§ Lieut.-Colonel Gluckstein (Nottingham, East)I too desire to raise a question affecting the mining industry, but this is in relation to a different aspect of its activities, or perhaps I should say in-activities. A serious situation has arisen in the coalfields of the Notts and Derby district. This is a very rich district, possibly the richest in production in the country. I do not know whether similar difficulties have arisen in other districts—I am not informed on that particular matter—but I think it my duty to bring to the notice of the House and the Government Department concerned that in the three weeks ended firth December the following quantities of coal have been lost to war factories and domestic consumers for the reasons I shall give in a few moments—in the first of the three weeks, 19,000 tons were lost, in the second 31,000 tons, and in the third 66,000 tons making in all 116,000 tons. I am informed that this current week which finishes on Saturday will show an even worse loss of coal.
The coal has not been lost through the unwillingness of the miners to dig it. It has not been lost by reason of their absenteeism or by reason of undue sickness in the pits, but only through a lack of wagon transport to remove the coal from the pit-head. I share the position, humbly, with the Minister of Labour in that I am not an expert in these matters, but I am informed that in modern pits the coal comes to the pit-head, is screened and is put into wagons at once, and that facilities do not exist for stacking it in any quantity, so that the failure to remove the coal by wagons after it has been screened means that no more coal can be dug because you cannot get rid of it. The loss of 116,000 tons of coal at this time is serious enough, but coming at this particular moment I suggest that from the point of view of morale it is almost a disaster. After all, we know that many harsh things have been said in the past few months or years about the attitude of the mining industry and of the miners to production. The miners of the Notts and Derby district have had their share of that type of accusation. It is clear from the information at my disposal that the miners in this particular district have been brought to realise how vitally important it is that as much coal as possible 1862 should now be raised. Having come to that realisation, they find themselves refused the opportunity to work, because, as I pointed out, it is impossible to raise any more coal from these pits until what has already been dug can be carried away.
This deprivation means something more, it means a loss of wages. Apart from anything else that is bound to lead to great unrest, and I am bound to tell the Minister that the effect on local opinion has been really serious. Consumers are repeatedly exhorted to economise in fuel and to save it, and there are most admirable advertisements and broadcasts to that effect, yet they now find or think that the economies they are being asked to face are not really necessitated by any shortage of fuel but because of the inability of the Government Department concerned to make the fuel available by taking it away from the pits for distribution. That is a most unfortunate impression to create now in the minds of the consumers. On the part of the miners you get a sense of frustration and irritation, because, as I said, they are willing to go down into the pits and dig out the coal, and they find they are not allowed to do so for the reasons which I have given. They are now promised an additional supply of man-power or rather boy-power to help them not to produce coal. It could not have comer at a more unfortunate moment. It is for that reason that I felt it my duty to raise the matter in this House, not in any mischievous or fault-finding spirit, but to see whether the combined wisdom of the House and the Government Departments could not find a speedy solution.
I am quite prepared to agree that the shortage of wagons in the Notts and Derby coalfield district may be due to a partial breakdown in the transportation system and that that partial breakdown may have been aggravated by the influenza epidemic. What I want to stress to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of War Transport is that he should accord the highest wagon priority to the carriage of coal. Surely, it must rank among the very first priorities for war factories and for other purposes. If he had accorded that priority to the carriage of coal, my suggestion is that this particular crisis would not have arisen. If the operative man-power on the railways is really in 1863 short supply through illness, could not some of it be diverted to this particular, very pressing need? I want to point out, what is self-evident, that you cannot carry coal about in lorries in an economic way but that there is a great quantity of goods transported by railway which could be moved by lorry at any rate in a crisis. What I ask the Minister is, has he brought his present difficulties, for they are quite clear, to the notice of the Services—the three Services, two of which certainly have ample transport facilities available in this country? Has he brought them to the notice of the American Forces in this country, who also, if one may judge by the number of narrow shaves one has in the streets, have some supply of transport at their disposal, and how necessary it is that he should have some temporary assistance from them? There must be certain black spots where transportation difficulties are very great. Could the Service personnel at the moment available in this country be utilised for this immediate purpose? I am sure the House would support the Parliamentary Secretary in any action which he thought right to bring about that state of affairs. I am quite satisfied that with good will and co-operation this immediate problem could be solved.
But I want to ask something else about it. It is clear that there is a shortage of wagons, and that they cannot be moved about, for reasons which no doubt the Parliamentary Secretary will explain. But I am sure that he will also admit that the supply of wagons is inadequate, and that after four years of war wagons are tending to break down and fall into disrepair. Is he being provided by the Ministry of Labour with adequate labour resources so that those wagons can be kept in repair and new ones provided to meet the enormous need? Most Members will agree that transportation is the real bottleneck in the war effort, and that adequate transportation will ultimately win the war for us. Has my hon. Friend adequate reserves to keep the wagon supply going? If not, why has he not pressed very hard for it? Our air strategy has devised a method of hitting the enemy through his transportation system. Fortunately, we have not had to compete with that particular trouble, but if our wagons are breaking down because there are not sufficient hands to repair them, I hope that every 1864 possible step will be taken to remedy that as soon as possible. I recognise that the Minister lacks either good will nor determination. I hope that on this occasion he will recognise that I have spoken in a friendly and co-operative way, and that I am anxious, as we all are, to see this particular trouble remedied at the earliest possible moment.
§ Mr. Bowles (Nuneaton)Last weekend in my constituency I went to two mining villages—I will not name them—20 miles apart. I talked to a large number of miners, and at one place they said: "We have had four shifts not worked, owing to shortage of railway wagons" while at the other they said that two shifts had not been worked, for the same reason. I was surprised at that, though some of my mining friends in this House say that it is an old-standing grievance, and the public, I think, will be rather shocked. I support everything that has been said by the hon. and gallant Member for East Nottingham (Lieutenant-Colonel Gluckstein), and I hope that the Minister will have a satisfactory reply to the miners, who lose wages, to the public, who suffer from the shortage of coal, and to the boys who are being directed at the age of 18 into the pits. If this kind of stoppage, having nothing to do with the production of coal, but with its movement forward, is taking place, it seems that there is not quite so strong a case for directing boys of 18 into the pits.
§ Mr. Evelyn Walkden (Doncaster)My hon. Friends the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of War Transport and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Fuel and Power will recollect that a week ago I raised this subject, which is a burning issue in the area that I have the honour to represent. Many persons who are expert from one angle or another on this subject have given me differing kinds of advice. They have put into my mind a question which I hope the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of War Transport will be able to answer to-day, in view of the very reasonable manner in which the subject has been put forward by the hon. and gallant Member for East Nottingham (Lieutenant-Colonel Gluckstein). The issue which is being raised in my division, particularly through one of our local newspapers, is the amount of time that 1865 is now spent in repairing wagons. It has been stated quite definitely by a man who has been for many years in the wagon repair industry that we are now carrying on exactly the same kind of repair service as we did in peace-time, undertaking the same kind of renovations and painting all sorts of names on the wagons; and it is generally held that at least three days could be saved on each wagon renovated or repaired if some utility method of repair could be adopted. There is undoubtedly something in this argument. We see wagons coming out of the repair shops, and there is nothing of a utility nature about the design when they are finished: it would be a very fine job for peacetime, and it is far beyond what ought to be done in war-time. Is the Parliamentary Secretary fully satisfied with the amount of labour that is expended on these wagons? I am not concerned with whether they put three or four lbs. of extra paint on them, but I am concerned with the amount of time. Reference has been made to the number of wagons used by the American Forces in this country. I am assured that if we had a sort of get-together negotiation, we could persuade the Americans to release almost right away some 4,000 or 5,000 wagons. If we could have a quarter of those wagons in the Doncaster area it would obviate much of the trouble which is frightening coal-owners and managers to-day, and keep men at work, instead of causing them to come up the shaft earlier because of shortage of wagons.
§ Mr. A. Bevan (Ebbw Vale)We ought to give more attention to the fact that long before the war it was quite normal for what were called "stop tracks" to occur in the coalfields of Great Britain. Because of snowstorms, long nights, the failure of ships to come to the ports, and the holding-up therefore of wagons at the ports, in the winter, coal stocks were built up in the summer. One of the reasons why this stoppage of coal wagons is serious now is that we have failed to build up stocks to the extent which we did before the war. This stoppage, therefore, comes with a much-added impact on our unfortunate coal industry. I cannot refrain from turning the dagger in the wound a bit, by pointing out that one reason why we have a shortage of wagons is that we have the craziest method in the world of 1866 distributing coal. You have only to look out of a train window at the average station, to see that we have an archaic way of unloading coal by hand. The wagon is held while it is unloaded by men with shovels, a process which sometimes takes days, and then the coal is picked up again and put on to a lorry for distribution. That is what the Americans would call a one-horse way of distribution. Dozens of wagons are idle because they are being unloaded in that way. Then if you have a flu epidemic, coming on top of everything else, the men who normally do that work are not there to unload the wagons, and they are left standing, full. If we had our coal distribution system intelligently organised we could put our coal straight into hoppers, so that the wagon could be emptied at once and taken back to the pits and we could use the ordinary laws of gravity to fill the bags for the consumers. It is because we have left the distribution of coal exclusively to private enterprise that we have an enormous shortage of wagons in Great Britain. I am surprised we have not had more transport difficulties than we have had, because the strain on the railway system of Great Britain is unprecedented. But the impact of this really serious dislocation causes very special hardship, and something will have to be done to maintain the even flow of coal from the pits to the consumer if we are to avoid the worst consequences of the Government's coal policy in the last few years.
§ The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of War Transport (Mr. Noel-Baker)I am most grateful to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for East Nottingham (Lieut.-Colonel Gluckstein) for raising this question, and to him and other hon. Members for the moderate and constructive speeches they have made. I agree that the Government must do everything in their power to meet the needs of the coalmines for railway wagons and that it is disastrous that, when the miners are urged to give us every last ounce of output, they find that the coal they produce cannot be shifted from the mines. This Debate gives me an opportunity to explain the difficulties with which we are faced, and with which we shall be faced during coming months, and the special difficulties which have caused the serious situation of the last few weeks. I hope that in doing so I can remove some of the 1867 feeling of despondency and alarm which my hon. and gallant Friend has said exists among the miners. I accept my hon. and gallant Friend's statistics for the loss of output: it is not within the competence of my Department, but I understand from my colleague the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Fuel and Power that the figures are right. Last week I visited some of the open-cast workings in South Yorkshire to see the Transport arrangements which had been made, and I saw there that wagon shortage had caused difficulties and in some cases had brought the whole of the work to a stop.
If there had been no special factors in the last few weeks, the wagon position would have caused anxiety, and indeed it is bound to do so in the next few months. As the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan) has said, the railways are carrying a great and continually increasing burden. We have cut the passenger train mileage since 1939 by 30 per cent. The amount of passenger traffic has now increased by 60 per cent., and it is still going up. Trains are loaded 125 per cent. more than they were before the war. Freight traffic is increasing still more. In the higher classes of merchandise it has increased by 106 per cent. since pre-war days; and in the lower classes of merchandise and minerals, excluding coal, by 96 per cent. And ton-miles of coal, coke and other fuel are up by 24 per cent. Taking all in all, the railways are now carrying in every hour of every 24 hours about 1,000,000 ton-miles more than before the war. It is evident that we could not increase our wagons in that proportion. With all the other competing demands for war production, it is hard enough to keep the supply of wagons up to the total of before the war, to get the plant and the labour required to keep the wagons we have in adequate repair. All that we could do was, subject to these war-time limitations, to do everything possible to increase the supply of wagons, to keep them running by adequate repairs, and to ensure that the wagons we have are used as fully and as efficiently as possible, or, in other words, to try and quicken the turn round, and to cut out the days that are wasted, by inducing everybody to unload the goods when they come as quickly as they can.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale that if we 1868 could get rid of all the inadequacies of our peace-time system during the war we could make great advances, but, unfortunately, we have to work within the limits of the equipment that we have available. Within these limits, we foresaw the difficulties to which he has drawn attention. We took action. At present the pool of wagons, railway and private requisitioned wagons together, is about the same as it was before the war, perhaps a little higher. The number of wagons under or awaiting repair is a little over five per cent.—it was about 5.28 on 12th November, which is the last figure that I have. That is a good deal lower than it was in the summer, as the summer is always the peak of wagon repair. In the last eight weeks we have improved the situation by no fewer than 22,000 wagons, and the figure is better to-day by 3,000—that is the figure of wagons under repair—than it was on 1st January of this year. As my hon. and gallant Friend said, we must remember that the age of the wagons is above normal. We have not had the normal replacement we should have had in peace time. For over four years these wagons have been subjected to quite abnormal wear and tear and repair has become increasingly necessary, but increasingly difficult to carry out.
I want to assure my hon. and gallant Friend that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour has been very good to us. He has given us the same priority in regard to labour as for the Ministry of Aircraft Production. Labour is coming in, and if we get the labour and go on getting it as we hope to do, we expect to bring the figure down to four per cent. by which we should put another 16,000 wagons on the road. We have taken every measure of which we could think to improve the repair position, and we are now investigating new means of finding additional labour and equipment to help us in the task of repair.
My hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster (Mr. E. Walkden) said that he had evidence that the methods of repair were over elaborate and that, instead of adopting war-time utility standards, we were adhering to the luxury standards of the past. He raised this by question and answer and I have to-day sent him a full reply, with a long memorandum on the statements made by the expert whom he quoted from a Doncaster paper. I hope 1869 he will find that reply fully satisfying and that he will be assured that the railways are not adhering to peace-time standards, far from it. They are only doing the minimum required to make the running of the wagons safe.
We also sought to increase the total supply of wagons and have placed an order for 10,000 mineral wagons to be built, and an order for an additional 5,000 is very shortly going to be placed.
§ Mr. MolsonWhat will be the size of these wagons?
§ Mr. Noel-BakerFourteen-ton wagons, if my information is right.
§ Lieut.-Colonel GlucksteinAnd the date of delivery?
§ Mr. Noel-BakerDeliveries begin in the New Year, and the order is to be completed by the end of the year. We expect and hope for something like an average delivery of 1,500 a month. At any rate, at this time next year, if we are still at war, we shall have got a great deal of that order through.
But I do not want my hon. and gallant Friend or the House to think that wagon supply—the numbers in the pool—is the most important factor in the present situation. We want some more wagons, of course, but beyond a certain point more wagons would only cause congestion on the lines, unless other factors were correspondingly increased in a way we could not hope for—I mean, for example, train crews. More important than either repairs to wagons or new construction is the turn-round I have mentioned. We are trying to get the users of wagons to unload the wagons quickly and reduce the turn-round, and, of all the measures taken, this is by far the easiest and by far the most rewarding. At the present time the average time for a round journey is nine days. On one recent day, selected quite at random, the number of days lost by loaded wagons standing more than two days at their destination was no less than 80,000 wagon days, by not being unloaded.
§ Mr. Noel-BakerWe are doing what we can to call attention to it.
§ Mr. Noel-BakerDuring last winter, by the vigorous measures that the railways took and we took and by the propaganda we did, we cut the average turn-round by nine hours. That was the equivalent in carrying capacity of the addition of 50,000 wagons.
§ Mr. BevanMy hon. Friend has not divided these figures between the public utilities and other factors?
§ Mr. Noel-BakerNo, that is over-all.
§ Mr. Noel-BakerIn any case, our desire is to quicken the turn-round in all railway wagons in whatever use. I am certain that as far as this business of wagon capacity is concerned and our ability to meet the increasing demand, this turn-round question is the very crux of the problem.
§ Lieut.-Colonel GlucksteinHas my hon. Friend considered the application of some sanction or an increased demurrage charge? Will he consider telling all offenders that, if they persist in doing it, their priority of delivery will be placed somewhat lower?
§ Mr. Noel-BakerI will consider that proposal; I will consider any proposal that will help. We cannot always divert priorities because we want the stun from the manufacturers. We are at their mercy quite as much as they are at ours, and it is not so simple. I want to take this opportunity of expressing publicly and to everybody concerned the immense importance of this matter, and of appealing to every railway user to help us to the greatest possible extent in the next few months by quickening the turn-round. I can say with some confidence that there is no greater service that they can render to the nation at the present time than that.
It is not only by increasing wagon capacity in these various ways that we could meet the present emergency. We could also divert traffic to other means of transport. That we have done. In particular, we have carried great quantities of coal by coaster and by canal. In the first 11 months of this year, that is, up to the end of November, we carried by coaster 19,000,000 tons and by canal and inland waterway 5,000,000 tons. We could 1871 have taken more on the canals, if we had had more boats and more crews; but this is a very considerable contribution.
We have never hesitated and we shall not hesitate to call in road transport where it will be useful and where it is required. I do not myself think that road transport can ever be used on a large scale for long-distance transport for such a cargo as coal, but it can be used, as my hon. and gallant Friend suggested, for goods which will relieve the pressure on the wagons and so make more wagons available for coal. We used it, for example, in South Wales. Recently there was a very acute but, I am glad to say, temporary congestion in the ports. Under our road haulage scheme we sent down 1,000 lorries or thereabouts and we helped to clear that congestion in about eight days. A splendid job was done. My hon. and gallant Friend suggested that we might also give higher priority for wagons for coal over other kinds of goods. Coal is very important and so is food, and the transport of workers to the factories and so are raw materials for the factories. We have to try and keep the whole thing in balance. Because we happen to be making a special appeal to miners, we cannot throw everything out of gear and stop other production of things like bombing aircraft which stands so very high in priority at the present time.
My hon. and gallant Friend further suggested that there was another measure that the Government might take—that we might get the Services to give us more help than we have had. He asked whether we had brought this situation to their attention and to the attention of the American Army. In fact we have discussed it with them. They have given us generous help on many occasions and in many ways. They sent down road transport to help us in that emergency in South Wales and they have very frequently unloaded their own goods when they have been delivered from the factories to the Armed Forces, and in other ways they have done what they can. I have no doubt that when they have considered my hon. and gallant Friend's suggestions to-day they will see if there is more that they can do, and for my part I will discuss the matter with my right hon. Friends, the Secretaries of State for the Service Departments. I know that the House will realise that the Service Departments themselves are carrying 1872 very heavy burdens and that they have special duties in the next few months which it would be very difficult for them to postpone. Therefore, I do not want too much to encourage hopes from them.
In any case, none of these measures which I have described—repairs, new construction, quicker turn-round, diversion to coaster and canal, road transport or the help of the Armed Forces—could in fact have secured an adequate supply of wagons to the pits in the last few weeks. They are all important in the future and we shall do our best to push them on. But in the last few weeks there has been another factor—influenza. The greatly increased traffic on the railways is not being handled by a greatly increased staff. The railways have done everything they could to dilute their staff with boys and women and I think they have done very well, but there are limits beyond which they cannot go. In particular, they have not been able to increase the numbers of their train crews and, as in the omnibus services, it is the trained operating crews who are the bottle-neck of the services we can give the public. And I realise that as on the road, the operating crews are very near the limit of their strength. They are in their fifth black-out winter. For four years they have worked for very long hours in bad conditions. In recent weeks they have all too often met the railway man's worst enemy—fog. They have kept their services running in a magnificent way and the nation owes them a great debt for the patriotism, the patience and endurance which they have shown.
§ Lieut.-Colonel GlucksteinWhen will they be reinforced?
§ Mr. Noel-BakerI am now talking of sickness. I cannot give the House specific figures for sickness among operating train crews or the results of that sickness, but I can give them some indication. Taking the whole staff of the railways together, ten per cent. have been away from duty in recent weeks with influenza. The figure for the train crews will not be less than that, and in all human probability it is a good deal more. That means that trains in great numbers have been cancelled. On one day alone during the week before last one company—the L.M. & S.—had to cancel no less than 71 passenger trains in order to find crews for freight trains; and very often even that has not found crews for freight trains. 1873 On one section of the main line between Stratford and Whitemoor nine main line freight trains had to be cancelled on Wednesday of this week because no crews could be found. That is the real cause of the difficulty in the coal mines at the present time and I hope that the miners will understand that it is not lack of desire on our part or lack of energy or foresight. We have been working at this, but influenza has beaten us. We hope that the dislocation and loss of output which it has caused will pass as soon as the influenza epidemic ceases. I hope, therefore, that the miners will not feel that the railwaymen and railways have let them down. When the wave of sickness has passed we shall return to normal—to the normal of a fifth black-out winter of a total war, and I hope that the measures we have taken will then begin to produce real results. I have not led anybody to think that we are complacent about our task. We shall have shortages of wagons even in the coalfields, but wes have taken vigorous measures to improve the situation, and I have sober confidence that they will reasonably succeed.