HC Deb 25 January 1949 vol 460 cc878-92

9.50 p.m.

Mr. William Shepherd (Bucklow)

I want to direct the attention of the House to a purely domestic matter—the question of railway fares which I raised in the House a short time ago when I received from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport a very extraordinary answer. On that occasion I sought to press three points; first, that railway traffic in this country was falling at an alarming rate; secondly, the cost of fares was not 55 per cent. above the 1948 figure as the Government so loudly proclaimed, but something substantially higher; and, thirdly, that the cheap fare facilities now being offered by the railways were inadequate in view of the number which should be provided.

In reply to those three points the Parliamentary Secretary made many very vigorous assertions—more vigorous, in fact, than accurate. In the first place, he went into a long dissertation upon the improved punctuality, and then he sought to explain how railway fares were increased, which, of course, had nothing to do with the case at all. What we on this side of the House are concerned to have is an assurance that coach and bus fares will not be increased. If tonight the Parliamentary Secretary can give such an assurance to this House and to the country, we shall be very grateful indeed. I await with pleasurable anticipation his announcement that under no circumstances would his right hon. Friend sanction any increase in coach or bus fares in this country.

The remarkable thing was that the statements made by the Parliamentary Secretary were incredibly inaccurate, even for a Minister in the present Socialist Administration. It was made worse by the fact that he accused me of being inaccurate, if not misleading. I want to draw attention to some of the alarming inaccuracies in the reply of the hon. Gentleman. When I was making the case about the percentage cost of fares now compared with 1938, I put forward the proposition that the fares were not 55 per cent. higher on an average because the cost of cheap fares today is much more than 55 per cent. greater than in 1938. I further pointed out that the ratio of cheap fares today in relation to the sum total of fares paid is much lower than it was in 1938.

In pursuit of that object, I gave one or two examples. I said that the cheap fare between Manchester and London was 37s. 6d. today, but the hon. Gentleman said he had a newspaper or some publication which showed that it was 23s. He argued that, therefore, I must be wrong. I did not expect the hon. Gentleman to be so emphatic, but I do expect a Minister, when he comes to this House, at least to quote figures which he can substantiate. I have here a pamphlet published by British Railways, reference No. E.22/R, with details of day excursions between Euston and Manchester and vice versa. It says the fare to Manchester is 37s. 6d., which is precisely what I said. What has the hon. Gentleman done? He is Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport, and yet he has confused a half-day excursion fare with a day excursion fare. That does not help his argument, because although the half-day excursion—the few that have been run since the war—costs 23s., the fare before the war was 10s. 6d. In other words, the cost today is well over 100 per cent. above what it was in 1938. The hon. Gentleman made the same gross error about Bournemouth. He said that the Bournemouth fare was 12s. and that that was cheaper than going by coach, but he ignored the fact that before the war the cheap day fare to Bournemouth was in the neighbourhood of 6s. or 6s. 6d. He ought to have had some regard for accuracy.

Even worse was to come, because he said he was surprised—he certainly had some reason to be surprised—on looking at the present fares to find that they were only 10 per cent. higher than in 1928. I do not know where the hon. Gentleman got those figures. Probably it was from the same publication which misled him about the cheap fares. The third class standard fare in 1928 was about lid. a mile, and today it is 2¼d. I am no good at arithmetic, but that seems to be something like 60 per cent. up. The hon. Gentleman was guilty of a gross error in stating that the fares had only risen by 10 per cent. I want to get home to the hon. Gentleman the fact that it is no good for the Government to repeat that the fares have only gone up by 55 per cent. That is obviously not true, and it cannot be supported by any argument.

I want the Minister to realise that the percentage of cheap fares offered at present is abysmally low. Sir Cyril Hurcomb was good enough to write to me at my request—one has to write to these organisations to get information nowadays—and he advised me that in 1948 approximately 10 per cent. of the passengers travelled on cheap fares and that in 1938 about 50 per cent. of the passengers travelled on cheap fares. If we take into account the fact that there were roughly five times more people travelling on cheap fares in 1938——

Mr. Ernest Davies (Enfield)

Has the hon. Gentleman the figures of the percentage of people who travelled by excursions in the periods which he is comparing, in other words the percentage of people out of the total passenger journeys per year who go by excursions and those who go by ordinary fares? If he takes the amount by which they correspond proportionately to the number of journeys, he will find that the figure is very insignificant.

Mr. Shepherd

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is entirely wrong. The figures which Sir Cyril Hurcomb sent me showed that the percentage of journeys on cheap fares in 1947 represented five per cent. of the total fares. The figures were not complete because the information was not available, but in 1948 they were over double—probably 12 per cent. There is no doubt about these figures. If the hon. Gentleman travels by train he must notice how scarce facilities are in comparison with 1938.

It being Ten o'Clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Snow.]

Mr. Shepherd

Cheap fares are far too few. The falling off in traffic at present is a most serious affair. I want to emphasise to hon. Members how serious it really is. The figures for 1947 were roughly 100 million less passengers than in 1938, and the figure for 1948 looks like being 200 million less than in 1938. That is a serious falling off, and it is even more serious when one realises that in 1947 and 1948 about 50 million journeys were undertaken by the War Department, which swells the figures, abnormally.

When one realises that, in the main, there is no petrol for holiday journeys, that hundreds of thousands of people who previously travelled by road in their own cars, now have to travel by train, one realises how tremendous has been the loss to the railway companies. Take, for instance, the question of holidays with pay. Ought that not to have swollen considerably the amount of traffic on the railways? And in a period of full employment is it not natural to expect that there would have been a considerable expansion of the demands on the railways as there has been for almost every other service in the country? Without having any actual figures to guide me, I should say that the railways today are losing something like 500 million passengers a year compared with what they ought to be getting, if they were getting the same proportion of the traffic as that which was available in 1938.

Therefore, something has to be done to encourage the number of passengers on the railways. It is no good the Parliamentary Secretary or hon. Gentlemen behind him merely saying that we have not enough locomotives. I quote Sir Eustace Missenden, who is an excellent and able man. He said in the "Railway Gazette" of 5th November, 1948: Today there are sufficient locomotives and the condition of the fleet is better than before the war. That disposes of the argument that we are short of locomotives.

We have the further argument that we are short of carriages, and that argument, of course, has more weight, but it still remains the fact that carriages are running on the railways day in and day out, day and night, poorly filled, and the first job of the Railway Executive is not to complain that they cannot supply the carriages but to fill the carriages they have. That is what they are not doing at present. This is one of the inevitable defects of State monopoly. In support of that statement I quote the extraordinary reply which the hon. Gentleman gave me when this subject was last debated. He said that it was the desire of the Railway Executive to reduce fares but that they wanted to do it if they could be reasonably certain of securing additional revenue from reduced fares.

This is the dilemma into which everybody is thrown through a State monopoly. If the railways can be reasonably certain that they will recover more than they will lose in the way of cheap day fares, they will go for it. But in the old days of private enterprise the railway companies had to take a chance, and what I can now see happening here is a determination on the part of the Minister and the railways to play for safety. They are saying to themselves, "We might fill up these empty carriages but we might not, and therefore we shall not take a chance. We shall wait until coach and bus fares are increased and then more people will utilise our service." That is the inevitable dilemma attached to State monopoly, and I do not blame the Minister of Transport because he is part of a system which is a bad one. However, the people of this country have a right to make full use of the railways, and they have a right to take advantage of the services that are available.

While fares are so high, some attempt ought to be made to fill those empty carriages. They can only be filled by making rail travel cheaper than it is at present. People will not pay twice the price for the privilege of travelling on British Railways in preference to using a coach or a 'bus. The sooner the railway Executive and the Ministers concerned realise this, the sooner we shall get these empty carriages filled. The Railway Executive is punishing itself and the community as long as it withholds the cheap fare facilities which would fill them.

I raised this issue because I thought it was of some importance. I thought particularly that it was my duty to raise it in view of misstatements which the hon. Gentleman, perhaps quite unwittingly, made on the last occasion. I agree that then I was in a somewhat boisterous mood myself and that I may have goaded the hon. Gentleman into putting forward a defence stronger, perhaps, than the case merited. To that extent I accept whatever share of responsibility is mine.

Leaving aside all party questions, here we have the case of a national asset which is not being utilised to the full, a case where the railway system of this country is losing, perhaps, 500 million passengers a year which it ought to have. The time has come when we should treat this matter seriously. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will be able to tell us tonight that he will see that a really substantial effort is made by the Railway Executive to go after this missing traffic. I believe that by cheap fares the railway companies got the business in the 1930's in very difficult circumstances, and that the railways can get it again, if they will give the public the full advantage of cheap facilities.

10.7 p.m.

Squadron-Leader Kinghorn (Great Yarmouth)

Far be it from me to join in this private little fight between the hon. Member for Bucklow (Mr. W. Shepherd) and the Parliamentary Secretary, but whilst they are recovering their breath I would like to raise a few points. Under the present system there are certain aspects affecting our constituencies which we cannot bring up through the normal method of Question and Answer. Hon. Members in all quarters appreciate any efforts being made by which we can persuade the powers that be to give us more efficient and cheaper services for the community, especially for big industrial districts and the areas to which the industrial workers have to go for their holidays in the summer months.

The Railway Executive will be receiving from my constituency in the very near future a Petition in these terms: In view of the financial hardship suffered by many holiday makers in our district through the high level of railway fares to the seaside we pray note the word "pray"—— you to give the most urgent consideration to the East Anglian Petition for a reduction of long distance travel rates on your Railways"—— I do not know why they say "your railways" instead of "our railways"—— in the summer-time. We especially urge the consideration of cheaper travel for families of three or more. To constituencies like mine this matter is of paramount importance. If we cannot get for our people cheap travel from the heavily populated districts to the holiday resorts in the summer time, our major industry will suffer hardship. I am not saying it has already suffered hardship, because I reiterate what I said in the last Debate of this kind, that the railways have done a very good job since the end of the war. We on this side who put forward nationalisation have nothing to be afraid of in view of the progress made since the passage of the Act. Indeed, the hon. Member for Bucklow has given us this commendation from the "Railway Gazette," that we now have sufficient locomotives and that their condition is as good as before the war. [An HON. MEMBER: "Better."] Yes, better. That is a very good testimonial from Sir Eustace Missenden and we are very glad to have it.

I hope that British Railways will take notice of a Petition of this kind, because it is essential that our people who want to get across that huge bulge of East Anglia when going to the Midlands and to the North should be able to do so fairly cheaply and reasonably, especially in these days when poorer families have to count their earnings and outgoings much more carefully, perhaps, than they did when we were in a better economic position.

My second point, of which I hope British Railways will take notice, is that at this interval after the end of the war people may now catch trains like the "Bournemouth Belle" andthe "Brighton Belle" and that seaside resorts of that kind are provided with some very fast trains. Of the premier resorts, Yarmouth is one which has not that kind of "Belle" train, but our people would like to have something of the kind. They jib at the time it takes to get to Yarmouth from London. Years ago there were trains which did the distance more quickly. I suggest that the British Railway Executive might consider for this summer; when we are celebrating the centenary of the book "David Copperfield" in my constituency, the introduction of a good passenger train which would bring people from London to Yarmouth in about two hours. Let us also have nonstop trains from York, Manchester, Leeds and Nottingham terminating at Yarmouth.

I was told in my constituency that the Eastern Region of British Railways published a plan of campaign a few weeks ago. They were going to spend some thousands of pounds on refreshment facilities. In the very famous seaside resort of Yarmouth there are three stations. One, the Beach Station, is served by a single line from the Midlands. That is the only one with any refreshment facilities whatever and even there it is a relic of the old days, a small room run by a private firm. The other two stations, Vauxhall, serving London and the North and South Town, serving London and the South, have no restaurant facilities whatever. I would like the Parliamentary Secretary to make a note of this and see that the Executive reconsider their decisions about spending the money. I do not want them to cut off the money they have earmarked for other towns in the region, but I think that priority should be given to Yarmouth, especially as it is a seaside resort and the only facility at the main station from the North is a wheeled coffeestall which is overwhelmed in the summer.

10.12 p.m.

Mr. Percy Morris (Swansea, West)

Like my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Squadron-Leader Kinghorn), I propose to leave the Parliamentary Secretary to settle the disparity in figures with the hon. Member for Bucklow (Mr. Shepherd) who initiated the Debate. It is fairly obvious that they are not comparing like with like. The main complaint, as I understand it, is against the policy of nationalisation and is to the effect that all the evils arising in the present situation are due to that policy being adopted. The chairman of the Railway Executive has been quoted during the last 10 minutes. If he can, I should like my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to quote any hon. Member opposite who would declare now that the policy of nationalisation ought to be abandoned and that we should go back to private ownership in respect of transport.

I re-read the Debate initiated by the hon. Member for Bucklow on 16th December and I thought that perhaps tonight he would bring forward figures to disprove something which the Parliamen- tary Secretary said on that occasion. I felt sure that he would make an attempt to discredit what I regard as the bright features of that Debate. For instance, the Parliamentary Secretary forecast that by the end of the year 7,000 special trains would have been run, three million passengers would have derived benefit and an additional £1 million would have been received. That is an indication of the progress made in the last 12 months and there is abundant evidence that progress has continued. That indicates that the zeal of the Railway Executive will bring to the British public a far more efficient service than ever we had before.

What is the magic about the year 1938? I suppose that year was quoted because it was the year before the war. If we are going to make anything like a reasonable comparison, why not compare the year 1948, three years after the war, with the year 1921?

Mr. Shepherd

1938 was a bad year for the purpose of my case, because the war scare spoiled the holiday traffic. I could have quoted a year just before, which would have been much better.

Mr. Morris

I can hardly believe that the hon. Gentleman is as ingenuous as that, and in view of what he has said about the Parliamentary Secretary, I do not think he would have given him that golden opportunity. I should like him to compare the year 1921 and the progress made from 1918 to 1921 and from 1945 to 1948. It would be very much against his case, and it would be ample proof of the enterprise of the Railway Executive during the past 12 months. But I do not wish to infringe upon the time of the Parliamentary Secretary. I submit that the case against the Ministry and the Railway Executive has not been proved. If the complaint was about dear fares, they are higher than we would wish them to be; but we are never going back to the cheap fares of the old days at the expense of the employees in the transport industry. The day has come when transport must be paid for on an economic basis, but I still believe that, with proper organisation and co-ordination, we could have efficient service at a reduced cost, given reasonable time in which to adopt these improvements.

10.17 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. James Callaghan)

I apologise to my hon. Friends who wish to join in this Debate, but time is getting on. This is in the nature of Act 1, Scene 2. The cast is .the same, there are one or two new characters who have entered, but the plot has not altered. The villain of the piece is the nationalised railways and the dashing young knight who comes to the rescue sits opposite in the person of the hon. Member for Bucklow (Mr. Shepherd). Broadly speaking we do not seem to have advanced much further.

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has returned to the charge this time because he did not like to lie under the stigma of a 1,500 per cent. error in the loss the railways made in 1947, or the 700 per cent. error in the number of special trains that were run during the last year, and therefore he thought this was the opportunity to recover a little of the lost ground. I am bound to say that I do not propose to remind him of those errors of last time. I shall let the record speak for itself, but I must comment on the errors with which he charged me.

His speech this evening has been much more reasonable than it was last time. Whether that is because I had the opportunity of reading the speech he had just made in one of the technical journals last week before it was made, and with which I acquainted him, I do not know. It is always an advantage to know beforehand the sort of arguments that are to be deployed against one. I have been told that I made a gross error or misled the House. I am not sure which—perhaps both—in connection with cheap fare facilities. Two of the illustrations I gave, Manchester and Bournemouth, are quoted against me. The hon. Gentleman happened, in the course of his comments last time, to read out the excursion fare from Manchester to London. I happened to be perusing one of our London evening papers at the same moment and I saw an advertisement in it——

Mr. Shepherd

The hon. Gentleman should not have been doing that.

Mr. Callaghan

The speech of the hon. Member had provoked me into doing something like that. I happened to see an advertisement of British Railways and all I did was to read out of the paper some of the fares printed there, of excursions which were being run on the following Sunday. It was quite clear to the House and the hon. Member has not challenged the validity of the fares I read from the paper. What the hon. Member says is, "Yes, but there are various different types of excursion and we were not talking about the same types." That may well be true. In point of fact what I read was exactly a reproduction of the advertisement that appeared in the newspaper for the special excursion facilities.

Now he charges me with misleading the House by saying that fares were only 10 per cent. above the 1928 level. It is important that we should get this right, because the hon. Gentleman says that I am wrong. In column 1524 of HANSARD I was quoting the main line fares. I said that they are all 55 per cent. up on prewar. I turned up the fares for 1928. This is really most significant. I had no knowledge about this until I looked up the figures. In point of fact, the fares we paid in 1948 were only about 10 per cent. up on the 1928 level. I am referring to the monthly return tickets which I had been talking about. That is accurate. The hon. Gentleman, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Swansea (Mr. P. Morris) said, is not talking about the same thing at all. The normal return fare in 1928 was double the ordinary single fare, whereas today the normal return fare is single fare plus one-third. That is the difference.

Because I knew the point the hon. Gentleman intended to make, I prepared some figures. In 1928 they were three-monthly return fares: today they are monthly.

Mr. Shepherd

Would the hon. Gentleman quote the standard fares? That is what matters.

Mr. Callaghan

I will come to that in a moment. I am quoting the normal fare. That is the comparison I made as reported in column 1524. The fare for the journey between London and Edinburgh (Waverley) was 99s. in 1928. That is the three-monthly return fare. The monthly return fare today is 107s. 6d. The fare from London to Norwich (Thorpe) was 29s. in 1928; it is 31s. 9d. today. From London to Brighton the fare was 12s. 10d. in 1928; it is 14s. 3d. today. From London to Birmingham the fare was 27s. 10d. in 1928; it is 30s. 6d. today. I have a whole list here. All the fares are roughly 10 per cent. higher today on the comparison that I was making on the previous occasion than they were in 1928.

The hon. Gentleman says, "But what about the standard fare, the ordinary fare?" Of course, he is quite right. There is indeed a very great difference. The point here which it is important should be understood is that there is a very small percentage indeed of people who travel by what the hon. Gentleman calls the ordinary fare. In October, 1948, which is a specimen month, 9.32 per cent. of passengers who travelled, exclusive of season ticket holders who ought to be excluded for this purpose, paid the standard fare. If season tickets were included it would make the percentage lower. Of the total, 31.13 per cent. paid the monthly return fare. That is, of course, the ticket that people normally get. It must be within the experience of all of us that people normally buy that ticket if they cannot get an excursion ticket. Nine per cent. of passengers who travelled, exclusive of season ticket holders, took the ordinary fare.

Mr. John R. Thomas (Dover)

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the remuneration of travel agents paid by the railways is no less than five per cent.? Would he justify that despite the increase in rates?

Mr. Callaghan

I prefer not to be led down that track. I do not want to take on too many people at one time. I should like to stick to this point on which I have been challenged. What the Government have consistently said, and what was said in the Minister's statement on 5th August, 1947, is that all railway charges will be raised to 55 per cent. above pre-war with effect 1st October next. That is the point that the hon. Gentleman has now twice tried to challenge and twice failed to substantiate. The comparison on which this is based—these words—is exactly the same as the wording used in a similar announcement during the days of the Coalition Government during the war, and the basis is precisely the same. We were quite right when we took the view that all railway charges will be raised to 55 per cent. above pre-war with effect from the 1st October, 1947, in the conventional terms in which that is used.

I want to deal briefly with one or two of the longer term considerations in the short time that remains, but I ought to say a word or two about cheap fare facilities. The Railway Executive have introduced large numbers of cheap fare facilities during the last 12 months. They did not have a straight run before them, because there were restrictions on coal and the railways were kept short of coal. It was not until last Spring that they could really start to introduce these facilities with any degree of assurance that they would not be interrupted. The point I want to make here is that, as these cheap fare facilities and excursions which have been very widely introduced become better known, and as we get a full year's working, I am confident that the proportion of passengers taking advantage of them will be very much higher.

Perhaps I might quote the figures. The proportion of passengers in 1947 who used cheap fare facilities was 5 per cent. of the total passenger traffic. In the first quarter of last year, it was 5.2 per cent., which was about the time of the release of the railways, in the second quarter it went up to 8.6 per cent. and in the third quarter to 17.8 per cent. For the year as a whole, as the hon. Gentleman said, it will be near enough the 10 per per cent., perhaps a little more, but it is an ascending curve and it is the commercial expectation of the Railway Executive that this percentage of passengers will rise more greatly as the facilities become better known and as more people understand that they exist and our broadcast advertisements become more widely understood. I do not believe they will ever return to the 50 per cent. of before the war, for technical reasons concerned with the abolition of the week-end ticket and its replacement by the monthly return. I think it is likely that they will rise to something higher than the figure at which they have stood up to the moment.

The hon. Gentleman asked me for an assurance that bus and coach fares will not be increased. The procedure has been quite clearly enunciated before. It is the duty of the British Transport Commission, laid upon it by Act of Parliament, to review the millions of fares and rates that are charged at the present time and to take them before the Transport Tribunal where they may be fully argued out. The case for the opposition will be presented if the charges are rather unpalatable, and there will be the opportunity of arguing the case before the tribunal. There is no suggestion that anybody is going to depart from that procedure, which is laid down by the Act; it will be followed and the full case will be presented. On a previous occasion, it took seven years to argue it out, but I hope it will not take so long now.

I shall conclude by reading some excellent extracts from a lecture given recently by Mr. Roland Bird, deputy editor of "The Economist," because they are very wise: The fruits of co-ordination and unification are therefore bound to mature slowly. It would be absurd to suppose that the Commission could devise charges schemes within two years of the passing of the Act, or perhaps within twice that period, which would begin to reflect the general directions in which costs are being or promised to be reduced. I leave out a few sentences, and again quote: A system of charges for transport as a whole, if it is to make economic sense, must await the results of the long-term attack upon costs. There is another paragraph which I regret I cannot quote.

The Question having been proposed at Ten o'Clock, and the Debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at Half-past Ten o'Clock.