short, I will confine myself to these questions at this stage, although I hope to have an opportunity of asking a number more later on. I hope that the Minister will consider that my questions are constructive and sufficiently important to justify an answer, since they urgently concern many thousands of railwaymen as well as others besides myself.
I repeat what I said at the beginning, that I give the Bill and its general purposes and principles the warmest possible support. I hope that it will be given overwhelming support in the Lobbies. I can assure the Minister that, given certain assurances, it will have the full support of the workers in the railway industry.
The speech made by David Webster, the then Conservative MP for Weston-super-Mare, in the House of Commons on 20 December 1967.
I always follow what the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, West (Mr. Steele) says with great interest. He talked about the 1921 speech of Lord Geddes, about the railway deficit and the 1923 regrouping. I remember that during the passage of the 1962 Act he tried, with great robustness, to resist the rearrangement of British Railways. I hope that, in view of what he has said today, he will, at the same length and with the same robustness, resist the changes now proposed for British Railways. I look forward to hearing from him at great length in Committee.
The point which the Minister left out of her speech was that the present railway deficit is less than the deficit in 1964. In 1964, the deficit was £120 million. Today, it is £150 million. But, in fact, it is 1 per cent. less because the cost of living has increased by 10 per cent. and the £ has been devalued by 16 per cent. I am sorry that the right hon. Lady missed that out of her speech. Perhaps she will make that point later.
The Minister’s speech today and the Government speech yesterday on South Africa prove the complete incompatibility between pure Socialism and a prosperous country and responsible government. The Prime Minister’s secret is that for the last three years he has managed to keep this from the public view, but now he is no longer able to do so. The crude cost to the nation of what the Minister proposes is an increase of £60 million on the rate burden without any right of appeal. Lest it should be thought that the taxpayer will benefit from the Bill, it should be pointed out that that will not happen.
Mrs. Castle
I am interested in the hon. Member’s statement that there will be an increase in the rates of £60 million. Would he break that figure down so that I might understand it? It does not relate to anything in my Bill.
Mr. Webster
The right hon. Lady knows that the cost of setting up passenger services in urban areas is £60 million.
Mrs. Castle
We should get this matter clear. The Bill makes clear that the provision concerning the passenger transport authorities for suburban railway finances in their area is specifically confined to the conurbations where the losses are, not £60 million, but £8 to £10 million. The figure of £60 million applies to stopping services all over the country, and they are not involved.
Mr. Webster
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady. I am always glad to give way to her, although she was not glad to give way during her speech. Clause 9 gives her power to set up a passenger transport authority in any part of the country. Therefore, what she says is absolute eyewash and is almost on the level of the parody which I put to her just now about how the railway deficit was less than it was in 1964.
There will not be a reduction in taxation. The taxpayer will have to pay £35 million to take over British Electric Traction. The taxpayer has already suffered an increase in the railway deficit of £20 million. There is an estimate of £40 million in the Bill in vehicle taxation alone. Is this justice for an industry which has had its excise duty doubled, has suffered three increases in fuel tax and has lost its investment allowances? If that is the right hon. Lady’s idea of justice—I will not finish that sentence.
The name of the Home Secretary, not that of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is on the Bill. The fact that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should allow this Bill to be presented straight after devaluation, after the Prime Minister has forced a crisis of confidence and the £ is tottering again, despite the 16 per cent. devaluation, shows the inability of the Government to put right the affairs of the country. I shall probably be accused of being disloyal by pointing out the defects of the Government in trying to put the country right.
The point which my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr. Peter Walker) made about the chairmanship of British Railways being hawked around, it is rumoured, seven people, the Parliamentary Secretary’s visit to Canada to ask a prominent railwayman there to become Chairman of British Railways and things of this sort are nothing compared with the Minister’s failure to achieve an adequate salary structure for the Chairman and top management. If the Government want to obtain people who can put matters right, they will have to pay them properly and ensure that there are prospects for people further down the scale to be adequately remunerated for a very hard and thankless job. One sees distinguished and devoted servants like Lord Beeching, Lord Hinton, Mr. Shirley and Mr. Fiennes leaving the railways distressed and depressed.
This is the industry which has now also lost the freightliner train, which was to be its white hope, to the National Freight Corporation. It is simply a new bureaucracy with yet another bureaucracy —the Freight Integration Council—set up to try to make sure that there will not be friction between the N.F.C. and British Railways. I cannot believe that there will not be friction between them and so it may be, for once, that this new Council will have purpose in trying to prevent that type of friction. It is known that communication in the top ranks of railway management is not very good. To set in a new authority will make it much more difficult at this time.
The argument that licensing will relieve congestion is simply baloney. It will mean that a person is prevented from having a vehicle of more than 16 tons. Therefore, instead of using proper commercial judgment and getting a 30-tonner, he will keep his vehicle size at 16 tons or less, thus causing more than twice as many vehicles to be on the roads, particularly in the city centres, when using the railway depots. The fact that what is called a special authorisation has to be given to operate a vehicle of more than 16 tons shows that the mentality of the Minister is that this is a privilege which is given to this type of haulier.
The railways will have the right to object and are given 14 days in which to do so. In planning matters, a person who applies for permission lodges his application. Nobody is advised; it is kept secret. In this case, however, the exact reverse will apply and those who might wish to object will be gratuitously informed at public expense. They then have to prove that on either one, two or three of the grounds of speed, reliability and cost, their service is almost as good as that of the person who is applying to give it, regardless of the choice of the customer.
If those who succeed in having an application for a special authorisation overruled then fall down and fail to carry out their undertaking—as the Joint Parliamentary Secretary told me today—no damages or compensation will be given to the person who has falsely been deprived of his licence. It should be almost a criminal matter with damages involved, but there will be none.
There is, of course, a right of appeal, but nobody can afford to keep vehicles when they become obsolescent and there is no use for them. Would somebody who was not allowed to use them wait and go broke in the hope that one day he might succeed in an appeal? There is also the possibility of appeal by the railways should circumstances change, when they can apply for a revocation order, with the result that a haulier who has invested in expensive vehicles could lose his fleet in the twinkling of an eye.
What about one of our best exporting companies, the Leyland Motor Co., well known for its commercial vehicle exports? One of the brightest things in British industry has been the functions of this company and its commercial vehicle exports. How will it manage to export if it does not have a safe domestic market? At a time when industrial management is being hectored and lectured by Ministers of the Crown, from the Prime Minister downwards, to work harder and to do better but is having its freedom of decision removed, it is small wonder that our application to join the Common Market has been turned down, because the Government’s proposals would be completely contradictory to the Treaty of Rome. The Minister knows that an appeal is already being made against the German labour plan, to which she referred with great enthusiasm, to the Council of the European Economic Community on the ground that it is contrary to the Treaty of Rome.
What will happen to our people when we have the annual pre-Christmas railway strike and the annual pre-Christmas freeze-up of points? Who will deliver the perishable and essential goods that are needed to keep people alive?
Mr. Peter Mahon
The hon. Member will, of course, agree that the Leyland Motor Co. is not altogether condemnatory with regard to the Bill. He has not conceded this.
Mr. Webster
I wonder whether the hon. Member met any of his constituents who came yesterday to see Members of Parliament. I met a number of mine and some of my neighbours’ constituents. I met a lot of people from Wales who had been waiting for about four hours. They said that no Member of Parliament had come out to see them and they were furious. They said that the effect of the Bill upon a development area would be exceedingly hard. They said that the penalty on heavy indivisible loads, on which there would be a tax of £15 a mile, would hit the development areas exceedingly harshly. I was glad that as a result of the pressure which we have applied, both at Question Time and in this debate, the Minister will relent. I hope that she will relent thoroughly and make matters a good deal easier.
I hope that the Minister will also relent regarding Schedule 11, which specifies a charge of £50 for a 3-ton vehicle and £190 for an 8-ton vehicle, because the development areas will be very hard hit by this. Many of the heavy loads are plant which is required by bodies such as the Central Electricity Generating Board, another nationalised industry.
I sympathise with the Chairman of British Electric Traction concerning the take-over of his company. He was treated to one of the most brutal forms of blackmail by threat and he was then given a tempting offer which, in the interests of his shareholders—who include many pension trusts with workmen’s pensions involved; he had to consider this—he had to accept. This method of picking off companies like that, taking the biggest operator and then taking, as, I am sure, we will be hearing from my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Sir R. Cary), the best routes of the other companies, is designed by the Minister to ensure the withering-away of private interest which has served the country well.
It is illusory to imagine that passenger transport authorities, for which Clause 9 provides, will be set up only in Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and Newcastle, because the Clause states clearly “any area”. One-seventh of every authority is to be what are called “independent members” nominated by the Minister. With the different and varying authorities, there is bound to be difference of opinion and the Minister’s nominees will always hold the balance, particularly if they have the way in towards the purse strings.
Clause 10(l,vi) deals with the paying of the railway deficit, which I consider to be nearly £60 million in these areas. If the Minister does not agree with my figures, will she please tell me what they are for the four areas concerned and in the urban areas?
Mrs. Castle
I have just said: £8 million to £10 million in the four conurbations.
Mr. Webster
I should be grateful if the right hon. Lady would publish the figures and give the methods by which they are calculated.
What incentive to efficiency will the Minister, as arbitrator, have between a passenger transport authority and a railway company where the railway company is simply the agent for running an unremunerative service and the P.T.A. pays the bill and precepts the local authority? What defence or compensation will there be to the ratepayer whose assets are being stolen from him under a formula the details of which were given to four hon. Members on this side of the House from Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool and Newcastle? It seems that nobody on the benches opposite is interested in this point. I hope that a number of hon. Members opposite will serve on the Standing Committee and take an acute interest in it. I gather that the formula is almost nothing.
Why do he have this P.T.A. business before local government reform? If it is right to do it after local government reform for the lesser areas, why do it for the most important cities before local government reform? Why do we have to give power to the Executive under Clause 15(6) when it states—this is one of the most outstanding Clauses I have ever seen: Notwithstanding anything in this Part of this Act, nothing done by the Executive for a designated area shall be held to be unlawful on the ground that the approval of the Authority for that area to the doing of that thing was required by or under this Part of this Act and that it was done without obtaining that approval. I know of no blanker cheque in the history of mankind. Why are we giving this power to the Executive? I should like the Minister of State to tell us this when, in this intellectual dialogue with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell), he winds up the debate. I shall be grateful if he can tell us the purpose of this subsection.
We come, then, not only to Clause 10, which gives power to sell petrol and spares, but to Clause 45, which has been dealt with so adequately by my hon. Friend, which provides for the extension of public ownership enterprise, if that is what it is called. What is the purpose of these Clauses? What benefit will they give to anybody in this country?
I wonder why the Bill has been introduced. Is it that the Minister of Transport has said to the Prime Minister, “Either I have this Bill, regardless of the state of the economy or I go”? If not, why does not the right hon. Lady go. Surely we should all have the state of the economy as our prime interest, and not simply want to extend public ownership, despite the Letter of Intent. This is in complete contradiction of the Letter of Intent, and yet the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer propose to allow this Minister to try to gain control of the means of distribution of everything in this country. This will put at least 10 per cent. on all our export costs. It will take the cutting edge off the British economy. Why does the Prime Minister keep the right hon. Lady there, and tolerate her in this appointment? Is it that he is frightened that if she were to go to the back benches the Left-wing would really have a champion? My right hon. Friend the leader of the Opposition said yesterday that the Prime Minister was first class at looking after No. 1, but he is allowing this Bill to go through, and it will be a first-class disaster to this country.
The speech made by George Strauss, the then Labour MP for Vauxhall, in the House of Commons on 20 December 1967.
I am certain that the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Peter Walker) has been looking forward immensely to this debate so that he could deploy all his debating skill in attacking the Bill. He has excelled himself in turning a discussion on a largely technical matter into a political debate. He has emphasised certain aspects of the Bill and invented others which, he suggests, have a big political content which does not in fact exist.
I will mention only two. The hon. Gentleman spoke many times about this being a Bill to extend public ownership. There is not one Clause in the Bill which will bring about any compulsory public ownership. How, then, is this a Bill to extend public ownership?
The hon. Gentleman laid enormous emphasis at the end of his speech, which was obviously the climax of his remarks, on the provisions in Clause 45 which enable the nationalised industries to undertake trading where they already have facilities for doing so, in the same way as private enterprise is able to do at present. It is inconceivable that hon. Members opposite, who say they want to save public money and are interested in efficiency, should continue to deny, for example, to a railway workshop the ability to use machines and the skill of men who are there when there is no work which the railways can give them. It is a most wasteful thing that those machines and men should stand idle when there is other work available.
What nonsense it is to say that, although railways may have big car parks adjoining their suburban stations, they should be prohibited from selling petrol at those car parks and from making repairs to vehicles that use the car parks. It is obviously in the public interest that public bodies should be able to do this in exactly the same way as private interests do. It is the fear of competition from public bodies which induces hon. Members opposite to take up this wholly anti-social attitude.
My right hon. Friend the Minister and the hon. Gentleman suffered from a disadvantage in discussing the Bill, in that it is a whale of a Bill containing a large number of diverse proposals. It is a comprehensive Bill. It is a meaty Bill.
It is impossible to discuss all its contents and many suggestions in the course of a short speech. As a backbencher who wants to confine himself to a quarter of an hour at the outside, obviously all that it is possible for me to do is to make a few brief comments on some of the issues raised by the Bill. I would not attempt to do so had I not been associated with Transport Bilk for very many years, from the time when I played a small part in carrying the original nationalisation Bill through the House in 1947. I have also played some part in every subsequent Bill dealing with transport matters. I may have a little knowledge of the subject. I therefore certainly have strong feelings about many of the proposals in the Bill.
Before making a few critical remarks and inquiries, I want to congratulate my right hon. Friend warmly on a number of things. I want first to congratulate her on providing us with three White Papers which set out in great detail, and very admirably, the background to, and purpose of, the proposals which she intended to bring before the House. Never has a Bill come before the House with so much information provided for hon. Members before its Second Reading debate.
Second, I congratulate my right hon. Friend on her exposition of the Bill today. Third, I congratulate her on the contents of the Bill, which boldly tackles problems besetting almost every aspect of British Transport in one way or another. Although some people may disagree with the solutions which my right hon. Friend proposes, they are at least a serious attempt—and basically, I think, a correct attempt—to deal with present and future transport problems. Many of these have been neglected for far too long because they are difficult or controversial. In this Bill my right hon. Friend proposes many realistic and original solutions for them.
Furthermore, my right hon. Friend finally buries one myth which has clouded thinking on transport matters for far too long. She is no longer apologetic, and this party has for some time not been apologetic, about the need to give public funds to transport because transport is a public service. For far too long the party opposite has believed that there was something wrong and shameful in subsidising railways or other forms of transport. It has always been apologetic about it. Conservative policy towards transport has been and is based on the idea that any form of support from public money must, as the first major objective desideratum, be cut out. This was the reason for the Beeching Report and Conservative support for it. It was to make our railways viable. It would never have done so, in fact, but that was the purpose. Viability is desirable, but this Bill recognises that there are broad social benefits in many transport activities which can be financed only by society as a whole through taxes or rates. We are not ashamed of that.
One of the many examples provided by the Bill is the grant which the Government will give in respect of rural transport services. Six years ago, the Jack Committee made a survey of these services and came to the conclusion that they were inadequate and likely to deteriorate and that, unless certain public money was given to support them, they would become much worse. The Conservative Government did nothing about it. They were thinking about it, but no more. At last, the present Government have said that something must be done. They make provision for £2 million a year which, if the local authorities spend a similar sum, can be spent on maintaining and improving bus services. This provision is apart from the large reduction in fuel tax for buses. I mention that merely as an indication of the sort of thought which the Government give in the Bill to the social purposes of transport for which some financial support is needed.
My right hon. Friend is to be congratulated for her general approach to transport problems and, in particular, for devising machinery for integration, a matter which has for too long been no more than vague aspiration. We now have machinery proposed by which integration can be accomplished. I believe that it will work. For providing that machinery in a sensible way, my right hon. Friend deserves the support of this side of the House, and I am sure that eventually, when the process is seen to work in the country, she will earn the country’s gratitude, too.
It is against that background of general enthusiastic support that I wish now to express anxiety about certain provisions. I shall deal only with the more important ones. First, my right hon. Friend suggests, more in the White Paper than in the Bill, that, after all “the financial readjustments have been made, the railways should become viable in the early 1970s. It is more than a hope; it is an expectation on my right hon. Friend’s part. I hope that she will not pin her faith too closely to that expectation. Those who have long experience of the reorganisation of the railway system recall that, right from the time in the 1950s when General Robertson produced his great re-equipment programme—and a very fine programme it was—we have always been told that, in about five years, the railways would pay. But they never have.
Again and again, there seems to be an unfortunate rule operating in railway finances which provides that, whatever economies are devised and whatever financial benefits are envisaged as accruing from increased capital expenditure, at the end of the day costs and expenses swallow them all up. I fear that, however desirable it may be, after the financial changes now proposed are implemented, after the various subtractions and additions have been made on the debit side of the railway accounts, the railways will not be viable. But I do not believe that it matters very much so long as they are performing the services which they ought to perform and carrying freight and passengers in the way the nation needs.
My next doubt is in regard to the National Freight Corporation. This is an ingenious idea for integrating the country’s freight transport, but I have asked myself one or two questions about it and I now put them to my right hon. Friend. Is it necessary to set up a new statutory body for this purpose? Is it the idea that that statutory body should be the first step towards the abolition of the Transport Holding Company? The National Freight Corporation will take over a large part of railway activities. It will take over the depots, vehicles, warehouses and containers of British Railways, though not the trains. Will not this be disheartening to all sections of British Railways, when they are deprived of the most promising and profitable development which they have? Will it not damage the morale, which is already low, of all railwaymen from the highest to the lowest?
Second, will not the existence of this body create a large area of conflict between British Rail and the new Corporation, especially in regard to costs and charges? As far as I can see—I may be mistaken—there will be further areas of conflict between the Railways Board and the freight liner company which is, as it were, to be put in between the Railways Board and the National Freight Corporation and which will be responsible for the marketing and management of the whole freight system. The financial obligation is on the Corporation. Management and working is on the company. The Railways Board is to have only a 49 per cent. interest in the company. It seems to me that there is here the possibility of much conflict and confusion. Nevertheless, I hope that I am wrong and that everything will be resolved.
Would it not have been possible to bring about the desired co-ordination without setting up a new statutory body, which is undesirable if it can be avoided, by some co-operative method and without having a drastic surgical operation which is bound to be upsetting? We are told that there is already in existence a joint freight organisation between the Transport Holding Company and British Rail whose purpose is to promote closer inter-working between the two. Would it not have been possible to achieve the desired result through this body? It would certainly be more desirable to do so if that were possible.
Another statutory body is to be set up. It is a bad habit to set up more statutory bodies than are essential. There is to be a Freight Integration Council, whose purpose will be to advise the Minister about integrating the freight set-up and organisation. I cannot see what this body can usefully do. I should have thought that under the Bill’s proposals integration will be complete and tight. I do not know what more can be done.
I am fearful that a body of this sort, established under Statute and containing a variety of important people, will either become an academic talking body or, if it comes down to earth and considers practical and detailed matters, will be interfering with the responsibility of British Railways, the Corporation or the Minister. This is an advisory body for the Minister. But the Minister could bring together an advisory body any moment she liked without having a Clause in the Bill demanding that she should do so.
The idea of the Passenger Transport Authorities is admirable, but, however much I hope they will work well, I cannot help wondering whether they can work smoothly until there has been a reorganisation of local government. Let us look at the proposed set-up. There are four bodies which will have some share of responsibility. There are the local authorities, which will be responsible for traffic management in their area. This is extraordinarily important. One cannot run buses and so on as one likes through a city unless one has some voice in the traffic organisation and management of the flow of traffic.
The Passenger Transport Authorities themselves will consist of nominees of the local authorities drawn from the whole area, and they will be authoritative bodies. They will consist of local government nominees of diverse interests and perhaps different political views. They may have strong and divergent views on whether rates should be paid by their local authority on some proposal to subsidise the commuter train service in another area.
The Passenger Transport Authority will be solely responsible for appointing the main body, the Executive, which will do the running of the whole scheme and receive the subsidies to be paid by the Minister. The Executive will receive them although it is a body appointed by the Passenger Transport Authority and, therefore, dismissable by the Authority. On top of that one has the Minister coming in all along the line. I do not object to that. It is inevitable if grants are to be paid by the Treasury, but one has a four-tier body to carry out the reorganisation and integration of passenger transport over a large area, and the key body is one which consists of people probably with diverse interests, ideas and objectives, nominees of the local authorities in the areas.
Sir R. Cary
The Executive would also become a monopoly not answerable to the Traffic Commissioners.
Mr. Strauss
That is a possibility. However, the Minister says in the White Paper that the relations between the Authority and the Executive will in many ways be similar to those between a Minister and a nationalised industry. But it will not be anything of the sort. A nationalised industry, through its chairman, comes to a Minister and says, “I want to do this. Do you agree? What shall we do?” The Minister will say, “Yes” or “No” or “I will consult about it and let you know.” But here the Executive has to go to the Passenger Transport Authority, a body of 20 people with different ideas, and get its views. The local authority nominees on the body will be likely to find an important issue one on which they will have to consult their local authorities about, certainly if it is a question of a precept on the rates. I do not put it higher than that, but I see great difficulties in the running of these bodies, and I hope that the Minister has some ideas about overcoming them. I think it will be a long time before the bodies can work effectively.
Mr. Ronald Atkins (Preston, North)
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Mr. David Webster (Weston-super- Mare)
Will the right hon. Gentleman—
Mr. Speaker
Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will decide to which hon. Gentleman he is giving way.
Mr. Strauss
I will give way to the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Webster) and then my hon. Friend the Member for Preston, North (Mr. Ronald Atkins).
Mr. Webster
I am following the point that the right hon. Gentleman is making about the difference between the Authority and the Executive. Clause 13(6) says: Notwithstanding anything in this Part of this Act, nothing done by the Executive for a designated area shall be held to be unlawful on the ground that the approval of the Authority for that area to the doing of that thing was required by or under this Part of this Act”—
Mr. Speaker
Order. Interventions ought to be brief.
Mr. Ronald Atkins
I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way—
Mr. Speaker
We cannot have an intervention on an intervention. Mr. Strauss.
Mr. Strauss
My hon. Friend wanted to ask me a question, Mr. Speaker, and I am perfectly willing to give way to him.
Mr. Ronald Atkins
Is it a fact that the chairman or head of a nationalised industry—British Railways, for instance —consults die Minister on questions of day-to-day management? Are not the bodies which are to be set up to deal with day-to-day management rather than questions of policy?
Mr. Strauss
My hon. Friend asks a very big question. All I can say is that when I was in charge of a nationalised industry the chairman and vice-chairman came to see me every week, and about not some detail but some important policy matter which had arisen. I am perfectly certain that in the work which the Executive has to do—it will be very important work, especially in the early years—important issues will arise constantly on which it will want some direction from its superior body, the Passenger Transport Authority.
The highly controversial point of the new quantitative licensing has been raised. I am not as frightened of it as the hon. Member for Worcester is. I think it is a sensible idea. I do not think that anyone would question that if the railways can carry a consignment as cheaply, reliably and speedily as can be done on the road it should go on the railways. The only question is whether this is the best way of deciding whether in any particular case this is so or not. Should one leave it to the consignor? Should one leave it to the road haulage company? The consignors may be set in their ways, or prejudiced. There may be a number of reasons why they may not take an impartial view. The suggestion is mat the Commission should do it. I do not see why it should not be able to. At worst after some trouble and time—consuming work on die part of the people involved, the consignments will in the end continue to go by road; but at best there may be a considerable diversion from road to rail, which everybody in the House wants.
I am not upset about the approaches made by the road hauliers. One is used to protests from them on every occasion when any change is proposed. They are exceedingly vocal. My views about their attitude were very well expressed in an article in the Sunday Times. I do not think that the writer of the article was a member of the Labour Party or a Labour candidate. In fact, I have no idea who it was. It was an unsigned article. It read. One cannot help feeling that they”— that is, the road hauliers— are really upset because the Bill will compel more vigorous competition than the industry has grown used to. I think this is probably true.
There are many other proposals in the Bill that I have not time to deal with, but I would just mention one or two briefly. The provisions of Clause 45 are long overdue. I am glad that my right hon. Friend has incorporated in the Bill the idea of allowing nationalised industries to enter into trade in certain conditions. A matter which is very important is the remission of a further part of the fuel tax for bus services. This is logical and, again, long overdue. Ministers of Transport and Members of Parliament have for a long time been saying that what we have to do is to try to get the public to use buses rather than private cars.
We have to make public transport—the buses—more attractive so as to get people to move to their use. Everyone has been saying it, Some of us have been advocating that the best way to do it would be to reduce the fuel tax on them, but this is the first time it has been done. It is a good thing and should have a marked effect in reducing bus fares. I am glad that my right hon. Friend has done it. I am a little doubtful about the huge tax on the transport of large and divisible loads. It is a technical matter which can be thrashed out in Committee, but it seems to me that it may be a burden on exports and, Under no circumstances, however theoretically justified it may be, should additional costs be added to such transport at a moment when we are trying to increase exports at all costs.
But, by and large, the Bill is excellent. It is based on sound principles. I think that we all recognise that it will not be easy to put some of the major provisions into operation. Carrying out the proposed changes will be far more difficult than devising them, putting them in a Bill and getting them through Parliament. Getting them into operation will indeed be a colossal task. There will be difficulties and opposition but it is all important that my right hon. Friend should succeed, and in that task I am sure that she will get all the support from this side of the House that she needs and deserves.
The speech made by Peter Walker, the then Shadow Minister for Transport, in the House of Commons on 20 December 1967.
I must, first, comment on the right hon. Lady’s opening remark, that she wished that we had had two days to debate this Bill, but that it was the fault of the Opposition that we had not. It is remarkable that the Government should now consider that the Opposition should give some of its limited time for a Bill introduced by the Government. It is particularly unreasonable of the right hon. Lady when she knows full well that what she has done with this Bill is to put under one title eight Bills in an attempt to steamroller the whole lot through the House—[Interruption.] The right hon. Lady laughs at this, but she knows quite well, for example, that this Bill is three and a half times as long as the Steel Bill, which got into Committee at the beginning of November, and is 80 per cent. bigger than the Transport Bill of 1962, which went into Committee two months earlier and received the Royal Assent on 1st August.
Therefore, it is perfectly clear that the Minister is trying to push on to Parliament a Bill which it will not have sufficient time properly to debate and amend. The reason is quite obvious to anyone who examines the Bill, when he realises its effect, the enormous extension of public ownership and increase in public expenditure which is involved.
This is an outrageous Bill to introduce within a few weeks of having had to devalue. Within two days of the Prime Minister telling the House from that Despatch Box that this Government would make a determined review of public expenditure, they introduce a Bill which, in terms of capital write-offs, fresh loans to nationalised industries and new grants, adds up to a total bill of £1,900 million. This is the action of a Government who are trying to give the impression abroad that they are serious about public expenditure.
When one considers the difficulties of properly amending the Bill, one can obviously examine only its major facets. It would be irresponsible of me to comment on all the various parts of the Bill, because there will be a limited time for hon. Members on both sides to discuss them. But very little in the Bill is concerned with the real problems of transport—the provision of proper management and planning. What really obsesses the right hon. Lady is not management or planning but ownership. All through the Bill there is the one theme of extending the public sector as quickly as possible.
First, let us consider the proposals for railway reorganisation. This Minister’s record over the railways does not give us much confidence in their future so long as she remains Minister of Transport. Since she has been Minister, the railway deficit has soared. Indeed, only eight months ago the right hon. Lady was predicting in the House what this year’s deficit would be, and already she has been proved more than £20 million wrong. Was that the Tory policy? Did she not know the conditions in which she was operating? In fact, since Labour came into office, the deficit has gone up by more than £30 million.
Not only that, but everyone knows that labour relations on the railways have never been worse than in recent months as a result of the right hon. Lady. They also know that the morale of top management has never been lower. What a remarkable sense of proportion the right hon. Lady shows when she can at the same time write off more than £1,250 million-worth of capital and yet refuse to pay the Chairman more than £12,500 a year. This is a remarkable sense of proportion which the right hon. Lady has of the Chairman of British Railways, who anyway was her second choice. She wanted Mr. Peter Parker first, and from her answer this afternoon it is clear that a considerable number of other people were approached to see if they were interested in the job and, if they were asked, whether they would accept. It is no use her saying that, only Mr. Parker was asked, because others were approached, as she well knows.
At present, therefore, British Railways is making a deficit this year of more than £150 million, with considerable labour troubles and great difficulties; yet for six weeks the right hon. Lady allowed the newspapers every day to be full of speculation about who the Chairman would be and whether Mr. Parker would accept or get the salary which he wanted. What support is there for the new Chairman when he has to say at his first Press conference, “Yes, I was the second choice; the Minister really wanted Mr. Parker, but he was unwilling to agree to the salary conditions”.
Mr. Raphael Tuck (Watford)
Is this in the Bill?
Mr. Walker
The hon. Member may not like it, but this affects the Bill in as much as this Minister will be administering it and I am trying to prove that she has shown herself completely incompetent at handling British Railways.
How are the Government tackling the problem of the railway deficit? Not by improving management and by trying to recruit the right management at the right salaries. The Government are tackling the deficit by a series of accounting procedures to put the deficit elsewhere on the taxpayer. In fact, the taxpayer will still pay for the railways, but instead of it being called a railway deficit it will be called part of the national debt or a Government subsidy to the railways, or a tapering-off grant or part of the grant to the National Freight Authority, or a precept on the roads to the P.T.A. If the Minister were able to say in five years’ time that the railways were no longer incurring a deficit, in fact it would mean that she was probably losing on the railways about £20 million more than when Labour came to power in 1964, if we added all the costs of the various accounting procedures that fell under those headings. It will all be disguised under different headings. Is that the way to make management face the realities of its task? There is no pressure for better management and no question of better salaries to attract the best management.
Next we have the concept of a subsidy. The right hon. Lady says, “Look at the way in which Conservative Members complain about the closure of railway lines”. As she knows, during her period of office she will be responsible for more closures than those for which we were responsible. She knows that the closures which have taken place and which she will allow to take place—several thousands of miles of closures—were and are needed and were and are sensible. But she also knows that once she gets into a subsidy position the pressures will start building up. Every time it is suggested that fares should be raised the areas concerned will ask, “Why cannot we have the service on the subsidy basis which the Government are operating in other areas in order to keep lines open? Why do we have to pay higher fares?”
I turn to the P.T.A. concept. Putting the railways on a cost-plus contract is not the way to get the best management. The Minister’s proposals show no indication at all that she will attract the right management to the railways. She will take the biggest asset—the freight liner trains—from them. She says that her proposals for quantity licensing will reinforce the sales drive of British Railways. What she means is that it will be a substitute for any sales drive which is in existence. Instead of British Railways achieving their marketing by management skills, they are to achieve it in future by Ministerial direction.
What of her statement about 11,000 route-miles? She knows that I have always made my position clear about it. It is nonsense, and she must know it to be nonsense, to say that in a railway system we are fixed to a rigid 11,000 route-miles. Patterns will change, and demands and needs will change. The only reason that the right hon. Lady chose the figure of 11,000 route-miles is that in the lifetime of this Government it is unlikely that it will ever fall below that figure—and when it reaches that figure it will, quite rightly, be reviewed in the light of existing demand. That figure is a piece of propaganda to give a false impression.
There is no indication that the right hon. Lady has any intention of tackling the problem of over-manning on British Railways. She knows that it exists. She announced the winding up of the Joint Steering Group. I dare her to publish the report of Cooper Bros, which was given to the Joint Steering Group. I dare her to refer two questions to the Group. I challenge her to ask them, before she winds up the Group, whether the members are in favour of the National Freight Authority as a concept. Let us get them to answer that question one by one. Let her also ask them what they estimate could be the reduction in the manpower force of British Railways if sensible managerial techniques were adopted. Let her publish that figure. But neither of those answers will ever be given by the Government.
It is impossible to talk about subsidies until British Railways are working efficiently under good management and with the proper labour force that is required. Every estimate which has been given by the experts who know the problems recognises that there is considerable overmanning on British Railways. I am the first to appreciate that if it is tackled it will create a social problem, and I should be the first to support every possible aid being given in terms of retraining and redundancy payments. But it is a nonsense for railwaymen to continue with an inflated labour force, because that will never get British Railways on a proper managerial basis.
I turn to the National Freight Authority. I said that it had no friends, and the right hon. Lady quoted in reply Professor Day in the Observer. I have the greatest respect for Professor Day’s views, but I do not think it is surprising that an Observer commentator should be friendly to some of the right hon. Lady’s views—particularly Professor Day, who is on one of the Government’s Transport Planning Councils and, I believe, is Chairman of it.
Mrs. Castle
Of which Council?
Mr. Walker
The South-East Planning Council. I understand that he is Chairman of the Transport Consultative Council. If not, I apologise, but I believe that he is.
The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. John Morris)
Is the hon. Member suggesting that Professor Day’s judgment is altered in any way because of some office that he holds?
Mr. Walker
Not a bit of it. If I have given that impression, I completely withdraw it. I respect Professor Day, although I disagree with him in many of his views. But I respect him as a distinguished man and, I am sure, as an academic of integrity.
The right hon. Lady also quoted the Economist. I do not know whether it affects his views, but the Minister no doubt knows that the transport correspondent of the Economist was at the last election Labour candidate at Folkestone and at present is Chairman of the Soho Labour Party. I am told that the Soho Labour Party is one of the few remaining branches.
The Minister was unable to quote any friend apart from that. Industry does not support the Authority. There is no vocal support for it from the National Union of Railwaymen. [HON. MEMBERS: “Oh.”] They have certainly not said so; indeed, a. their conference they were very critical of it.
Mr. Ron Lewis (Carlisle)
The N.U.R. support the main provisions of the Bill.
Mr. Walker
I am talking about the National Freight Authority.
What is wrong with the Authority? It does not integrate road and rail. It integrates nationalised rail with nationalised road and, by so doing, it positively avoids a proper integration with all the free-enterprise road services. This is where the Minister has allowed her critical prejudices to affect her judgment. During our last debate, she accused me of wanting British Railways to be an iron bridge to be used by the free enterprise hauliers whenever it was economic for them to do so. That is exactly what I want them to do, and it is a great pity that the Minister did not try to get this form of integration. Her policy is by handicapping road haulage to shift freight to rail, not by increasing the efficiency of rail but by further handicapping road haulage.
The Minister is well aware of the previous handicaps, for she has approved them all. They include three increases in the price of fuel, a 50 per cent. increase in vehicle licence fees, the effect of S.E.T. and the abolition of investment allowances on all commercial vehicles. In their Report last week, the National Board for Prices and Incomes pointed out that in three years the imposed charges on road haulage had put up their costs by 7s. in the £.
The Bill introduces two new handicaps in case the other handicaps have not been enough. The first is the new tax, and the second is quantity licensing. Estimates of the new tax vary between £30 million and £40 million as to the total effect. And what a way to announce the new tax—to say, “We are doing this for reasons which we cannot yet publish”. What a disgrace to the Minister that before the Second Reading of the Bill she has not published the Report on which she bases this tax. The whole argument is based on a Report which has been in her hands for some weeks, but which she has not made available to the House before Second Reading. One of the reasons for her failure to do so is that if the findings of the Report supported a £40 million tax, they would be more than questionable. Total expenditure on road construction and maintenance in this country, including expenditure by local authorities, was last year about £450 million. We know that from motor vehicle taxation of one sort or another the Government obtain almost three times that amount. Therefore there can be very little justification for such a drastic tax, which amounts to £15 a mile for some abnormal loads.
Consider the adverse effects this new tax will have, not to speak of the complacent way in which the Minister swept aside the adverse effects of it on our exports. “This will put up transport costs by only a few per cent.”, she said. The Government should be concerned about any increase in export costs, particularly at this time. After all, two-thirds of our exports go to the ports by road, and that is bound to be affected by this new imposition.
Then consider the development areas, especially Scotland. The Parliamentary Secretary spent most of Question Time today arguing that there was no case for Scotland and the development areas complaining about this proposal, because these lorries were wearing out the roads in Scotland just as they were all over the country; they were causing congestion and, therefore, the tax should apply in Scotland in exactly the same way as south of the Border.
This and former Governments have encouraged firms to go to the development areas. They have offered them aid, grants and subsidies. To add a tremendous tax on their communications—which is what this is; let it be remembered that some of the industries that will be most hard hit will be the heavy industries, which are situated primarily in the development regions—is ridiculous.
One of the largest projects in Scotland in the post-war period has been the establishment of big paper mills. I have seen a telegram saying that this Bill will do tremendous damage to that industry and to its future prospects in Scotland. The same can be said of the building industry. The Government have said that they are in favour of encouraging industrialised forms of building, but that will be adversely affected by the new tax since many of the components used in this form of building comprise abnormal loads.
So we have the paper industry, timber, agriculture, coal, local authorities and many other interests being adversely affected by these measures. Local authorities will be greatly affected because their vehicles will have to bear the appropriate increase which will have to be passed on to the ratepayers.
As if this tax were not enough, we have the quantity licensing system. The way in which the Minister defended this—as a great simplification and a dash for freedom—was amazing. We understand that 100,000 vehicles will be subjected to this form of licensing. That will apply if they wish to travel over 100 miles. For bulk carriers, if they wish to travel any distance at all—I refer to vehicles of 5 tons unladen weight or 16 tons gross—they will have to apply for special authorisation.
Did the Minister consider the effect of this on the motor industry? Did anyone tell her that, for example, Leylands and some other great companies have invested large sums of money to develop the articulated vehicle, which is becoming the most popular vehicle throughout Europe? Did anyone tell her that the result of her licensing system will be that whereas today firms may use the articulated vehicle of 30 tons gross—a flexible vehicle which is more manoeuvrable than the rigid type; and is 25 per cent. more efficient carrying loads—the hauliers concerned, instead of using the 30-ton articulated vehicle, which is made by British firms, will go in for two 16-ton vehicles and so completely avoid these licensing procedures? This means that instead of having one 30-ton vehicle on our roads we shall have two 16-ton vehicles. What a wonderful contribution to halting congestion! These are come of the direct results of the Minister’s interference with the proper mechanism of the development of the road vehicle.
Then consider the unique Socialist system which the Minister has thought up for other vehicles. If one wants to travel over 100 miles one must send to the licensing authority the details of the vehicle, the details of the goods and the place to which they are being sent. When the licensing authority has received those facts it will send copies of them to British Rail and the National Freight Authority. Those two organisations will then have 14 days in which to object. The basis of their objection will be that, in terms of speed, reliability and cost, they are as good as the private haulier and that therefore they should carry the load.
Who will decide how the matter should be discussed? The answer is that those authorities will not be left to judge these matters for themselves. The Minister will make Regulations on how they must be judged—and we know what those Regulations are likely to be. And if by chance at the end of this procedure they are in doubt, the Minister has laid it down that the benefit of doubt must go to the National Freight Authority and the railways. It is a remarkable thing to have in legislation in this country that, if there is a dispute between an enterprise, an individual and the State, the benefit of doubt must go to the State in all cases.
I accept that the individuals concerned will have a right of appeal. They will be able to go to the Transport Tribunal. The chairman will have a background of transport or commerce and members of the Tribunal must have knowledge of finance or economics. They will decide, and any person may be made to attend. If he does not attend he may be fined £25 for non-attendance. What a monstrous licensing system to impose. It is completely unnecessary.
Who are the friends of this proposal? Has the Minister heard of anyone who is prepared to support it? Certainly industry does not support it. Indeed, industry generally has come out violently against it. Agriculture is violently against it, and so are drivers throughout the country. The motor industry is strongly opposed to it, and, most of all, the customer is strongly opposed to it.
The customer is opposed to it, because his choice will be taken from him. Even if the management of our railways was so deficient that it was unable to market its goods and was unable to bring to the attention of potential customers its services—even if that were so, we would object; steps would have to be taken to improve its management—the Minister could adopt the Dutch system whereby the services which the railways can provide must be brought to the attention of potential customers. My hon. Friends and I believe that these proposals are dangerous and that their object is to create State management on the long distance side.
Consider the dangers of direct action. Only a few weeks ago we were faced with a possible go-slow on the railways. British Railways contacted private hauliers throughout the country, asking them to stand by and, if required, to make the necessary arrangements. When the Minister has had her way and when there is one National Freight Authority, there will be no alternative. There will be no free enterprise hauliers for her to contact to make these stand-by arrangements.
We are left with the higher costs that this will bring about, the loss of choice to the customer and an enormous extension of public ownership. The House should make no mistake about realising that this is an extension of public ownership, for in the Bill the Minister—the right hon. Lady did not mention this—has made provision for the borrowing powers worth £300 million for the National Freight Authority. Will that sum be used for acquiring road haulage firms? Certainly the Minister has always been an advocate of an authority which would be able to acquire on a large scale. British taxpayers are being asked in this Measure, a few weeks after devaluation, to find £300 million for a buying spree by the right hon. Lady to extend nationalisation still further.
We have the other nationalisation proposal which the Minister has already achieved in the Transport Holding Company. It has already made a bid—we are told a successful one—for the bus companies of the B.E.T. It was a good way of making a bid. One publishes a White Paper saying that the bus companies will be taken over by compulsory purchase—[Interruption.] One says that the routes can be taken over by compulsory purchase, and then the Transport Holding Company says, in effect, “Why wait for it to be done in this way? Sell out now”—and the bid is successful. However, the matter must come before Parliament and, although the Minister is loath to provide time for a Parliamentary debate, my hon. Friends and I will certainly need at least a day in which to debate that issue.
The £35 million to be paid for that exercise is all part of the P.T.A. concept, with the Minister saying that this is a shot in the arm for local government. I suggest that it is a shot at local government. The Minister knows—whatever references she might make to the G.L.C. —that Mr Desmond Plummer will be violently opposed to a P.T.A. for London—[Interruption.] He has made it clear that he would be. The right hon. Lady must not say that Mr. Plummer will in any way support her idea. As a result of conversations that I have had with him, I assure the House that the one thing that he wants to avoid is the Government imposing a P.T.A. on London, and I am delighted that he is succeeding.
The Minister knows the views of the local authorities. The Municipal Passenger Transport Association left no doubt at its annual conference about how strongly opposed it was to this idea. The A.M.C. in its last report stated categorically its view that any P.T.A.—bus companies and transport—should be operated only after local government reform. The A.M.C. has made its position quite clear there. What will the Minister do if she finds that wherever she wishes to impose this scheme the local authority is opposed to it? Will she then say that it is a wonderful shot in the arm for local government, in spite of the fact that none of the authorities concerned wants it? Or will she consider why they do not want it?
The reasons why the local authorities do not want it are obvious. First, fares will be substantially increased—and the right hon. Lady knows it. She may say: “The hon. Member for Worcester says that fares will be increased, but look at the capital grant I shall give”, but she knows full well that in Manchester, for example—and if she does not know this it is very remiss of her—the members of the Transport and General Workers’ Union have already said to their negotiators, “We must negotiate not only to see that when the P.T.A. is formed our members get the best wages currently being paid by any bus companies and the best conditions currently being provided by any bus company, but we must also ask for more. The Minister is boasting that these authorities are more efficient, so we, the workers, should have more of the benefit of the extra efficiency they will create.” The Minister knows, and she must be very worried about it, that there will be an enormous increase in fares as a result of this levelling-up process in wages and conditions—and further demands beyond that.
If the right hon. Lady wants examples of where this has happened she need only look at two P.T.A.S abroad—one in Ulster and one in Massachusetts. The P.T.A. in Massachusetts, almost identical in principle to that proposed by the right hon. Lady, is now the subject of study by a Senate Committee because it is doing so badly. It is making a loss of £10 million a year, and is having to increase fares by 100 per cent.
What of the precept on the rates? None of the local authorities wants to meet the railway deficit in its area. That is quite reasonable. Local authorities do not want to meet that deficit from the rates because they will have no influence on how efficiently or inefficiently the railways are being run.
What about planning? The right hon. Lady’s great boast is that this is connected with planning, but how does she argue that? A county borough that now has planning powers will have only one member on the P.T.A. A city like Worcester, a county borough, will have one member on a P.T.A. in Birmingham, dominated by members from British Transport or the Birmingham conurbation. How will that link up with the planning demands of the county borough of Worcester? The same could be said of other local authorities. They remain independent for planning, but are joined for transport.
Above all, there is the domination from Whitehall. The Minister may well look to the heavens, because no Bill has ever been put forward which gave more power to a Minister over local authority affairs than does this Bill. Let me list the powers, and if the Minister wants to deny any of them, I will gladly give way to her.
First, the Minister will designate the areas in which the P.T.A.s will operate, and local authorities will have no right to a public inquiry. That is unlike the 1947 Act. Local authorities will not be able to go to public inquiry and in any way refute the boundaries drawn by the Minister.
Second, the Minister will have the power to approve or disapprove the chairman of a P.T.A. Third, the Minister will have the power to fix the salary of the chairman. Fourth, the Minister will have complete power over the authorities’ capital expenditure. The right hon. Lady listed this as one of the powers she would not have, but if she looks at her own Bill she will know that that is untrue. The Bill categorically states that at any time the Minister can have the capital expenditure of P.T.A.s reduced, and the authorities must obey her directive on how it shall be reduced. There is no power there for local authorities.
Fifth, the Minister will have power to authorise or refuse the compulsory purchase of land by the authority. Sixth, the extent of the power to precept on the rates will be completely with the Minister. By Clause 13, the Minister is able to reduce the amount to be precepted on the rates. If the Minister is able to do that, she is able to influence the level of fares. Seventh, the Minister will lay down the form in which the accounts of an authority will be prepared, and will lay down the particulars they shall contain and the manner in which they will be compiled. All these are the powers of the Minister, who has just stood at the Dispatch Box and said the local authorities will have wonderful control over the P.T.A.s.
Let us go on—there are many more powers. About Clause 16, the Minister will take power to direct the P.T.A.s on how they will conduct the business of their subsidiaries. She will also have the power to direct the executives to discontinue the activities of their subsidiaries. No capital grants will be provided to the PT.A.s as of right, but only at the discretion of the Minister.
No investment grants for buses will be provided as of right—discretion there lies with the Minister. The right hon. Lady talked of investment allowances, but under that system every bus proprietor, municipal or otherwise, had the certain knowledge that he would get the investment allowance. The Minister knows that when the Government replaced investment allowances with investment grants, she and all her Parliamentary Secretaries went into the Division Lobby to do away with the investment allowances for buses, and then voted for a Bill on investment grants that provided no investment grants for buses. So even her last minute repentance on investment grants for buses, though pleasant, is rather sad, because it was not until the Minister had bought up the biggest private operator that she decided to give the bus operators the grant they deserve.
The Minister will be the sole arbitrator on arrangements between the P.T.A.s and British Railways. The Minister decides any dispute between the two bodies. A P.T.A. will be unable to transfer any part of its undertaking or property to a private operator without the permission of the Minister—not the permission of the local authority. No money can be raised by local authorities for the purpose of P.T.A.s without the approval of the Minister. The Minister will have complete power over what property and which employees of the local authority undertakings are transferred to the P.T.A.
Finally, just in case the Minister’s powers are not complete, in the provision for the Minister making Orders setting up the P.T.A.S., the following words are added: Any order … may contain such supplementary, incidental and consequential provision as the Minister thinks necessary or expedient. … It is nonsense for the Minister to maintain that this is in any way local authority control. It is control from Whitehall. Whereas local authorities have previously been able to run their own bus services or make their own contracts with private enterprise operators, in future all the direction and power remain with the Minister and her representatives on the P.T.A.S.
It is not just the bus companies that are referred to. We have many other nationalised proposals. As to nationalisation, I say that Clause 45 should have been a Bill on its own—and the Minister knows it. But if it had been a Bill on its own instead of being just Clause 45 of this Bill, it would have been the most controversial nationalisation Measure in British history. It would have been a Bill of 22 or 24 Clauses, and it would have been debated throughout the country as a mammoth nationalisation Measure. In fact, the famous Clause IV of the Labour Party has been put completely into the present Clause 45. That will please hon. Members opposite below the gangway and, I believe, depress the rest of the country.
Let us look at the powers given by Clause 45 to each of the authorities concerned—British Railways, Inland Waterways, National Freight Corporation, and the rest. Subsection (2) states: Each of the authorities to whom this section applies shall have power… to manufacture for sale to outside persons and to repair for outside persons, anything which the authority consider can advantageously be so manufactured or, as the case may be, repaired by the authority by reason of the fact that the authority or a subsidiary of theirs have materials or facilities for, or skill in, the manufacture or repair of that thing in connection with some existing activity of that authority or subsidiary … Hon. Members opposite cheer, but let them notice that the word is “advantageously.” The word is not “profitably” or “efficiently,” but “advantageously”—in the Minister’s view. In the Minister’s view, anything is advantageous which destroys free enterprise. We know that that is exactly how the Clause will be operated.
It continues to provide that the authorities shall have power— (b) to sell to outside persons, and for that purpose to purchase, anything which is of a kind which the authority or a subsidiary of theirs purchase in the course of some existing activity of that authority or subsidiary”. So these authorities will be able to go into the retailing business for all the commodities they buy as authorities. The Bill goes on to provide specifically for the sale of accessories for motor vehicles and for the provision of car parks by these authorities. It deletes powers not yet given to this nationalised industry.
I wonder whether the Minister mentioned to the cabin cruiser manufacturer, who, she said, was so delighted about her inland waterways provisions, that under Clause 45 in future the Inland Waterways Board will be allowed to make cabin cruisers. I wonder whether he was particularly pleased with that piece of news.
The authorities will have power to manufacture road vehicles, bodies or chassis for road vehicles or major components of road vehicles”. These powers will all be given to the nationalised industries in future. The Bill gives powers as to garages, motor accessories, repair shops and shipbuilding. The Clause provides the Government with the possibility of the largest extension of nationalisation in British history without ever again having to come to the House of Commons for legislation to do it. I defy any hon. Member to name one industry or one form of manufacturing or retailing that the Government cannot enter into as a result of Clause 45. The taxpayers’ money will be used in all the acquisitions necessary.
In total the Minister has £550 million, which she will take from the taxpayers, in borrowing powers to speed up her acquisitions as a result of the powers to be conferred by the Bill. This is the policy of a Government who are reviewing all forms of public expenditure and who are endeavouring to say that we want to improve our export position. In the whole of the Bill no consideration is given for the consumer. Fares will rise. Freight costs will rise. Choice is lost between one company and another. The economy is not considered. Public expenditure, higher costs of exports, extension of public ownership—these are the great themes of the Bill.
I do not condemn the right hon. Lady for this. She has always been a Left-Wing, extreme Socialist. Those who I do blame strongly are the Prime Minister and the new Chancellor of the Exchequer for allowing this piece of legislation to come forward at this particular time. There is nothing in the Bill which will improve confidence in Britain. What the Bill proves beyond doubt is that the Government do not intend to use devaluation as a means of changing their course. They do not mean to use it to show that they have learned their lesson from the failure of the last three years. They intend to use it to go even further with their wrong-minded and Left-wing Socialist schemes. I believe that it is an immense criticism of the new Chancellor of the Exchequer and of the Prime Minister that the major piece of legislation in this Session of Parliament following devaluation should be a Bill that puts up the cost of transport and which goes in for a savage extension of public ownership.
There is obviously to be an attempt to steam-roller the Bill through. We shall certainly see that in the time which is given to us every bad proposal—and, my word, there are many—is exposed and debated. We shall unfortunately have to show that the Government have shown by introducing the Bill that they have no intention of pursuing policies which will stimulate the sector of our economy most necessary for our exports, namely, the free enterprise sector. Indeed, the Bill illustrates that it is the Government’s intention to use the loans from abroad and the effects of devaluation to intensify their pace towards destroying a free economy. The Bill will cost Britain dearly, but the one advantage that it will have is that in the months in which it will be debated, both in Parliament and throughout the country, it will illustrate more clearly than ever the desperate need for this Government to go.
The statement made by Barbara Castle, the Minister for Transport, in the House of Commons on 20 December 1967.
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
I should like to begin by saying how sorry I am that we are to have only one day’s debate on the Bill’s Second Reading. I would certainly have welcomed two days, but, unfortunately, the Opposition threw away the opportunity offered them by the Leader of the House by preferring to give priority to foreign affairs. I appreciate how urgent and important it is to discuss foreign policy, but I regret that transport will be the sufferer.
The purposes of the Bill are well known to the House, as they have been spelled out in detail in the four White Papers which I have published over the last few months. I do not think that more detailed background information has ever been given about a Bill’s contents in advance of its Second Reading. It is true that if I had hoped to inform the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Peter Walker) by publishing all this material, I have failed. As each White Paper has appeared, he has been ready, regardless of its contents, with his instant stickers: “Wholesale nationalisation”, “Whitehall domination”, “£60 million burden on the rates”. I doubt whether any exposition of the facts will ever shake him—he prefers prejudices. None the less, for the benefit of the House, if not for him, I would like to explain what the Bill is really about.
It is, of course, a massive document because it embodies a comprehensive policy. Its various parts comprise decisions already announced over the main areas of the transport field: freight services, the future of our railways, public transport and traffic and inland waterways. The Bill deals with these matters in very great detail—hence its complexity —but through all the 169 Clauses and 18 Schedules runs one unifying theme, what I would call practical Socialism. As a Socialist, I believe that transport is a vital service to industry and to our people and that, if economic planning or the physical planning of our environment is to make any sense at all, transport planning must form part of it. In the same way, transport services must be planned in relation to each other—not allowed to go their own sweet way regardless of consequences.
To me, therefore, the Ministry of Transport has always been a planning Ministry—not just a highways department with an appendix for deploring the railway deficit. It must create the administrative and financial framework in which transport can serve the nation’s social and economic needs; it must be a power-house of research, both economic and technological. It must work closely with other Departments concerned with the same fields. All these things the Ministry of Transport is and does today, and the Bill is a product of its new personality.
Anyone who tries to plan transport today must start from two main facts. The first is the ever-increasing dominance of road transport in the movement both of people and of goods. By 1966, road’s share of passenger-mileage had risen to 90 per cent. and of freight ton mileage to 60 per cent. This development has brought all the advantages of flexibility and mobility and we must ensure that the country can exploit these advantages to the full. That is why the Government are financing a massive and expanding programme of road building—twice what it was only five years ago.
The second fact is that we possess in our railway system a very important national asset. The railways in Britain—as in every country in the industrialised world—have been going through difficult times in recent years, but in many countries, too, they are taking on a new lease of life as the potentialities of steel wheel on steel rail for rapid transit and for relieving congestion on the roads are coming to be realised.
One of the main purposes of the Bill, therefore, is to build a new relationship between road and rail. They should no longer be seen as rivals—almost enemies—but should complement each other. The essential starting point is to integrate and expand our publicly owned road and rail services. But the ways in which we do this must vary according to whether we are dealing with passengers or freight. Freight transport is an economic service to industry and must be organised on national lines, whereas passenger transport is much more closely linked to local community life and has important local social implications. This is one of the reasons why I have decided not to re-create a British Transport Commission with responsibility over the whole publicly-owned transport field. Integration is not just a shibboleth to be satisfied by setting up a top-heavy centralised administration while every activity underneath it goes on just as before. Integration is a practical response to the needs of today and if those needs are to be met we must do some hard thinking about just where we want integration and why, and then decide the how.
Hence the creation of the National Freight Corporation—for which Part I of the Bill provides. The hon. Member for Worcester, in previous debates, has tried to claim that nobody wants it. I can assure him that he is wrong. Indeed, the case for the National Freight Corporation was put as well as I can put it, if not better, by Professor Alan Day, writing in the Observer the other day. He welcomed the National Freight Corporation as representing the most exciting and promising proposals coming from Mrs. Castle and as providing a great opportunity for making sensible use both of road and rail for carrying our goods “. The Economist finds the management structure of the National Freight Corporation “encouraging”, while the Financial Times thinks there are strong arguments in favour of maintaining separate National Freight Corporation and British Railways organisations on the lines we propose.
I know that my hon. Friends, too, welcome the fact that we are to end the absurd situation in which Transport Holding Company road haulage services have been pitted against British Railways’ freight services and in which the respective road services of British Road Services and British Railways have been cutting each other’s throats. No one will ever be able to get rid of the British Railways deficit completely unless, for a start, the parcels and sundries services of the two bodies are brought under a single control. British Railways lost £25 million in 1966 on their sundries traffic alone. The National Freight Corporation will not be able to eliminate the loss on sundries overnight, but it should be able to do so over a period of five years and the Bill, therefore, provides for a diminishing subsidy to it over that period to cover the loss.
The whole purpose behind the National Freight Corporation is to ensure that we make integration a reality by grouping like with like. The National Freight Corporation will have a relatively small board, responsible for central planning and common services, while the day-today operations will be delegated to a series of specialised subsidiaries which make functional sense, and which can be held financially accountable for the work they do. In some types of freight business, removals, for example, there is obviously little scope for integrating road and rail, but in other types of freight activity road and rail are in direct competition and ought to be co-ordinated.
The new Joint Parcels Organisation, for instance, which is already at work preparing for the bringing together of the British Road Services Parcels and British Railways sundries services will in due course become the basis of one of the subsidiary companies under the National Freight Corporation.
In the same way, there is an obvious area for integration between road services and freightliners. This is an essential line of attack on the £35 million a year loss which British Railways incur on their general merchandise traffic. The whole secret of the freightliner is that it is a train load of containers and that these can be flexibly switched from road to rail.
It is technical integration in practice and it needs an administrative structure which will be able to exploit its potentialities to the full by offering a comprehensive door-to-door service to the customer. That is what the Freightliner Company, another subsidiary of the National Freight Corporation, jointly owned by British Rail, will be able to do.
British Railways will benefit from the vigorous marketing of a package in which their freightliners will form a key part, and reap their full share of the financial benefits from the freightliner, not only by the contract payments they will receive for running the trains, but also by sharing in the profits of the Freightliner Company.
The simple principle behind the National Freight Corporation, therefore, is that it will be responsible for all freight traffic in the public sector which originates by road, while leaving to British Railways responsibility for traffic originating by rail—whether as complete trains or as wagon load traffic.
The flexible structure of the N.F.C. will enable it to respond, in partnership with B.R.B., to the exciting transport developments of the container age. It will provide a vital part of the total transportation system which the container age demands, providing comprehensive, country-wide inland transport links between the ports and industry, having a stake in the expanding network of inland clearance depots and developing its own links to Ireland and Europe by both container and roll-on/roll-off services. Its potentialities are immense and that is why the Opposition object to it.
If the House gives the Bill its Second Reading I intend to set up very shortly an Organising Committee to prepare for the setting up of the National Freight Corporation. Its chairman will be Sir Reginald Wilson, currently Chairman of the Transport Holding Company, which, in due course, will be wound up.
I am glad to tell the House that Sir Reginald has given me his assurance that he will be ready to serve as chairman of the N.F.C., subject to the proposals in the Bill being approved by Parliament.
To believe, as I do, that our railway system ought to be carrying more of the goods traffic of this country—and the N.F.C. will have a statutory duty to put traffic on rail wherever it is economic to do so—is not to belittle the importance of the road haulage industry. Indeed, it would be absurd to do so.
I am not a Canute, trying to hold back the tide of expanding road haulage activity. What I am trying to do is to define the proper social and economic role of the industry in our transport system as a whole. It is an important role, but it cannot be a freebooter one. One of the key steps must be to overhaul the road licensing system as we do in Part V of the Bill.
The proposals in Part V are a charter for a modern road haulage industry. They cut through the administrative tangle of the present licensing system with a bold act of liberalisation where control has become meaningless and substitute new, more limited controls to meet the needs of today.
The first form of control is designed to improve the quality of the industry—to get rid of sweated conditions and low safety standards and to do this by concentrating our checks to make them as effective as possible. So, under the Bill, out of l½ million vehicles subject to licence today, 900,000 vehicles under 30 cwt. whose roadworthiness is enforced by other means will be completely freed from licensing. The rest will have to obtain the operator’s licence—what I have called the quality licence—spelt out in Clauses 56 to 66.
The standards we intend to enforce are high, but I believe that they are justified. Every sensible person accepts that it is in the interests of the road haulage industry, as well as the public at large, that we should get the killer lorries off the roads—and by prevention, not by prosecution after an accident.
Do not the Opposition agree? Is it not time that we stopped operators scratching a living by buying a lorry or two on the “never-never” and putting them on the roads without the resources to maintain them properly? Is it not right that someone in a firm should be held responsible in law for the state of that firm’s lorries, instead of the driver being left to “take the rap” if his vehicle is found unroadworthy?
I hope that no one will object to the long overdue reduction in drivers’ hours. Indeed, it would be difficult for anyone to argue that statutory hours established 30 years ago are appropriate to the traffic conditions of today.
The second form of control is the quantity licensing, spelt out in Clauses 67 to 89. Here again, we have cut through the present largely meaningless widespread control, to concentrate on those road hauls with which rail is economically competitive. Having exempted 900,000 vehicles from licensing altogether, the Bill then goes on to exempt from quantitative control all vehicles under 16 tons gross weight, that is, 5 tons unladen weight. Of these heavy vehicles only those travelling over 100 miles— which at present carry half the ton-mileage suitable for transfer to rail—or those carrying certain bulk materials to be specified by regulations, will be subject to any limitation on their activities.
This will be for one sole purpose, namely, to ensure that where rail offers an equivalent service in terms of speed, reliability and cost, the goods concerned shall go by rail.
One of the intentions of the present system was to give protection to the railways, but there are so many loopholes in the existing “proof of need” formula, that the law has totally failed in this respect. If the intention of helping the railways was laudable in the 1930s, when the present system was introduced, is it not a great deal more so today, when congestion on the roads and under-utilisation of our rail assets are two of our biggest headaches? I believe that this is a legitimate social aim of road licensing policy and the criteria which must be satisfied before a road licence can be refused, which are spelt out in Clause 70, ensure that there will be no additional economic burden on industry. If there is, rail will not get the traffic.
This carefully-thought-out scheme could give a big boost to the freight-liners by reinforcing the sales drive of British Railways, aimed to divert to them some 4,500 million ton-miles a year of road traffic by the early 1970s—an increase of 30 per cent. on the 1966 rail ton-mileage. This is more than enough to offset the decline in coal and steel traffic which the railways will suffer. Yet the impact on the rising ton-mileage by road would be much smaller: about 10 per cent. or the equivalent of two or three years’ growth in road transport.
No one can say this will mean a reduction in the size of the industry, or throw road transport workers out of work. I have no intention of introducing quantity licensing until the freightliners are capable not only of producing a comprehensive service, but a reliable one. There will be a separate appointed day for this group of Clauses. So it is now up to railwaymen to create the conditions in which I can bring it into operation.
As for bulk traffics, I believe that it is absurd that heavy materials like coal and steel should ever go by road where it is equally economic for them to go by rail—yet this is happening. As we have told industry, control here will be concentrated on a limited range of materials such as coal, iron and steel, and certain extracted materials, but it will operate for any distance, long or short.
If anyone thinks that this is a scourge invented for the road haulage industry by Barbara Castle, let me refer them to West Germany, where my counterpart has just presented to the Bundestag proposals which will prohibit the carrying by road in any circumstances of no less than 28 items of bulk materials. I can imagine what the hon. Member for Worcester and the Road Haulage Association here would say to that!
The same comparison with other countries is relevant when we come to look at the road haulage charges outlined in Part VI of the Bill. What an outcry we have had from the hon. Gentleman and others about this! We had it again at Question Time today. To put a burden of £30 million worth of extra charges on heavy goods vehicles will, we have been assured, lose us exports by making us uncompetitive. Yet the effect for most vehicles will be to add only 2½ to 3½per cent. to their operating costs. Moreover, most of the goods we export are of high value and move over relatively short distances to the ports. Transport, therefore, forms a low proportion of the final cost to the purchaser so that the effect of the charge on delivered prices will be only a fraction of 1 per cent. And I can assure the House that, compared with some of our competitors, British transport is getting off very lightly indeed.
Mr. S. O. Davies (Merthyr Tydfil) rose—
Mrs. Castle
Perhaps my hon. Friend will excuse me if I do not give way, as I have a lot of ground to cover.
Mr. Davies rose—
Mr. Speaker
Order. The right hon. Lady is obviously not giving way.
Mrs. Castle
I have put in my speech as much information as I possibly could in a time which, for the sake of the rest of the House, must be inevitably limited. If I give way to hon. Members, the House will get less information and not more. [HON. MEMBERS: “Give way.”] If I clear up one point, I shall have to clear up a number of other points, and I shall not be able to deal adequately with this massive Bill, and at the end hon. Members will say that I have dodged this issue or that. I am trying to make a comprehensive speech. Hon. Members, if they catch Mr. Speaker’s eye, will have a chance to ask questions which can be answered by my hon. Friend the Minister of State when he winds up the debate.
Sir Harmar Nicholls (Peterborough)
On a point of order. Is it not against the conventions of the House, when there is a Bill as intricate as this, and when the Minister has extended time for the debate, that she should not clear up points as she goes along on the important parts of the Bill? It is no good having just words if those words are not clear to the House because of the speed at which she is uttering them.
Mr. Speaker
The hon. Gentleman has been in the House long enough to know that whether a Member is allowed to intervene depends on the hon. or right hon. Member who has the Floor.
Mrs. Castle
I do not wish to be discourteous to the House. This is a very detailed Bill and I am trying to give a lot of information. If my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil (Mr. S. O. Davies) or the hon. Member for Peterborough (Sir Harmar Nicholls) wish to ask a specific question on the road haulage charges, which I know form a particularly vital part of the Bill, I will give way; but it must not be taken as a precedent.
Sir Harmar Nicholls
The right hon. Lady said that there would be only a 2½ to 3½per cent. increase in the operating costs of vehicles. Is she aware, however, that on a machine tool weighing 76 tons the transport costs from the Midlands to Liverpool will go up from £500 to £900?
Mrs. Castle
No.
Sir Harmar Nicholls
I can give the right hon. Lady the facts.
Mrs. Castle
I am talking about the road haulage charge. The hon. Gentleman may be referring to the abnormal loads charge. I am not talking about that charge. This is what happens when hon. Members interrupt and will not wait. I am talking about the road haulage charge, or what has been called the “wear and tear” charge. Only 2½ to 3½ per cent. will be added to the operating costs of vehicles and, therefore, considerably less to the ultimate cost of the produce.
I can assure the House that compared with some of our competitors British transport is getting off very lightly indeed. In both France and Germany increases in transport taxation are proposed which will add substantially to their transport costs and consequently to their export prices. Germany has long had a ton-mileage charge for own account vehicles, in addition to the normal excise tax based on vehicle gross weights, and the fuel tax paid by both public and private hauliers.
The German ton-mileage charge is now to be substantially increased on the larger own account vehicles and extended to public hauliers, though at a lower rate. The additional charges will mean increases of up to £800 per year on the heaviest class of vehicle operating on own account, and up to £600 per year on such vehicles operating for hire and reward, compared with the extra £190 extra which will be paid by a similar vehicle here under the wear and tear charge. And whereas my tax will add only 2½ to 3½ per cent. on to transport costs, the German proposals will add three or four times as much.
The new wear and tear charges are not a further device for diverting traffic to rail. They are merely an elementary act of justice to the private motorist and light vehicle operator, because the heavy lorry creates the need for costlier standards of road construction and maintenance as the previous Tory Government learned from their unhappy experience with the Ml. Nor is the new charge for abnormal loads designed primarily to divert these to rail. I know full well that the railways are incapable of carrying many of them. There just is not enough headroom in the tunnels and under the bridges. Here again, it is a question of fairness: these loads simply do not cover the congestion and police costs they cause, and I hope that the fact that they will now have to do so will make those responsible consider more seriously whether they could use coastal shipping or even rail in some cases or assemble more of those monster pieces of equipment on site. This tax will give them an incentive to do so. I recognise that this charge may bear particularly heavily on firms in development areas, which areas we want to help, and I should be prepared to consider in Committee whether and, if so, in what ways we could mitigate the effects of the tax on these firms.
I have already described to the House the part that the railways will play in the movement of freight. I now turn to the wider problem of their finances and management dealt with in Part IV of the Bill. When we last debated transport the hon. Member for Worcester complained that he had not had time to read the White Paper on Railway Policy and refused to comment on it. May I now ask him whether he agrees that, if confidence is to be restored to the railway industry, it must be given a sense of stability and financial self-reliance, both of which were impossible under the terms of the Transport Act, 1962?
Does the hon. Gentleman agree with the basic railway network of 11,000 to 12,000 route miles which we have earmarked for development? If not, does he think it is too small or too large? And does he agree that, if Parliament decides to keep open certain passenger lines because they are socially necessary, even though they run at a loss, it is grossly unfair to railwayman to go on saddling the railway accounts with the cost? Whatever he may say, I know that there are a number of his hon. Friends who will benefit from our decision that these lines shall be considered for social grant, paid by the Government.
I see from the Press that, in the Western Region alone, British Railways are planning to submit a number of branch lines in Devon and Cornwall to us for the new social grant when the Bill becomes law and have been discussing this with Conservative Members of Parliament from the West country. All I can say is that I hope I shall have their support this afternoon.
The earlier Clauses of Part IV are based on the proposals of the Joint Steering Group which conducted the railway review. I am glad that the hon. Member for Worcester has paid a tribute this afternoon to the group and to my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary. The Joint Steering Group has devised a basis on which we can really expect the railways to pay their way: a condition essential both to morale and to financial discipline. They include three main elements. First, the grants for socially necessary lines. In our last debate, I described how these will work. The Joint Steering Group has put a tentative figure of £55 million a year on the cost. This is not an additional burden on the Exchequer, but a new, more logical and more effective way of controlling grants which the Government are already paying through a blanket subsidy for the deficit.
I also described the grant which we propose to encourage the elimination of surplus capacity, for example, four tracks where two would do. This is the really modern way to approach the railway problem: to streamline track instead of chopping off routes. The grant will taper off over five years and the maximum annual cost in the first year is likely to be about £15 million.
The third element consists of a far-reaching capital reconstruction. The Railways Board’s debt to the Exchequer under the 1962 Act amounted to £1,562 million, £705 million of which was placed in a suspense account where it carried no liability for interest or repayment. The annual interest burden on the balance of live debt, plus borrowings from the Exchequer, since 1962 is about £52 million, with a further £13 million related to other liabilities such as pension funds, giving a total interest charge of about £65 million.
The Joint Steering Group estimated that, even with the grants which I have mentioned, and even taking into account the transfer to the National Freight Corporation of British Railways’ sundries traffic on which the railways lose about £25 million a year, the Board’s accounts would be likely to be in deficit by 1974 by up to £55 million. It is a cardinal aim of my policy that the Board should be given a financial target which it can fairly be expected to meet. I want to create the conditions in which we can get away from deficit financing. The Government therefore, propose, in Clause 39, to reduce the Board’s commencing capital debt to the Exchequer to £300 million on 1st January, 1969. This will reduce the interest burden by about £30 million with a consequential reduction, also, in the depreciation which the Board will have to provide when its assets are correspondingly written down.
The new financial framework will also mean that there will be no provision for deficit finance. British Railways will be standing on their own feet and will be expected to pay their way.
Mr. Peter Walker (Worcester)
The right hon Lady has given her estimate of the saving in interest. Can she give her estimate of the saving of depreciation?
Mrs. Castle
If assets are written off or written down to the corresponding extent, there will be a corresponding writing-down of the assets. Thus, the depreciation element in the deficit grant will be correspondingly reduced. I believe that this is a fair challenge to the railway industry, but it will certainly be a tough one. The Joint Steering Group and the Government are under no illusion that a massive write-off debt will in itself make the railways financially viable.
The end of deficit financing will itself lead to a tightening-up of investment control by the Board, which will no longer be able to claim grants from the Government to finance depreciation allowances on assets the value of which is now shown to be inflated. The Joint Steering Group also recommends, however, that £a new type of Board is needed, somewhat smaller in size, whose members concentrate more on policy, particularly long-term policy, financial control and corporate planning, rather than on detailed executive matters. The Government are in process of implementing these ideas.
The Leader of the Opposition has described the Bill as irrelevant and objectionable. [HON. MEMBERS: “Hear, hear.”] The Pavlov reactions of hon. Members opposite do not pay great testimony to their cerebral activity. All I can say is that such epithets come oddly from a party which left our railways in such financial chaos under its Transport Act, 1962.
In no area were Tory policies more inadequate than in passenger transport, where the crisis now facing public transport demands urgent steps which Tory Governments never had the courage or vision to take. The seriousness of the situation in our conurbations is illustrated by comments such as those of the West Midlands Traffic Commissioners, who, alarmed by the vicious circle of rising fares and declining services, warned some time ago that stage carriage facilities in this area have now reached the point of no return. Parts II and X of the Bill embody the Government’s rescue operation for the deteriorating traffic conditions in our towns and cities. They embody, too, a basic principle of my policy: that local people should be responsible for transport policy in their own local communities. Any objective person reading these parts of the Bill must be struck by the revolutionary degree of devolution of powers for transport and traffic which they represent.
Local government has not had such a shot in the arm for years. For years we have been talking, and rightly, about the need to integrate bus and rail services, to create convenient and comfortable interchange points, park and ride or kiss and ride facilities, to use an Americanism. These are elementary steps if public transport is to play the role which it must play in moving millions of our people at the peak hours.
But integration must go further than that. In my view, there is absolutely no hope of coping with the traffic explosion in our cities unless those who plan them, who build the highways and the housing estates and site the factories and the overspill developments—and who manage the traffic—are also responsible for public transport.
It is for those reasons that I have decided not to re-create the nationalised Area Passenger Transport Boards of the Transport Act, 1947, but instead to take powers to create Passenger Transport Authorities controlled by people appointed by the local authorities in the designated areas. In our last debate, although I assured the hon. Member for Worcester that he was wide of the mark, he insisted on maintaining that I was going to swamp the authorities with my own representatives, appoint the chairman and rule the roost.
Mr. Peter Walker
Hear, hear.
Mrs. Castle
It is no good saying “Hear hear”, because Clause 9 and Schedule 5 to the Bill prove the hon. Member wrong. They provide that all but two or three of the members of the authorities shall be appointed by local authorities and that the authorities shall appoint their own chairmen, with my approval or that of the Secretary of State in Scotland and Wales, who will be responsible for the Passenger Transport Authorities in their areas.
An authority will have the power to hire and fire the members of the passenger transport executive. It will control the general level of fares and services. It will approve the executive’s annual estimates, its investment programme, its reorganisation scheme for bus services, its agreements with British Railways and the comprehensive transport plan for the area.
Mr. Michael Heseltine (Tavistock)
Would not the Minister agree that all the points which she is listing will be subject to her final decision?
Mrs. Castle
That is not so.
Sir Harmar Nicholls
The right hon. Lady has just said so.
Mrs. Castle Certainly not. Clearly, if I am to give the substantial financial grants that I shall give, I have to approve the schemes under which they are given. Does the hon. Gentleman suggest that I should give 75 per cent. grants to road schemes which are never even looked at? It is time that hon. Gentlemen opposite changed the tune. This is not Whitehall domination: it is Whitehall devolution.
Mr. Michael Heseltine rose—
Mrs. Castle
No, I am sorry.
Is the hon. Gentleman trying to say that local authorities do not have control over their highways? Any Minister who gives Government money for schemes has control to that extent. This applies over the whole local authority sector. It applies to education, housing, and roads, and all I am saying is that the responsibility for public transport will now become one of the normal functions of local government, in the same way as local authorities are responsible for highways, housing, and traffic management, and nothing that hon. Gentlemen opposite say can invalidate that. I assure the hon. Gentleman that what I am proposing is a normal Ministry-local government relationship.
If local control is to have any meaning at all—and hon. Gentlemen must face this, because they want it both ways —it must be accompanied by local financial responsibility for public transport. I am vesting in the authorities the municipal undertakings of their constituent local authorities, and giving them wide powers to enter into agreements with other undertakings and with British Railways. Having drawn up their comprehensive transport plans, it will be for them to decide whether they want transport in their areas to pay its way, or whether they wish, as a deliberate act of policy, to subsidise it as a social service. But to help them they will have the new capital investment grants for which Clause 53 provides. These grants make history, because for the first time we have a Government willing to give Exchequer grants for public transport facilities at the same rate—75 per cent.—as they do for principal roads. At last, therefore, we shall have created the situation in which local authorities will have the same encouragement to produce a modern public transport system as they have to produce roads.
The imperative need for such grants has just been demonstrated by the Manchester Rapid Transit Study, which points out that no highway and parking system could be designed, let alone financed, to permit more than 25 per cent.-30 per cent. of Manchester central area workers to travel to work by car. That is why Manchester City Council and the Ministry have been studying the feasibility of various systems of rapid transit for Manchester.
The consulting engineers we employed found—as those in other countries have done—that a “steel wheel on steel rail” electric rail system would be as effective, and would certainly be cheaper to build and operate, than a monorail or other more dramatic-sounding system, and could be geared into existing B.R lines, bringing new life to them. In the light of their report, the Ministry and Manchester are now working out what would be the best combination of old and new rail routes to give a rapid transit network of high quality.
But these constructions are very expensive: the new rail link in central Manchester would have to be in tunnel. The cost would certainly be beyond the capacity of any local authority, or group of authorities, hence the need for capital grants. The hon. Gentleman keeps saying that my policy will put up fares. Has he really given any serious thought to this matter? Let me refer him to an estimate recently given by Mr. R. F. Bennett, Chairman of the Manchester Rapid Transit Working Party. He has calculated the fares that would be necessary on what might be the first portion of a rapid transit network for Manchester—that is, a 17-mile route from Bury to Cheadle Heath. He calculates that an average fare of 3d. per mile—no more than present bus fares in the area—would cover operating costs and debt redemption, given a 75 per cent. Exchequer grant towards the expenditure. So let me ask the hon. Gentleman: does he believe that modern rapid transit systems are needed in our conurbations? If so, does he not welcome the Government’s proposed 75 per cent. grant towards the expenditure? Will he support Clause 53?
I am going to give the P.T.A.s power to reorganise bus services. I am also going to give them financial help. This is essential, because bus services, even in the conurbations, and certainly elsewhere, will carry the vast majority of passengers for many years to come. So the Government propose another revolutionary new grant—25 per cent. of the cost of equipping bus undertakings with modern fleets. The hon. Member for Worcester is always calling for the restoration of investment allowances as his panacea for the bus industry. In fact, of course, the loss of these allowances never affected London Transport or the municipal undertakings because they did not earn enough profit to benefit from taxation allowances. And to the sectors which were affected—the private companies and the T.H.C.—the loss never represented more than £2 million to £3 million a year.
The cost to the Exchequer of my new bus grant scheme will be about £5 million in the first full year, rising possibly to as much as £10 million when it is in full effect. In addition, the rebate of fuel duty for bus undertakings is to be increased by 9d. a gallon from January, 1969: a saving to them of no less than £7 million a year.
Colonel Sir Tufton Beamish (Lewes)
Why has not assistance over the cost of fuel been given to the private companies, which have been faced with such difficulties over the past three years?
Mrs. Castle
It will be given to all undertakings, and it is given now when it is appropriate to give a fuel rebate, for the reason that the better type of modern bus which we want to see the bus undertakings purchasing consume more fuel, and they have increased operating costs.
This, therefore, is the appropriate moment to make this addition to the fuel tax rebate.
All these grants will help to reduce the operating costs of transport authorities. What then, about the alleged plot to dump railway losses on to the laps of the ratepayers? “£60 million on the rates” thundered the hon. Gentleman. Frankly, this figure is something he dreamed up in one of those nightmares to which he is so prone. Clearly—and I ask the House to face this because we are considering serious matters of administration and financial responsibility—if a Passenger Transport Authority is to draw up a transport plan which integrates road and rail effectively, it must be able to control the level of fares and services for all types of transport, and if it does that it must take financial responsibility for any losses it incurs as a result of its policies.
But, as Clause 20 points out, this provision will apply merely to those areas, where railway passenger services have a particularly important contribution to make “— in other words, only to the suburban rail services in the conurbations. The total losses on these suburban rail services at present is about £8 million to £10 million a year—and that is before planning and integration of these services, with the consequent financial benefit, has even been tried. Against this loss, the Exchequer will pay compensating grants, starting at 90 per cent. and phasing out only as other Government help for transport is being phased in on an increasing scale.
The total value of the new Exchequer grants which I have described for public transport—excluding the grants for existing rail services—could amount to £20 million in their first full year of operation—1969—rising substantially in the 1970s. The Government’s intention is to give massive net help to transport authorities, and that will be the result of their policies. The hon. Gentleman has hopped on the wrong bus.
The drawing up of successful transport plans will be greatly helped by the creation of the National Bus Company. The T.H.C. has in any case to be reorganised since its road haulage assets are to be transferred to the N.F.C. and it is proposed in the Bill to transfer all the T.H.C. interests in bus undertakings in England and Wales to the new National Bus Company, together with the remaining assets of the B.E.T. group of bus companies which the company has, as the House knows, arranged to buy.
The National Bus Company will be organised in subsidiaries as the T.H.C. has been and, like the T.H.C, it will be expected to pay its way. It will be a commercially viable undertaking.
Sir Robert Cary (Manchester, Withington)
Did the right hon. Lady say all bus companies?
Mrs. Castle
I said the T.H.C. plus the B.E.T. assets which the company is in the process of acquiring.
Sir R. Cary
There will be some outside?
Mrs. Castle
Yes. There will be some outside.
Because of the special problems in Scotland—in particular, the importance of the local shipping services—a separate Scottish Transport Group is being set up responsible to the Secretary of State. The Minister of State for Scotland will deal with this in more detail later in the debate.
The T.H.C. acquisition is not, of course, nationalisation.
Mr. Percy Grieve (Solihull)
It would greatly assist those who have spent a great deal of time trying to make our way through this morass of a Bill if the right hon. Lady would use words and not initials.
Mrs. Castle
I always begin by using words and then I hope that the initials can be deduced.
The T.H.C. acquisition is the result of a voluntary sale. The T.H.C. thought, and the Government agreed, that it made commercial sense. And it also makes administrative sense. The Opposition were quite shocked when I said in a recent debate that the basic services of public transport are no longer an appropriate field for private profit-making activity. Why should they be shocked? Do not they realise how far this process has already gone? Publicly-owned bus undertakings already carry 80 per cent. of all passengers on stage services. In the conurbations the percentage is even higher. We are now going to carry the process a stage further.
The T.H.C. acquisition, by bringing nearly all the main bus companies in the country under the control of a single publicly owned body, will enable sensible working agreements to be reached between the National Bus Company and the transport authorities. The necessary extension of the borrowing powers of the T.H.C. is the subject of a separate Bill now before the House.
If final proof were needed that nationalisation is the wrong word to apply to the Bill it lies in the agreement that I have just reached with the Leader of the Greater London Council to make the council the transport authority for London. This will require legislation and although the full details have yet to be worked out the agreement is directly relevant to our argument this afternoon.
What are we doing in London? We are putting the nationalised London Transport Board under the control of London’s great local authority. And why? Because the Leader of the G.L.C., Mr. Desmond Plummer, agrees it is right and proper and long overdue for his authority, which is responsible for highways, town planning and traffic management, also to be responsible for public transport.
Of course it is—and here is the first Conservative leader with the courage to admit it. It really is time the Opposition got into line, because other Conservative municipal leaders are going to follow Mr. Plummer’s lead, however much Conservative Central Office tries to stir them up against the P.T.A.s.
The kind of authority which will be needed in London is different from that needed in other conurbations, because the local government structure is very different. In the Greater London Council we have the fruits of London government reorganisation which has given us an administrative area under one authority large enough to make transport sense. So the process of setting up a P.T.A. is much simpler—we can just put the Greater London Council in charge.
Unfortunately, the Conservative Government, responsible for the 1963 London Government Act, were not very far-sighted about traffic matters, and divided traffic management powers between the G.L.C. and the London boroughs in a most inept way. Mr. Plummer has asked me to put this right and I have told him that I will be glad to discuss this with the G.L.C. and the boroughs and to legislate for a transfer of further traffic powers to the G.L.C.
In all this I have talked about the transport needs of our towns and cities because our country is so largely urbanised. But I realise that the transport problems in many rural areas are equally acute. What astonishes me is that Conservative Governments, who draw so much of their strength from these areas, have never done anything to arrest the decline of public transport there, despite the warnings and recommendations of the Jack Report.
The Bill will come to the rescue of rural life in two important ways—first, with money, through the rural bus grants provided in Clause 34 and, equally important, by relaxing the licensing provisions which at present prevent the development of more flexible forms of public transport than the normal bus. The National Bus Company and the Scottish Transport Group will have a strong base from which to continue cross-subsidisation of rural bus services by healthier urban ones.
But I believe that we have got to encourage all sorts of unconventional and imaginative ways of getting people from village to village. That is why the Postmaster-General and I are experimenting with the G.P.O. minibuses, but I believe that private operators could play a role here by combining the carriage of passengers with other activities.
So we shall make it easier to get a licence to run bus services with small vehicles and make it possible for minibuses to be exempted altogether, provided that they do not carry more than 12 passengers. Incidentally, this will help the publican who wants to find a way of getting his customers home.
There is another section of our people to whom the Bill brings new hope—those who love and use our canals, whether for cruising, angling or just walking on the towpath, or who want to see stretches of canal in some of our unlovely built-up areas developed as centres of beauty and fun.
Part VIII of the Bill embodies the proposals outlined in the White Paper, British Waterways: Recreation and Amenity. The White Paper defined the commercial network of the canals, and we shall see that this is developed to high standards of efficiency, though, unfortunately, the narrowness of our canals makes it impossible to use them for commercial traffic as much as many of us would like.
The White Paper also gave a secure future for the non-commercial network by committing the Government to the necessary expenditure to keep it open and develop it for recreation. The response to that White Paper by waterways enthusiasts has been astonishing. The Tories just could not make up their minds what to do with the waterways. We have—and now there is an upsurge of hopeful development.
Ironically, it has needed a Labour Government to give the stimulus to private investment in boat houses, pleasure craft, and so on, which Tory vacillation held back. One Midland firm which makes cruisers said the other day, “We have been hoping for this step for over 20 years, and now it has come.”
Some local authorities, too, are drawing up plans to turn their canals into “little Venices”. Government help has transformed the situation. The Secretary of State for Wales tells me, for instance, that he hopes shortly to announce a scheme for restoring for recreation the Brecon and Abergavenny Canal, which runs through the beautiful Brecon Beacons National Park. I hope that, in their promised line-by-line fight against the Bill, the Opposition are not going to keep us up all night opposing that.
Finally, there are two further important pledges that the Bill fulfils. The first is the Government’s promise to remove the restrictions on the manufacturing powers of nationalised industries. Clause 45 will remove the absurd limitations from which the transport boards suffer on the use which they may make of their resources, and will put them on an equal footing with private enterprise in being able to make full use of their assets and to diversify.
Of course, I as Minister must be satisfied that they are carrying on these activities reasonably and on strictly commercial lines, and, so far as is possible, I propose to see, as the Clause enables me to do, that they publish information in their annual reports to demonstrate that they are doing so.
This is not unfair competition: it is equality of opportunity. Why should not the fine new production line for containers at the Derby railway workshop, for instance, be used to win this country exports? And why should not the transport boards—including British Railways —be able to sell petrol at the car parks which we are all urging them to provide? It is just common sense.
The second point relates to travel concessions for old-age pensioners, the blind and the disabled. The concessionary fares legislation which the Labour Government introduced in October, 1964, has proved an enormous boon to those who most needed help —so much so that there has been a considerable outcry from those who are not served by municipal buses and so do not benefit.
For a long time, therefore, my hon. Friends have been pressing the Government to extend the power of local authorities to finance such concessions on non-municipal undertakings as well as on municipal ones. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, West (Mr. Bob Brown) introduced a Private Member’s Bill on these lines last year and was persuaded to withdraw it on the ground that we would be legislating in the Transport Bill. We have kept our promise, as Clause 152 shows.
If the Bill is approved, therefore, local authorities and P.T.A.s will be free to decide for themselves on which services, public or private, they will grant these concessions, provided always that they are prepared to pay for them themselves, without the benefit of rate support grant. Here is another area of free choice for local authorities.
This, then, is Labour’s plan for transport. It faces modern needs boldly and flexibly and brings to the support of our socialist principles the highest techniques of management. It is based on the belief that transport has a social role to play, but this does not mean that it should operate without financial discipline. The Bill gives a new status to amenity in our national life. It ends the financial muddle which the Tories left, and offers to local government the most exciting new role it has had for years. I confidently commend it to the House.
The speech made by Barbara Castle, the then Minister for Transport, in the House of Commons on 15 June 1966.
My policy is to preserve the route of a closed line and the station sites and accesses wherever I consider that services might possibly be needed again following long-term planning decisions. Station buildings and signalling apparatus have a limited life after closure. In addition to natural deterioration, they are subject to vandalism which can destroy much of their value within a short period. I am satisfied that overall the retention of the line formation, station sites and accesses is a sufficient safeguard for the future. I have accordingly arranged with the Railways Board that they will continue to seek my agreement before they dispose of the formation (the land on which the actual track is laid) of all closed lines in urban areas and of all other lines closed since 1st January, 1963, and to the disposal of station sites and accesses on such lines.
At the same time I am anxious that the Board should be able to realise the value of assets the removal of which will not prejudice the possibility of restoring services in the future should that ever prove desirable. I recognise the Board’s concern to avoid retaining disused track when they can get very good prices from its sale immediately. I understand that they normally hope to gain well over £2,000 for every mile of track sold and that in 1965 they obtained £2 million from the sale of track on closed lines. I have therefore told them that they are free to dispose of the actual track and signalling apparatus, and of station buildings, where a closure has taken place.
Before giving or withholding my agreement to the disposal of formation, station sites and accesses, I shall henceforth first refer applications by the Board to the appropriate regional Economic Planning Council for their comments.
The speech made by Barbara Castle, the then Minister of Transport, in the House of Commons on 23 February 1966.
The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Rushcliffe (Sir M. Redmayne) began by saying that he believed a number of people among those outside this House were surprised that the Opposition should pray against these Regulations right in the middle of the experiment. I am one of those who were surprised that he should pray against the Regulations, but I think that the one thing that this debate has revealed quite clearly is that the Opposition are now completely opposed to this experiment—
Mr. Timothy Kitson (Richmond, Yorks)
What about the other side?
Mrs. Castle
No voice has been raised from this side opposing the experiment.
I am deeply shocked by the opposition that has been expressed. I should have thought that the whole question of road safety was of such importance that our motorists and drivers would have been prepared to wait for at least four months in order to see whether some of the surmises that have been ventilated, or some of the points made, were actually sustained by the result of systematic observation of driver behaviour, the question of bunching-up, and so on, and until the results of that systematic observation—which must be more important than any isolated example of personal observation—have been received in my Department, have been studied by the Road Research Laboratory, and have been reported on fully to the House.
It was interesting to hear some of the points made by the right hon. Gentleman, but it became clear that what we were having was open hostility to this experiment—
Sir M. Redmayne
The Minister must understand. What other opportunity have we to express these views? This is our only Parliamentary opportunity until she comes to the stage of considering the end of her experiment.
Mrs. Castle
I have explained to the House—I did so at the last Question Time—that the material will be made available by the middle of March, and that I shall before the end of the experiment on 13th April, give a full report to the House on my decision, and the reasons for it. I should have thought that it was little to ask that we should wait for this information to be obtained.
The opposition that is now being voiced has not been voiced at any time when consideration was undertaken as to whether there should be this experiment—on the contrary. This idea that we should experiment on speed limits in order to meet various developments is nothing new. This experiment was not a whim just cooked up by Her Majesty’s Government. It is the result of study over the years of what has happened in this country and in other countries on motorways and other high-speed roads, and study of certain recent developments.
I was interested to see that as long ago as 1st July, 1964, a couple of hon. Members—one from each side of the House—asked the then Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport whether he would impose a 100 m.p.h. experimental speed limit on the motorways. The Parliamentary Secretary replied: No. We are keeping under review the possibility of a speed limit on motorways. If we do introduce one it will be lower than 100 miles per hour.”—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 1st July, 1964; Vol. 697, col. 215.] We also had the experiment of a 50 m.p.h. speed limit at weekends, which was carried out between 1961 and 1964.
We have had this evidence from other countries of the effects of either a speed limit or of its removal. The American figures that we have used have been queried. I would say to the right hon. Gentleman that the American report to which he refers covers high-speed roads, if not actual motorways.
Sir M. Redmayne indicated dissent.
Mrs. Castle
I am sorry, but that is the position. I also point out that there has been experience from other countries. Germany tried an experimental speed limit in a certain period on a section of the Frankfurt-Mannheim autobahn. The speed limit was lifted, but not because it did not have the result of reducing accidents. On the contrary, the effect of removing the speed limit was a sudden and dramatic increase in the number of accidents. The number increased by 35 per cent. and the numbers of those killed and injured by 43 per cent. and this for an average traffic increase of only 9 per cent. Because of that there has been a growing feeling in this country that it is worth having an experiment to see whether speed is a major contributory factor in the level of accidents.
It will not be my advice which will decide the issue, but the evidence we shall get. Therefore, I do not want to give arguments in advance of the result of the experiment. I have a completely open mind about it, but I have not an open mind about the desirability of having an experiment. We all know that this matter was brought to a head by that terrifying series of multiple crashes last November on the motorways. There were three accidents involving 65 vehicles, five were killed and 30 injured. I say categorically that everybody in that situation was prepared to try any experiment that might contribute to avoiding a recurrence of that kind of horror on our roads.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. Tom Fraser), who was then Minister, would have been under fierce attack from the House if he had not examined every possibility of preventing that kind of terrifying accident from recurring. Then the voices of all who have a right to be consulted on this issue were overwhelmingly in favour of this experiment. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary met the Lancashire and Staffordshire police on 8th November, three days after the accidents when the country was still reeling with the horror of those multiple crashes. They were strongly of the view that excessive speed was responsible for those accidents and in favour of an experimental speed limit on motorways.
Mr. Antony Buck (Colchester)
Will the hon. Lady say what assistance there would be in having a 70 m.p.h. speed limit to prevent accidents in thick fog? That I fail to see.
Mrs. Castle
This all arose from the incidence of fog. The arguments which the police and others advanced was that if we are travelling into an area of hazard it is important that the speed differential should be reduced so that there can be quicker reaction. I have not the time to go into the technicalities. I am merely reporting to the House that the police of Lancashire and Staffordshire, were overwhelmingly in favour, arising from that experience, of an experimental speed limit on motorways and suggested 70 m.p.h. on the basis of American experience.
A few days later my right hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton met chief constables and others, including representatives of the motoring organisations. The general consensus of their views was that this experiment ought to be tried in the interests of safety on the roads.
Mr. R. Gresham Cooke (Twickenham) rose—
Mrs. Castle
I am sorry, but I have only two or three minutes left and I shall be criticised if I do not reply to some of the points which have been made.
I turn to questions put to me by the hon. Member for Chippenham (Mr. Awdry). He asked for an assurance that no speed limit would be made permanent before the full report on the experimental period had been published and debated. There is nothing to hide. I am not trying to prove a particular line of argument except to justify the experiment.
I want to tell the House quite frankly the position as I see it. It might well be that the Road Research Laboratory, which is collating the data on accidents which the police are giving it direct every week, might report to me in due course that it did not think that the experimental period was long enough for it to form a valid view. This would depend on whether or not the accident figures showed a substantial reduction, whether there was a substantial effect or a strong indication of the trend of accidents. It might say that the evidence was inconclusive. If it said that, it would then be for me to judge whether, in the light of other evidence from the police of driver behaviour and all the other information coming in, the experiment should be continued for a further period.
If I decided that it was desirable to continue the experiment, I should have to lay a fresh Statutory Instrument before the House which could then be prayed against. But before I did so I would report to the House fully what the findings of the Road Research Laboratory were and the reasons for the conclusion which I had reached. It would be only if the evidence were conclusive enough that I would even consider making the Regulations permanent.
When I make my report to the House I shall give the House as fully as is possible all the figures of the casualties and all other relevant evidence from the Road Research Laboratory’s provisional assessments, which will be available to me in the middle of March, and from the other sources that I have mentioned—police observation of driver behaviour, traffic flow and the rest. Therefore, there is no intention of trying to impose either the continuation of the experimental period or any permanent speed limit behind the back of the House—indeed this would not be possible because the House could pray against the Statutory Instrument—and this is certainly not my desire.
I remain profoundly convinced that my right hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton was very wise in fulfilling his public duty to the road users of this country by introducing the experiment. He ought to be congratulated and supported. I also have reached no conclusion, and I shall not until I have the evidence on which to do so.
The speech made by Clive Bossom, the then Conservative MP for Leominster, in the House of Commons on 23 February 1966.
I wish to make my position clear at the beginning of my speech. I was wholly opposed to the 70 m.p.h. speed limit on the motorways, and for the same reason as was put forward by Mr. Wilfred Andrews, Chairman of the R.A.C., who pointed out yesterday that it can be proved that the great majority of accidents in this country occur at speeds below 40 m.p.h.
So far, no evidence has been produced in relation to the 70 m.p.h. limit. The Ministry, in its wisdom, instituted this experiment. I am never against experiments if they are going to cut down the loss of life or improve road safety. However, very begrudgingly, I was willing to let it have a fair trial if it went on until only 13th April. Most people said at the time that the decision was ill-considered and far too hurried. Most hon. Members have received a large postbag of letters from motoring clubs and other organisations expressing unanimous disapproval of what they consider yet another restriction on the motorist.
At Question Time on 9th February, the Minister was unable to give me any assurance that she would remove this restriction on 13th April. I hope that she will state tonight what information she is asking for, and whether conclusions will be based on full scientific assessment or just on “hunches”. If the conclusions and statistics are not satisfactory—and many of us believe that the Road Research Laboratory, the police and the motoring organisations will not have enough time to form definite conclusions by 13th April—what is the Minister planning to do in that case? We must know that tonight.
We have had many arguments tonight about “overtaking”, “bunching” which caused the multiple crashes. The hon. Member for Meriden (Mr. Rowland) mentioned America. Driving on high speed roads in America at a constant speed in nose to tail queues, I found, in the end, led to lack of concentration. Many accidents there occur because of drowsiness and boredom caused by driving at constant speeds. What we must bring home to the Minister is that it is no good having speed limits which are hard or nearly impossible to enforce—and this limit will be one such. Motorists will soon realise that that law cannot be fully enforced, and will gradually take little or no notice of it. This will harm relationships between public and police, which is something we do not want.
I ask the Minister to take a long, close and scientific look into this question before she makes up her mind. She must not continue to impose the restriction, even experimentally, unless there is clear evidence to justify it.
The speech made by Daniel Awdry, the then Conservative MP for Chippenham, in the House of Commons on 23 February 1966.
I wish to make only three points on the subject of motorways, but I should like to say at the beginning that I really do believe that this experiment is totally misconceived. I realise that there is a need for some restriction on motorways in conditions of fog—we all realise that—but that really does not justify the total restriction in good weather conditions.
My first point is on the question of danger. As a result of this restriction there will be a tendency for drivers to drive up to the limit of 70 m.p.h., and that will produce bunching. My right hon. Friend fully developed this point and I do not wish to enlarge upon it, because other Members probably wish to speak, but the real trouble with bunching is that when an accident does occur more vehicles are involved and the accident is far worse. I speak with some experience because I drive quite regularly on the M.4 motorway. This bunching, I believe, will cause great difficulties, because people will tend to try to pass a line of traffic on the inside.
My second point relates to the experiment itself. I ask the Minister to give us tonight an assurance that no permanent regulations will be imposed till a full report of the results of this experiment has been published, and all the interested organisations have been given an opportunity to comment on it. I myself very much doubt whether a short experiment of this kind is capable of giving a conclusive result one way or another, and I ask the Minister to give us one further assurance, that she does not intend to extend the period of the experiment before she publishes the report.
My third point is on a slightly different aspect. Obviously, motorways were built to enable people to drive more quickly. This step will restrict the fastest cars of our country to half their maximum capacity and speed. I believe that this will discourage the development by the motor industry of new, high-performance models, and this is a field in which we have a very substantial export success. This is a serious point: a permanent limit of this kind would have an adverse effect on vehicle design.
I have received a number of letters, as has my right hon. Friend, and all the letters I have received unanimously condemn these Regulations, which I personally believe to be a step in the wrong direction.