§ 35. Mr. MACLEANasked the Minister of Transport if there has been or is contemplated a consultation on the regrouping of railways, with a view to placing the railways in Scotland in a separate group?
§ Colonel ASHLEYI have no knowledge of any such consultation, and, as I have previously stated, I should deprecate any disturbance at present in the general scheme for the grouping of the railways that was settled by Parliament so recently as 1921.
§ Mr. J. H. THOMASIs the right hon. Gentleman aware that the original grouping of the railways was to leave Scotland as a unit in itself, and that it was on the application of the Scottish companies against that danger that the change was made?
§ Mr. MACLEANI would remind the right hon. Member for Derby (Mr. J. H. Thomas) that I am not the Minister in question. Is it not the case that, while the railways themselves asked to be included in the English railway system, the people of Scotland wanted the railways for Scotland, and that the rates 960 chargeable to the passengers in Scotland to-day remain at the highest peak during the War?