§ Considered in Committee.—[Progress, 11th November.]
§ [Mr. BOWLES in the Chair]
§
Question again proposed,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to provide for the construction of roads reserved for special classes of traffic, it is expedient to authorise—
§ 2.15 p.m.
§ Mr. Peter Thorneycroft (Monmouth)I wish to make a few observations on this Resolution. I would remind the Committee that we are not concerned with the arguments adduced on Second Reading. We are not arguing the appropriateness or otherwise of having motorways, segregating traffic, road safety, and all those other matters which will be dealt with in the Committee stage. What I am concerned to discuss is the financial aspect of this matter as disclosed in the terms of the Money Resolution. If one examines those terms one finds the Money Resolution is concerned with three things. First of all, the raising of a sum of money, secondly, the payment of that sum of money into a fund called the Road Fund and finally, the payment out of that Road Fund for the purposes of the Bill.
The Committee will remember that at one time the Road Fund was a self-accounting fund; that is to say, money was raised by licences and other forms of taxation in the Fund and payments were made out for the purpose of repairing 795 roads. That happy state of affairs was, I regret to say, brought to an untimely conclusion by the intervention of my right hon. Friend the Member for Woodford (Mr. Churchill). No longer does the Road Fund act as a self-accounting fund. But it still exists, and money is still paid out of it, not only for the purposes disclosed in the Special Roads Bill, but for the whole of the road maintenance arrangements. It produces an annual report, and so forth.
I think the Committee is entitled to an explanation before it passes a Resolution which gives such very wide powers to the Minister for raising money for such a very unspecified purpose. The Financial Memorandum in paragraph 15 states:
It is not possible to frame an estimate of the total costs that will be involved if the powers sought in the Bill are granted. It is unlikely, however, that these powers will result in any such substantial increase in the total annual expenditure which would otherwise have been incurred by the Minister in respect of roads. The most important and most costly type of special roads to be provided under the Bill would be motorways, and in general these will be built where, but for the powers of this Bill, it would have been necessary under existing powers to provide an all-purpose road.That is a rather vague statement as to the kind of expenditure which the Minister of Transport envisages as likely. The only example the Minister vouchsafed us was that it cost half a million more to build a motorway than to repair the existing highway. I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary to give us a slightly better explanation before we vouchsafe him a Financial Resolution in terms as wide as this one. After all, the estimates as to the total cost vary very considerably. According to the Ministry it is a figure of £150 million.
§ Mr. ThorneycroftWell, £150,000 per mile for a thousand miles of road is £150 million, if my arithmetic is right. But the British Roads Federation, whose work in this matter obtained a well-deserved tribute from all sides of the House, estimate as much as £550 million. There is rather a gap between those figures and I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will give some indication of 796 which is right. I suggest that the right approach when we are concerned with a Money Resolution such as this is the approach one would make in the case of an industry seeking to capitalise itself.
The main point to which I want to direct the attention of the Parliamentary Secretary concerns the extraordinary method which has been adopted here. It is the more extraordinary when one considers the general policy of the Ministry of Transport upon road and rail questions. This Financial Resolution proposes the voting of money for capital development upon the roads. Personally, I welcome that. I am for every form of transport making its maximum contribution to efficient transportation inside this country. But that is not the policy of the Ministry. Their policy is to take road and rail together, to look at them as one. As I understand their policy, it is to plan the capital expenditure on both these industries so as to fit them into an integrated form of inland transport. So far, the Minister has given no answer whatever about how he reconciles this Financial Resolution for a special expenditure upon the roads with his transport policy in general. The House is entitled to an answer before it gives important powers such as those asked for now.
The methods which the Ministry have so far proposed—I am not concerned to debate their merits; I think that would be out of Order—to pursue their policy is to raise, say, the bus fares in order that people would be discouraged from travelling on the road and encouraged to travel on the rail. Suppose this Financial Resolution is passed, suppose these powers of raising money are given, and the money is passed from the Exchequer into the Road Fund. The matter will not stop there. The money will, therefore, be spent on capitalising and increasing the efficiency of road transport both of goods traffic and of passenger traffic. Obviously that will put the Government into very considerable difficulty. There will be a tendency for people to use this road transport rather than the rail transport. When the Parliamentary Secretary was pressed upon this matter his answer was quite simple. His solution was, "We will not have any buses at all on the roads, generally speaking.'
797 It will be a very expensive Friday afternoon if we vote powers to expend £150 million for a thousand miles of empty concrete with nothing running on them at all, everything being prohibited and restricted by the Minister in order that his own rail transport system may be a paying proposition. This is the most astonishing departure from anything that the Ministry of Transport have ever done. If has often been said that the Conservatives criticise planning, but if ever there was an example of lack of planning it is this one on the part of the Government. I do not believe that the Department of the Ministry of Transport which has produced this Bill has ever been in touch with the Department of the Ministry of Transport—if it exists—which is charged with the duty of providing an agreed rate structure and integrating road and rail transport. Does the Parliamentary Secretary really intend to take these powers of raising money only for him and his Department to prohibit either bus passengers or goods traffic travelling on the very roads we hope to see created? If he does not want that, how on earth, in the face of a Bill like this, does he hope to obtain the integration of transport in one form and another? I think we are entitled to an explanation.
§ 2.26 p.m.
§ Sir Arthur Salter (Oxford University)I rise to express agreement with my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (Mr. P. Thorneycroft) as to the unwisdom of introducing this Resolution in this form at this time. In doing this I say at once that I do not contest the view of the Government that, when the time comes for a substantial reconstruction of our road system, special roads or motorways should form an important feature of that reconstruction. There are, however, two very great disadvantages in introducing this proposal at this moment. The first is that obviously it cannot have any practical purpose of any importance in any near future. The second is that it asks for wide and general powers to execute a plan and a policy which, as far as we can learn, not only has not been indicated to us but does not exist. I should like to make a few comments on each of those two points.
The Minister referred to a plan for the building of roads amounting only to about a 1 per cent. addition to our exist- 798 ing trunk and classified roads to cost £150 million. As my hon. Friend has said, beyond that there is a suggestion—and it is not surprising seeing that what the Minister had mentioned was only a 1 per cent. addition—of the expenditure of a sum of something like £550 million. It is perfectly obvious that nothing of that kind can be undertaken——
The Deputy-ChairmanThat is definitely a matter which was raised, and which should only be raised, on the Second Reading. The right hon. Gentleman must confine himself to the terms of the Financial Resolution.
§ Sir A. SalterI accept your Ruling, Mr. Bowles. I was only saying that I think the introduction of this Resolution at this moment in the circumstances to which I have alluded has the great disadvantage of deceiving the public as to the vital importance of concentrating in the years immediately ahead upon the task of getting ourselves into a self-supporting position before 1952.
The Deputy-ChairmanThe right hon. Gentleman is disobeying the Chair's Ruling. Surely he understands that he must keep to the Ruling I have just given as to the terms of the Financial Resolution.
§ Sir A. SalterAm I not entitled to argue as to the wisdom of introducing the Resolution at this time in these circumstances?
The Deputy-ChairmanNo, I think not. The position is that the right hon. Gentleman possibly had his opportunity, if he were in the House on the Second Reading of the Bill to say that its introduction was ill-timed. I think I heard that said quite often by Members of the Opposition. That having been the position, and the Bill having been read a Second time, then automatically this Resolution follows and the timing of its introduction cannot be discussed by the right hon. Gentleman.
§ Sir A. SalterI will drop that point. I should like your guidance whether I am now entitled to express regret that a Resolution of this kind which asks for wide powers should be introduced without the simultaneous presentation of a plan and an indication how this money will be utilised?
The Deputy-ChairmanI am trying to be completely consistent in this matter. The House has already decided to give this Bill a Second Reading without a plan. That matter, if I remember accurately, was raised during that Debate. Therefore, the right hon. Gentleman is not in order in complaining about the introduction of the Financial Resolution now.
§ Sir A. SalterIn that case, I propose to conclude my remarks. I think my hon. Friend was allowed to express regret that there is nothing like a plan for the in tegration of transport. As I am not allowed to argue that——
The Deputy-ChairmanI listened very carefully to the speech of the hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. P. Thorneycroft). I do not think that he said that kind of thing at all. I listened very carefully because I have to be careful to see that hon. Gentlemen remain in Order on the Financial Resolution. I think that I was quite consistent in ruling the right hon. Gentleman out of Order and not ruling the hon. Gentleman out of Order.
§ Sir Patrick Hannon (Birmingham, Moseley)Further to that point of Order, is it the custom in this Committee, when a Financial Resolution is submitted, that no discussion can take place on the purpose to which the expenditure provided for in the Resolution is subsequently applied when the Bill becomes operative? Surely, there ought to be some opportunity by which the Committee can discuss the Financial Resolution and the purpose for which the money voted in it is to be applied?
The Deputy-ChairmanThe position is that that particular point might possibly be dealt with during the Committee stage of the Bill, but that it cannot be done in Committee on the Money Resolution.
§ Sir A. SalterMay I argue that the Resolution is drafted so widely that it does not indicate with any precision the kind of purpose for which the money contemplated in the Resolution will be used?
The Deputy-ChairmanI think the right hon. Gentleman will be able to do that, and also to argue in favour of the restriction of the terms of the Resolution. I think that would be in Order, and, if an amount is mentioned, an argument for the reduction of that amount.
§ Sir A. SalterI should like, then, to express regret that the Resolution has been drawn in terms so wide that it would not only permit expenditure of money of the order of magnitude which has been mentioned by the Minister, namely, about £150 million——
§ Mr. Callaghan indicated dissent.
§ Sir A. SalterI beg the hon. Gentleman's pardon, but what he did say, when the Bill was introduced, was that it was to give effect to a plan for the construction of 1,000 miles of road of this special type, which he estimated would cost £150,000 per mile, which is precisely equivalent to what I have said—that he is proposing an expenditure, or is seeking powers for the expenditure, of £150 million. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will explain why I am wrong? Is my arithmetic wrong or is my recollection of what the Minister said wrong?
My present argument is that, whatever was the intention of the Minister, the Resolution has been drawn in such wide terms that it would allow an expenditure immensely in excess of any plan which the Minister described to us on Second Reading. I think that is an extremely important thing, because a great deal of the money might now be spent outside the limits of the scheme which the Minister put before us. My protest against this kind of Resolution is that, in fact, we are giving enabling powers to the Government without having them tied or married to a policy or plan at the same time.
In view of your general Ruling, Mr. Bowles, I do not propose to develop this argument in the detail which I had otherwise intended, but I think it is extremely undesirable that we should be giving powers which can be used to promote something of which we have had no indication, even in outline and still less in detail. I say even in outline because my complaint against the drafting of the Resolution is that it does not state that the expenditure of money is limited to the kind of general policy which the Minister described.
It is quite obvious that it is of the very essence of the Government's problem in regard to transport, that they should have a real plan for integrating road and rail transport But this Resolution would enable money to be spent in 801 a way that is not only not based upon such a plan but is utterly destructive of any such plan. In those circumstances, I think that the Government, in asking for an enabling Resolution unrelated to any plan, are really asking, and not for the first time, that Parliament should abdicate its proper legislative function.
§ 2.36 p.m.
§ The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. James Callaghan)It is quite clear that I shall have to step warily in order to keep within the terms of the Financial Resolution, and I shall endeavour to do so. I ought to start by saying that this Financial Resolution follows on an enabling Bill, a Bill to empower us to do something, to enable us to bring what we propose to do before the various authorities who will carry it out, so that, in due time, the expenditure which will have to be authorised will be properly sanctioned. The Resolution enables us to do that very thing.
In case anyone may have been misled by what the right hon. Gentleman the senior Burgess for Oxford University (Sir A. Salter) said, there is nothing exceptional about the terms of this Financial Resolution, and I am advised that it is in precisely the same terms as that in connection with the Trunk Roads Act, 1946, which was passed by this House, and which, to the best of my recollection, aroused no passionate cries of dissent. I am bound to say that I think the terms in which it has been framed enable the Committee to discharge its responsibility in due course when it is asked to vote this money.
What will happen, of course, as I need hardly explain, will be that, as expenditure on these roads becomes possible, the annual Estimates of the Ministry of Transport will contain proposals for spending money of a nature and of an amount as will be consistent with the proposed programme. The Committee will then, in due course, fulfil its duty by raising on the Ministry of Transport Estimates, in connection with these particular proposals which the Minister lays before the Committee, any such questions as it might wish to ask in relation to the expenditure or the manner in which it is going to be undertaken.
802 What this Financial Resolution does is to enable us to make these plans and lay them before the House in due course, and it enables us to come before the House with our proposals on which we are to incur this expenditure. That is the whole purpose, and, to that extent, I cannot see that the Committee is being asked to commit itself to something that would be unjustifiable. Indeed, I venture to say that it is within my recollection that the Public Accounts Committee has expressed adverse comments on Departments which bring forward, year by year, proposals for expenditure of the same type without having secured legislative sanction in advance for those amounts. I am not an expert on constitutional matters, but I am almost prepared to say that that is true. All that this Resolution seeks to do is to give us power to come to the House annually and say that we propose to spend so much money in the coming year on such and such a plan for such and such roads.
That is the reason why the Financial Resolution has been widely drawn, and also why we have not put a figure into the Resolution itself. No one can say, in fact, how much money is to be expended. That will be for the House to decide year by year, and, if the House thinks that the expenditure is getting too big, it will be for the House to say so. Every year, that will provide an opportunity for keeping a check on the Government of the day on the amount that is proposed to be spent in this direction. I have scrutinised the remarks made by the hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. P. Thorneycroft) on the last occasion in order to see if it is possible to put in an estimate, and I am satisfied that, even if there were a set programme of development over a fixed period of years which we were able to state now, it would not really serve the Committee very well at this stage to insert a figure in the Resolution.
§ Colonel Dower (Penrith and Cockermouth)As a member of the Public Accounts Committee, I think I am right in saying that we should like an assurance that, when the Minister does ask for money from time to time, the real plan, not necessarily in detail, but the general principles involved in asking for the money, will be put before the House.
§ Mr. CallaghanI think the hon. Gentleman will find that in one of the Clauses of the Bill—which one it is escapes me now. There is a very detailed public procedure to be followed before such a proposal can come into effect. I think that will give hon. Members the cover they want, so that they can take care that the money that is asked for is properly spent. There will be public inquiries to make certain that what it is proposed to do and what is being done is in the public interest.
The reason why on technical grounds—on the grounds of what it is going to cost in relation to a programme—it is impossible to put in any figure is simply that no one can say what price levels and cost levels are likely to be over the next few years. We can make now a comparison between the costs of building a trunk road in 1948 and the cost of building a similar road in 1938, and it is upon that basis that the figure of £150,000 has been constructed. I doubt very much, however, whether that will help us to arrive at a reliable estimate of the total cost that may be involved on all 1,000 miles to which reference has been made. That is why I shook my head when the right hon. Gentleman mentioned the figure of £150 million, which my right hon. Friend did not mention.
The hon. Member for Monmouth asked for a conciliation between his multiplication of 1,000 miles by £150,000 and the figure which has been quoted by the British Roads Federation. I understand that that last figure includes a number of others, quite apart from the cost of the 1,000 miles of motor roads; it includes a great many other things. I imagine that is the difference, but I am quite sure that, if there is a wide disparity between their estimate and ours, that is all the more reason for my feeling that it would be wrong to put a figure into the Money Resolution—if at this stage experts cannot agree what the total cost is likely to be, and provided that hon. Members can be safeguarded, as I am saying they are safeguarded, by the fact that the Minister will be required to come to them year by year to ask for these sums as he wants them. It is, of course, possible to estimate—and my right hon. Friend did quote—the cost for particular sections of the road, but to be provided a national figure one would have had to undertake 804 the whole of the surveys for the whole of the area before coming to the Committee. That would not have been possible.
I think I get on to rather more difficult ground in trying to keep within the rules of Order and at the same time making some comments on the question of the conciliation between the railway policy and the roads policy of the British Transport Commission. However, I will endeavour to keep within your Ruling, Mr. Bowles, and at the same time to make some comments. The reason why we ask for permission to spend some money in due course for the development of roads although at the same time the railways are seeking additional traffic, is that we believe that road and rail traffic are complementary. We believe that it would be improper to develop railways by strangling the growth and proper development of road traffic.
§ Mr. P. ThorneycroftI welcome this statement by the hon. Gentleman, but does he, in this circumstance, withdraw his previous statement, that, generally speaking, he proposes to prohibit buses from going along these roads to secure that end?
§ Mr. CallaghanI understand that I should not be in Order in referring to a previous Debate, but if I may say a word on the question of buses I would say that, quite obviously, buses will not use these roads.
§ Mr. ThorneycroftWhy not?
§ Mr. CallaghanThese are to be roads to run from one large centre to another large centre, and local bus traffic, with fares of one penny or twopence, will not run along those roads.
§ Mr. ThorneycroftThere may be some misunderstanding as to terms. Obviously, these great roads, these motorways which are proposed will carry motor coach traffic, will constitute direct competition with the main line railways. Are those motor coaches to be allowed to use those roads or not?
§ Mr. CallaghanThe hon. Gentleman is putting up a case he did not make last time, and with which I did not deal last time. He was talking of buses, and now he is talking of motor coaches on long distance journeys. Clearly there is no intention to prohibit them from using 805 those roads. If there was a misunderstanding on that matter, we can clear it up straight away. Buses, I suppose, make the runabout journeys in the towns, and coaches are and always have been the rather luxurious vehicles running on long distance journeys. That sort of traffic will fall into one of these schedules and will run along these roads. As the Minister sees the position at the present time, goods vehicles, coach traffic, private motor cars and the rest will use these roads. The whole case for this Bill, as I said before, is that the roads have only outgrown their——
The Deputy-ChairmanI think that the hon. Gentleman must not repeat the argument he used on Second Reading. He is going a little too wide now, I think.
§ Mr. CallaghanThat was what I feared. I wanted to deal with this case, and I am sorry we have not had a chance to deal with it. I will keep within the rules of Order. The point I seek to make on that particular issue is simply that we need this money to make certain that the present motor industry in all its phases shall not be unduly hampered by the size of the roads and their inadequate nature.
§ Mr. ThorneycroftI am not going to invite the Parliamentary Secretary to go outside your Ruling, Mr. Bowles, but I do invite him to answer the much narrower question I asked. The particular method proposed in this Money Resolution for capitalising transport seems a very odd one, an out-of-date one, according to his own policy. He is going to pour money into the Road Fund exclusively for road development without any reference, apparently, to the British Transport Commission. It is all very well to ask hon. Members to suggest how these things are to be done from time to time, but they cannot. The original suggestions have to come from the Transport Commission under the set-up the hon. Gentleman has got, and he has made no proposals to us of how that is going to be done.
§ Mr. CallaghanI was not aware that I had asked the hon. Gentleman to make suggestions of that nature. I am aware that I did nothing of the sort. The hon. Gentleman seems to be forgetting that the British Transport Commission is to be a large-scale owner itself. It will 806 be the largest single operator of long distance goods traffic in the country in the years that lie ahead. In its particular interests it should have economic means of transport for its large fleet of vehicles running along the roads of this country. We should have had to spend a very large amount of money in any case on getting the roads of this country in order. This Money Resolution will enable us to spend that money in a much more efficient way than we could have spent it otherwise. That is why we ask the Committee for the Resolution today.
§ Question put, and agreed to.
§ Report to be reported upon on Monday next.