CHARTERED AND OTHER BODIES (TEMPORARY PROVISIONS) ACT, 1939. (Hansard, 1 August 1940)

§ Mr. Ammon (Camberwell, North)

I have one or two questions to ask concerning this Order which, I understand, must be either accepted or rejected as a whole and cannot be amended. I understand that under the major Act there is a provision that there should be 12 chairmen in the various areas defined by the Traffic Commissioners and two other commissioners who are unpaid and who are selected from nominees of 1,300 local authorities. Does the change proposed by the Order mean that it is intended to sack about 1,300, or 2,600 persons, or to sack about 24? In any case, the Order does not seem to make very much difference as regards the dictatorial power which is being sought for those who are left. I understand that as regards the people nominated for these unpaid positions, the local authorities nominate them but have no power of selection, that they were entirely under the dictation of the chairman himself, and that what is now proposed is to do openly what has been happening in actual practice, namely, that although persons have been 1512 nominated they never had any powers, or have never been called upon to operate them, but have simply been selected by the chairman. Now the elected or free representatives will no longer be on the Traffic Commission, which will be wholly in the hands of a paid official. I want to be certain whether that is the position to which we are asked to agree.

§ The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. Montague)

I think the best thing I can do in answering the points which have been raised by the hon. Member for North Camberwell (Mr. Ammon) is to outline the purposes of this proposed Order. Under the Chartered and Other Bodies (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1939, His Majesty is by Order-in-Council enabled to reduce the number of persons required to perform any of the functions of a corporation or of a body specified in the Schedule to that Act, and it is also possible by Order to add to the names in the Schedule that of any other corporation or body if a Resolution shall have been passed by both Houses of Parliament approving a draft Order to that effect. This draft Order proposes to schedule the Traffic Commissioners in addition to those bodies already scheduled in the Act of 1939. The Road Traffic Act, 1930, constituted 12 traffic areas with bodies of Traffic Commissioners each consisting of a paid chairman appointed by the Minister and two unpaid commissioners appointed by the Minister from panels of persons nominated by some 1,300 local authorities. Every one of those authorities is required by the Act to make a nomination each year. The most important function of the commissioners in peace-time is to determine applications for road service licences, but the Defence Regulations provide a modified procedure under which the Minister's representative, who is in practice the Chairman of Traffic Commissioners, may grant a road service permit. That rules out the ordinary procedure, questions of appeal machinery, authorisation, and a number of other provisions, with the result that since the outbreak of the war there has been no occasion to call upon the services of the unpaid Traffic Commissioners. The formal procedure of consulting the 1,300 local authorities and selecting additional commissioners from among their nominees cannot be justified in war-time, we hold.

1513 As a matter of fact, this Order, if it is passed, practically regulates what is happening in practice to-day. The Local Authorities' Associations have been consulted and are in complete agreement, and there has been no objection from any local authority.