HC Deb 20 January 1913 vol 47 cc175-84

The Orders for the remaining Government business were read and postponed.

Whereupon Mr. SPEAKER, pursuant to the Order of 14th October, proposed the Question, "That this House do now adjourn."

Mr. R. HARCOURT

I desire to call attention to a matter of more than local concern. Of course, it only affects a limited number of persons, but it is a matter of very serious interest to the East Coast of Scotland. As Scottish Members are already aware, about ten days ago a deputation waited on my right hon. Friend the Postmaster-General to urge or rather to repeat, for it has been put very often before, the case for an extension North of Edinburgh of the underground telegraph system, which is apparently the only effective way of guarding against the isolation of large areas of country owing to storms which blow down poles and wires. The deputation was one of exceptional size and strength. It included many Members of this House, and Lord Provosts, Knights, and merchant princes who came down five hundred miles at a considerable loss of time and money to complain, and I think, justly complain, of the loss of time and money they had already incurred. I am afraid that it was only a case of throwing-good money after bad. For all the satisfaction which they got they might just as well have stopped at home.

Indeed, I mean no discourtesy whatever to my right hon. Friend the Postmaster-General, but he had apparently made up his mind to return a point-blank refusal, and it is a little difficult to understand why he allowed sixteen gentlemen to come up from Scotland when he could have conveyed the same decision on half a sheet of notepaper. I emphasise the postal method because if he had been moved by business ardour to use the telegraph within two days after receiving the deputation, he would not, despite the statements, of his officials, have established communication. The right hon. Gentleman said that we have hardly had isolation or interruption since that date, but we have had a storm, and it is precisely because those storms are periodically occurring, and indeed with increased severity in that portion of the country, that we ask for an extension of the underground system. Really, to the least imaginative man there seems to be an element of poetic justice in the swiftness and relentlessness with which rude nature once again disposed of the prim Departmental non possumus,because within twenty-four hours after the statement that nothing much was the matter the whole area was once again, for practical purposes, isolated. The Postmaster-General this afternoon, in answer to a question, said that the English centres were being linked up with the submarine cables. There is something to be said for the Scottish centres also. Dundee deals with Calcutta, Aberdeen does a very large trade in fish with Germany; and, at the same time, Arbroath, the town I represent, and others, get raw material from Russia, and send the finished material to America. We ask for a capital sum of £130,000, or about £11,000 a year, and we have not an unreasonable claim when over £2,000,000 has been spent already mainly upon English centres. The right hon. Gentleman says, first of all, that the service will not pay. We reply, in general terms, that the service is not expected to pay; that the function of a monopolist profit-making Department is not to square up its accounts with each isolated town or district. You have to consider general business interests. Trade suffers; the proper distribution of food, cattle, and fish is seriously impeded, and even, the safety of ships and the security of the Navy might be prejudiced. In capital matters of that kind you cannot merely strike a profit and loss account. It is not, as the Prime Minister said in another connection, a question "of nicely calculated less or more." On the second point, I think the right hon. Gentleman, acting under the directions of the Treasury, rather exaggerates the case by taking too short a period, namely, fifteen years, for his sinking fund. Surely that is not a reasonable estimate of the life of the earthenware ducts, which I believe are the chief elements in the case.

On the point merely of the way-leaves to railways, which he is paying at the present moment, I am told there is to be a considerable reduction; and in answer to Question No. 61, this afternoon, he said that on the line to Watford there had been a considerable saving on that head. But the last point is by far the more serious. He based his cast, in answer to the deputation, largely upon figures; and on the first day that I was able to put a question to him my right hon. Friend, admitted that those figures even on the basis on which they were given, were grossly and, indeed, grotesquely inaccurate. I am compelled to believe that the figures were only used as "illustrations." His case was that the gross revenue of Dundee and Aberdeen was so small that it was the main ground of his refusal. The cost of the line was put at £11,000, and against that he said, "I can only set a gross revenue of £16,000, and you have two-thirds of the cost already." It now turns out that the £16,000 which he gave should be at least £30,000, an error of 87 per cent., the cost not being two-thirds but little more than one-third. I am bound to say that seems to be a rather serious matter. He knew the correct fact last Monday, and he did not know it upon the preceding Thursday. It is a mistake of the departmental officer but I do not think human nature can resist the comment that it is singularly unfortunate when he was receiving an expert and highly aggrieved deputation that he should have been allowed to make an error of nearly 100 per cent, in favour of his own case. He based his case largely upon figures which collapsed the very moment they were examined. We say that even those figures left out of account a large number of industrial towns which must be large telegraph users. The figure which he was good enough to give me of seven counties I had selected in the North-Eastern corner, was £61,000. From that you have to deduct a large sum undoubtedly, as he said, for the local traffic, and you therefore have a figure something between £30,000 and £61,000. It is a matter of pure hypothesis what figure you take, but for the purposes of argument, taking it at £44,000, and the cost at £11,000, it gives only 25 per cent, of the gross revenue instead of the 70 per cent, which he represented. I do not think that he would expect a business community which has already lost faith to-accept conclusions based upon premises which have been wholly falsified. He has chosen the ground on which he desires to stand, and it appears to me that the ground has crumbled under his feet. I do say most seriously to him that he is bound to reconsider the whole case, and that it is impossible that we should rest satisfied with the anwer which he has already given.

The POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. Herbert Samuel)

Of the many unpleasant duties that devolve upon a Minister from time to time, there is none more unpleasant than refusing, on financial grounds, requests that are made to him by Members of this House in the interests of their constituents. That is a duty in the performance of which the Minister never gets any sympathy or any support from any quarter of the House. When we are discussing the amount of national expenditure and the necessity, from time to time, of increasing taxation, then, indeed, many Members rise in their places from all quarters and protest against the lavish increase of our national expenditure, but when on any particular occasion any individual Minister raises objections on grounds purely of economy to some particular proposel for large increased expenditure, then, as I say, the support which he receives is usually of the smallest. I well recognise the grave inconvenience that is caused on a few days, I am afraid every year, to the people of Dundee and Aberdeen, and to other parts of the country which have not the advantage of underground telegraph communication, and those comments upon my reply to the deputation the other day which have represented me as minimising that inconvenience are, I think, wholly unjustified. My remarks to the extremely influential deputation, which many of my hon. Friends attended, were made in answer to a statement that Dundee and Aberdeen were frequently isolated from all communication with the outer world, and that therefore they had an unanswerable claim for the establishment of underground cable communication. While I fully admitted the inconvenience caused by the delay to traders, newspaper proprietors and readers in those districts, I felt it my duty to point out that it was not the fact that these cities had, as a matter of fact, been completely cut off from communication with other parts of the country and of the world. I think my hon. Friend has done me less than justice when he represents me as saying that I thought there was not much the matter in conection with this question. The point is, is the inconvenience, which admittedly is suffered by these districts, such as to require the Government to spend, at the cost of the general taxpayers of the country, a sum of £130,000? That is the only point which has to be considered.

Mr. PIRIE

The real point is whether we get a fair distribution of the money spent on underground cables as between centres in England and centres in Scotland. We get a most unfair distribution.

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

The question is whether in this particular case the grievance is of such a character as to justify the expenditure of this large sum of money. My hon. Friend said quite truly that the figure which I quoted the other day was incorrect. I had asked my Department to furnish me with the gross telegraphic revenue of Dundee and Aberdeen. They telegraphed to Scotland for the figures, and the figures came back showing a total of £16,000 a year. It was afterwards found that these figures had been supplied from the Accountant General's Department in Edinburgh, and that they related only to the telegraphic revenue of the head offices of Dundee and Aberdeen, and did not include the branch and sub-offices of the two cities. The mistake was an inexcusable one, and I can offer no defence of it. I think my hon. Friend was fully justified in the strictures he has made, and those who were responsible have, of course, been censured for this error.

Mr. R. HARCOURT

The matter has been before the Post Office for five years.

Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL

These particular figures were newly asked for at that time. I cannot agree with my hon. Friend when he proceeds to base upon that error the conclusion that the matter is now disposed of, that since a wrong figure was supplied the case against the proposal falls to the ground, and that the expediture of £130,000 must necessarily follow. I do not think he can draw so sweeping a conclusion as that. The facts are these. I was using, as he says, for the purposes of illustration, the gross figures of revenue—not the net figures, but the total receipts, without allowing anything for the wages and salaries of the officers employed, for the capital expended upon plant, for the maintenance and engineering cost of plant, or for the headquarters charges and the telegraph service. I was simply taking the total net sum received into the pockets of the Post Office for these two cities. If the figure is £30,000 a year gross instead of £16,000 I do not think that that justifies the expenditure of £130,000 for this purpose. My hon. Friend said that we should save greatly in way-leaves to the railway companies. I am afraid that that would not be so, because we certainly could not remove our wires from the railway companies, and put them underground. The value of underground telegraph wires is greatly exaggerated. The telegraph engineers find that they are not nearly as suitable for the transmission of telegraphic messages as aerial wires. Owing to the difficulties of insulation and other causes, into which I do not wish to venture to-night, the communication along the underground wires is very much slower than overhead wires—so much so that they cannot be used at all for Press work. When an occasion does occur that the overhead wires are down, and the underground wires are used alone, there is so much congestion that the traffic is very much more slowly got through. During the recent storm, which caused so much havoc over the aerial lines the delay was very much greater to many towns which have got the underground telegraph cables, such as Newcastle, than to Dundee and Aberdeen which have not. That is a fact of great importance. If the underground cables had been laid to Dundee and Aberdeen, while I admit in those two cases the delay would have been somewhat lessened, it must not be supposed that no delay would have occurred and that the services would have gone on as usual. Therefore it is a mistake to say that we should save by putting wires underground. However, I believe, though I have not verified this, that these particular wires that we are now speaking of, run along by the roads and not on the railways, and that we have no wayleaves to pay. In view of the very large expenditure involved, I think it is important to the public and the taxpayer to see if there is any other alternative. In that direction my efforts have been directed. Two proposals have been made by officers of my Department who have had experience with a view to remedying this evil. One is to make use of the trunk telephone lines for telegraph purposes on occasions when the telegraph wires are down. The routes are different to a large extent. The telephone lines can now be used for telegraphic purposes, as I explained to the deputation, by means of phantom circuits, and the same wire can be employed at one and the same time for the purposes of speech through the telephone. The same telegraphic and telephonic instruments can be used, and the same telegraphic wires for that purpose. The system is enormously extended in the United States where tens of thousands of miles are used by the phantom circuits. I saw a statement in the Aberdeen Press that this system was tried during the recent storm, and was found to be a failure. That was not so. There was no apparatus available at the time for the use of telephone wires for telegraphic purposes, and the phantom circuit expedient was not tried. The apparatus has been ordered and will be supplied to Aberdeen and Dundee. Of course, immunity from interruption cannot be guaranteed. The second proposal under consideration is the use of wireless telegraphy. I know it is said that commercial men have put forward objections to the use of wireless telegraphy in view of the ease with which messages can be tapped. These messages they say are not as secret as the ordinary telegraphic message. I think they would rather have wireless, though than leave things as they are. A wireless installation will be very much cheaper than the capital expense upon the other expedient of underground wires. This is a matter which deserves the most careful consideration The wireless telegraphic stations in these districts would, I think, be serviceable for other purposes, possibly for the Admiralty, and the suggestion is one that is receiving the immediate attention of my Department in conjunction with the Admiralty. If high-speed apparatus were introduced we should be able by means of wireless telegraphy to make good much of the deficiency which occurs when storms arise and breakdown of wires occur. I deeply regret I have not been able to meet the wishes of my hon. Friends in this matter. Various districts always press Ministers for expenditure of one kind or another. Sometimes it is for harbours. In other counties, where we spend money upon roads or bridges or railways, we find continually that groups of Members representing districts are always urging the Government of the day to spend money here and there. It is the duty of the Minister concerned to weigh all these proposals, and to see whether they are justified. There are very many districts in England which have got no underground communication. There are no underground cables in Ireland. Scotland benefits already by an underground cable system for communication, such as is secured between Edinburgh and Glasgow and the whole of the rest of the country, and in these circumstances I ask my hon. Friend to see what can be done by means of using, possibly, telephone wires and wireless telegraphy before asking me to press the Treasury for the expenditure of this very large sum.

Sir G. YOUNGER

The right hon. Gentleman always makes very clever and interesting speeches, and he read us one or two homilies which, I suppose, we are all the better for hearing. The real question is whether or not Scotland has been quite fairly treated in comparison with other districts served by underground cables. It is no use talking about gross revenue or net revenue. This is a public service which ought to be fairly and reasonably distributed over the various districts of the country, and the very fact that at the end of his speech the right hon. Gentleman said that communication was not interrupted between Edinburgh and London is a very strong argument in favour of this communication being extended to Dundee and Aberdeen. We know the great loss suffered through these interruptions. We know that storms of the blizzard sort are more frequent in the North-East of Scotland that in some of the districts of England, and I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman has made out any case at all for economising in this matter. He wants to save this expenditure of £100,000. It is not always economy to save expenditure in this matter. Of course it is quite reasonable that the right hon. Gentleman in the position in which be is should take great care of the taxpayers' money. But that must not be done by being penurious, and it is not fair or reasonable that penuriousness should be extended, as it always is, where the Treasury is concerned, to Scotland, in comparison with the generosity which is extended to other parts of the country. The right hon. Gentleman for many weeks has been lavish in his financial doles to Ireland. The Grants to Ireland at the present moment amount to £3,000,000 a year. Scotland gets £1,500,000, while she contributes an enormous balance to the Treasury, yet the moment we ask for anything we are met with a non possumus by the Treasury. It is time we should protest against that. This is another case in point, and really the time has come to say to the right hon. Gentleman that we ought to be treated with a little more generosity. There is a strong case. The right hon. Gentleman talked about using telephone wires, but they are always the first down, as they were in the storm the other day. The right hon. Gentleman talked about a phantom system, but for this purpose he would find the telephone wires were a phantom. The poles were broken and the wires were down upon the ground before the telegraph wires. As for wireless, if the right hon. Gentleman could send telegrams to Aberdeen and Dundee by a wireless system I am sure the Aberdeen and Dundee people would like to see it. They do not say the wires should be underground. They say, "Give us communication that will stand the storm." If he will do that we should be quite contented to have it. If he cannot, he ought, in honesty and fairness to Scotland, to extend the underground system to Aberdeen.

Mr. MUNRO-FERGUSON

I am really astonished, if there is so little advantage attaching to underground telegraph cables, that there has been an expenditure of £2,000,000 upon them and that the expendi- ture is still going on, an expenditure to which Scotland has contributed over £200,000. I am quite accustomed to this kind of attitude on the part of the Post Office, because, although my Constituents are not concerned in this matter—and that enables me to speak with greater freedom—it took about as much trouble to get underground cables to Edinburgh and Glasgow as it is taking now to get them further North. It is not a question merely of Aberdeen and Dundee. The whole of the great county with which I am associated, the county of Fife, lies between Edinburgh and Dundee, and there are large cities and industrial districts besides Dundee and Aberdeen and those lying further North. We are told now to look to the telephone system as an alternative to our cables. The telephone wires were about the first thing to come down, and, as to it being an intermittent matter, I have been isolated in the Highlands for eight days without the use of trains, telegraph, telephone, or any thing else. I wish the Postmaster-General knew as much about the East Coast of. Scotland as I do. He certainly would not have offered this telephone remedy. I have never heard such an absurd suggestion before from the mouth of a responsible official. There are no underground cables in Ireland, but if such industries and districts as exist on the East Coast of Scotland were in Ireland to be deprived of communication because you did not ex tend the underground system—if such industries in the centre of Ireland were cut off by snowstorms, long before now there would have been underground cables to Dublin and Belfast in connection with the sea cables. We have been put off with every kind of excuse. In England we were told the climate was worse than in Scotland, and that snow fell from East to West instead of from North to South and so we have all this extension of under ground cables in England. What is good for the English goose would not be found bad for the English gander, and the mere fact of the extension and continued extension of these underground wires is sufficient reason for extending them further North. As for the strategic question of the Fleet—

It being half an hour after conclusion of Government business, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put.

Adjourned at Twenty-four minutes after Eleven o'clock.