§ 59. Mr. LAMBasked the Postmaster-General if he will reconsider his decision not to supply the district of Dilhorne, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffs, with a public telephone call office except under a guarantee of £18 a year, seeing that such guarantees are the main deterrent to the development of the use of telephones in this country, especially in rural areas?
§ Sir W. MITCHELL-THOMSONThe receipts from a telephone call office at Dilhorne are not expected to cover the charges. In these circumstances a guarantee cannot be dispensed with, but on going into details I find that the amount quoted can be reduced, and I am 1046 arranging for revised terms to be communicated to the persons interested. The guarantee system, far from being a deterrent to the development of telephones, is, in practice, the only means whereby call offices are being established in a number of places where the use made of the facilities is so small that their provision out of public funds could not be justified,