§ SIR F. DIXON-HARTLAND (Middlesex, Uxbridge)To ask the Postmaster-General whether it is the policy of the Department in districts where they are in competition with the National Telephone Company to refuse to their subscribers intercommunication with the subscribers of the company within each of the areas into which the company divide the country, though granting such intercommunication freely in other areas; and whether the Department, looking upon the extension and general use of the telephone as of public advantage and utility, will act in a spirit of general public convenience and, ignoring such a question of trade competition, grant equal facilities to their subscribers universally.
(Answered by Lard Stanley.) It is not the policy of the Post Office to refuse to allow its subscribers to communicate with the subscribers of the National Telephone Company in areas in which the two 961 systems are in competition. On the contrary, I should be glad to arrange for intercommunication between the two systems in all cases, but I have no power to require the National Telephone Company to make such an arrangement.