§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Bryan.]
§ 10.1 p.m.
§ Mr. John Baldock (Harborough)I am glad to have this opportunity to raise the subject of rural transport once again. If nothing else is achieved, it will at least give my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Mr. Nugent), the Joint Parliamentary Secretary, who has served his apprenticeship in the Ministry of Agriculture, which particularly fits him to appreciate the problem we are discussing tonight, the chance to give the House a progressive report on this subject, which we have discussed on several occasions within the last two years.
I believe that several hon. Members wish to speak on this subject, so I will make my remarks as brief as possible. There are two points which I should like to raise, one general and one particular. In general, I must say, quite truthfully, that I believe that rural transport in the 1354 areas which we have discussed is still deteriorating. Branch railway lines are still being closed and bus services are still being withdrawn.
I think hon. Members realise full well that this is a sign of increasing prosperity in the countryside. Those who follow this problem at all know that the principal reason that train and bus services are becoming uneconomic is because so many people have their own cars and method of transport, but, nevertheless, it does mean considerable hardship for those who still have not the means of getting themselves into the local town or wherever they want to go.
I should like to begin by saying that I think that the Ministry's pamphlet, the "Country Bus", was a helpful contribution. It gave a good deal of information which I am sure the great majority of the public still do not understand or appreciate, but I very much doubt whether it has been very widely read. I should like to ask whether it would be so very expensive, or whether it would impose such a tremendously heavy burden on my hon. Friend's Department or on the traffic commissioners, to send an official from the Ministry of Transport to some of the districts which are particularly badly served with transport or perhaps have none at all, or where a branch line is being closed down, or a bus service is being withdrawn.
Would it be very difficult or costly to send an official there who understands the problem and who could approach it from the helpful angle of the pamphlet, the "Country Bus", and investigate what perhaps unusual steps might be taken to meet the difficulty in a particular area?
I believe that such a service, if it could be instituted, would not be at all costly or difficult to fulfil and would be immensely appreciated. It could, no doubt, be done with the co-operation of the parish council or local authority, which could put the official in touch with those who might be able to help to have a bus or another sort of vehicle brought into use.
Many suggestions for overcoming this problem have been made. The Minister has very kindly undertaken to look at the regulations governing the certificate 1355 of fitness for certain types of vehicles. I have not yet heard to what conclusion he has come after the investigation, but I believe that there is scope for easing the regulations in this certificate of fitness so as to make them rather less burdensome on the smaller type of vehicles of, perhaps, eight or twelve seats. New materials, new alloys and lighter metals are now used in vehicle construction, and I think that the old regulations are, perhaps, somewhat unnecessarily rigid. Some vehicles which would be suitable and perfectly safe for carrying passengers into remote districts cannot at the moment qualify for a certificate of fitness. I hope that there will be some easing of the regulations.
Suggestions have been made about combining goods and passengers, a kind of successor to the old carrier with his cart and horse. It has also been suggested that, as on the Continent, we might combine parcel mail with passenger service. That is one service that might well be operated in some areas even if it were not applicable generally. I appreciate that a passenger service would not combine easily with the carrying of letter mail, but I should have thought that something could possibly be done about combining a passenger service with parcel mail.
On the question of branch lines which have been closed, or which are being kept open for goods only, many suggestions have been made in the House about the increased use of diesel rail cars. Several organisations have taken a great deal of interest in the problem and know a lot about it. They have studied the problem abroad and they would be only too pleased to give information to my hon. Friend if he would care to have it. I am glad to hear that some progress has been made with these rail cars. The results obtained from putting them into service appear to be very encouraging. I saw a figure, which I believe to be correct, concerning the Buckingham—Banbury branch line on which a single car diesel unit was put into operation. As a result, the increase in traffic was no less than 434 per cent. That is the kind of figure which justifies the pressure which some of us have been trying to exert in an attempt to have these experiments carried out.
1356 I am still not convinced that we have broken down the resistance of the railways to trying out the really light bus type of vehicle which runs on rubbertyred wheels. These vehicles are operated by one man who drives and collects the tickets. There is no station staff, only a halt. They reduce the cost of a passenger service enormously and they are running quite successfully in Germany, Ireland, and, I believe, in several other countries. I still feel that British Railways have a very closed mind about this ultra-light type of rail car. The ones which British Railways have built are excellent vehicles, solid and heavy, and will no doubt last generations. But I still think that the railways could successfully use this very light type of quite cheap vehicle on some of the lines with the lightest loads.
My second and more particular point applies not so much, perhaps, to small remote villages, although it can affect them as well, as to country towns which have not got their own local bus service. I believe that very few members of the general public, and, possibly, very few taxi and car-hire service owners, know that it is illegal for them to travel or run a taxi or car service on the same route regularly, even if there be only one passenger, unless the owner of the vehicle is the holder of a road service licence.
I completely understand the need for road service licences. I appreciate that there would be chaos in public transport if it was not regulated; there would be many services running on remunerative routes at the busy times, and there would be little or no service provided on other routes at the slack times. Some kind of organisation and control is essential, because, otherwise, a great deal of overlapping would result, and this can be done only by the issue of road service licences to those who wish to operate bus services.
My quarrel is that there is far too much fuss entailed in obtaining a road service licence if someone wishes merely to run a car or station wagon. I had two examples of this in my constituency which brought the nature of the problem very clearly to my notice. In one, several people who worked in the market town and who wanted to go home to their 1357 lunch to a village about a couple of miles away arranged for a regular service. One or two of them were women who had children coming home from school, to whom they had to give lunch; it was essential for them to go back home. For others, it was convenient for them to go home to lunch. But it is illegal, of course, for a taxi or hired car to carry those people every day from their work to their homes without the driver having a road service licence, and the service was accordingly stopped.
The other case presents the problem in the worst possible light. The parents of two children living next to each other, whose children went to the same school on the other side of the town, which involved crossing two main roads with very heavy traffic, felt, principally in the interests of road safety—in connection with which we are conducting a campaign at present—that it was inadvisable for their children to walk or bicycle to school and have to cross those two main roads. It was, moreover, a fair distance. They thought that the best plan was to arrange together for the hire of a taxi to take their children to school every day. This service ran for some time, but it was, of course, illegal as the taxi owner had not a road service licence, and it was brought to an end.
One can readily imagine the feelings of the parents of those children. It seemed to them to be the most absurd variety of "red tape" which made it illegal for them to send their children by that means, avoiding the danger of crossing the main roads. Furthermore, they were, on the face of it, fulfilling a parental obligation at no cost to the State and making no charge on the county council; they were, indeed, carrying out what one might regard as an admirable arrangement.
To be fair, it is true to say that, had the owner of the taxi applied for a road service licence to run between those two houses and the school every day, he would undoubtedly have got one. But he would have to wait until the next meeting of the traffic commissioners at the area town, in this case Nottingham, which is a considerable distance away. He would have to go to a public inquiry, sit through all those proceedings, and then, if there were no objections, he would be granted a licence.
1358 It seems to me that, although some such procedure is obviously necessary if it is proposed to run a new bus service, it is really an absurdly cumbrous procedure in order to deal with the running of a taxi to take two children from one side of a town to the other, when there is no public transport available. I ask my hon. Friend to consider whether it is possible to devise some simple means of issuing these licences for cars where there is no public transport.
The traffic commissioners must know, must have maps which show, where the public transport runs If a town has not public internal transport which will take people from one side of the town to the other, and if a taxi driver asks permission to serve regularly a route across the town, surely the licence should be given him, put into the very next post, so that he can help fill the need. It ought to be possible for action of that sort to be taken quickly and simply without all this formality. I should be glad if my hon. Friend would give that matter consideration.
I look forward with interest to hearing what progress has been made with the solution of the difficult problem of transport in rural areas. It is becoming more and more difficult to attract the right sort of labour into agriculture for the very reason that farm workers, who expect to be able to go to market towns to enjoy the same sorts of amenities as people in other industries enjoy, find it difficult, or even impossible, to obtain transport to take them to those towns. If transport in the rural areas continues to deteriorate I am afraid that that will ultimately further affect agricultural production. I know that that is a matter which will evoke a sympathetic response in the heart of my hon. Friend.
§ 10.16 p.m.
§ Mr. Ernest Popplewell (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, West)It is not my intention to intervene at length in this debate, but I would add a word in support of some of the proposals which the hon. Member for Harborough (Mr. Baldock) has put to the Joint Parliamentary Secretary, who really ought to have another look at this road transport question. Undoubtedly, a general deterioration is taking place in the transport services in many of the rural areas.
1359 Branch railway lines have been closed. They have not been closed until there has been full investigation by the transport users' consultative committees of the proposals to close them. The British Transport Commission has had to establish a case for closing them, which has been the loss involved in keeping them open. When branch lines have been closed the Commission has attempted to assist the rural areas by granting subsidies to private bus owners to provide bus services as alternative transport to the branch rail services. On numerous occasions private bus owners, small men, in many instances, have accepted such offers but, shortly after, have taken their buses out of service. We have seen what happened at Weardale, and that has been mentioned in the House before.
One cannot talk about legislation on the Motion for the Adjournment, but I hope the Joint Parliamentary Secretary will tell us tonight what he proposes to do about rural passenger services with a view to meeting the great social need for transport in the rural areas, and especially those affected by the closing of branch lines. We know from past experience that private bus undertakings will not operate unremunerative services. We have from time to time seen large bus undertakings shed the moral obligation upon them and encourage other and smaller bus proprietors to undertake the unremunerative services. They are run for a time and are then withdrawn.
It is a very serious matter and should not be dismissed with a Departmental answer. I hope the Joint Parliamentary Secretary tonight will give us an indication of what action the Ministry will take to provide these needed services. There has been much discussion about the use of diesel cars. They have not been much operated on branch lines, but they have been run on town to town services and have proved a very good investment indeed to the Commission, and attracted a good deal of additional custom.
The hon. Member for Harborough (Mr. Baldock) quoted a case where receipts had gone up 400 per cent. That is the highest figure that I had heard of, but I know of cases where the introduction of these diesel cars has increased the revenue by from 50 per cent. to 150 per cent. which is a very good increase indeed. However, the introduction of diesel 1360 passenger cars on branch lines involves a real problem to the Commission, and one which we must face.
We cannot ask the Commission to carry out this type of work unless we give something to it to reimburse it for the loss, because when passenger traffic is introduced on a line, certain standards of safety have to be observed in the upkeep of the points and the permanent way and so on. The standard of safety rightly laid down by the Ministry is so very high that a great deal of this unseen expenditure goes into the operation of branch line passenger traffic.
I do not think that the solution to the problem lies in taking measures of this kind. It lies rather in the Minister being able to indicate how he will co-ordinate the road services in these areas, perhaps by continuing to give some financial assistance. The large bus undertakings shed their obligations as quickly as they can, and the traffic commissioners can insist only that certain services shall be maintained for a period. It cannot insist that they be maintained indefinitely. However, there is a social obligation involved here and it is up to the Minister tonight to indicate his method of approach.
§ 10.22 p.m.
§ The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation (Mr. G. R. H. Nugent)I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Baldock) upon his success in raising this matter on the Adjournment.
§ Mr. Rupert Speir (Hexham)Would it not be more in order for my hon. Friend to congratulate the hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, West (Mr. Popplewell), who does not represent a rural area, on having excluded from the debate others who do represent rural areas?
§ Mr. NugentI think that I would best fill the time at my disposal by answering my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough. I assure him that his plea finds a very sympathetic spot in my heart. Although I have not replied to debates on this topic before, I listened to a great many of them when I was at the Ministry of Agriculture, and my very long association with the farming world makes me very familiar with the acute personal difficulties that people in rural areas find themselves in at present.
1361 I should be giving my hon. Friend a false impression if I left him thinking that this is a problem which can be solved easily. It cannot be, and it is a continuing problem. He asked for a record of progress in the past year. We have no precise figures because the officials in the regional traffic commissioners' offices have been completely employed in dealing with the fuel rationing in recent months and it has been impossible to correlate the figures. We think, however, that there may well have been a continuing reduction in services in rural areas, both road and rail. But I would point out that bus services cannot be withdrawn even by the big companies without the agreement of the traffic commissioner. If he thinks that they can bear additional unremunerative services he is very stiff with them. Something like 40 per cent. to 50 per cent. of these rural services are unremunerative, but the commissioner judges each on its merits and requires full costings before he agrees to a withdrawal.
§ Mr. NugentI assure the House that neither large nor small bus companies are allowed to withdraw services unless the traffic commissioners are satisfied that there is a case for doing so.
§ Mr. Popplewell rose—
§ Mr. NugentI am sure the hon. Gentleman will understand that I cannot give way again. In the few minutes that remain I want to reply to the general debate and to the points raised by my hon. Friend.
I want to make that last point clearly and to have it on the record. The traffic commissioners do their utmost to keep the services going, but they have to have regard to the fact that if they place unreasonable burdens on bus companies, large or small, they endanger the whole structure.
I will deal at once with my hon. Friend's complaint about his constituents who made individual arrangements to help themselves out of their transport problems. I will outline the position for the information of my hon. Friend. The 1930 Road Traffic Act, as amended by the 1956 Act, requires that a motor 1362 vehicle carrying passengers shall have a road service licence if it is used by people who pay separate fares—that is, is a shared service as in the case mentioned—and is used for a regular journey, even if there are less than eight passengers. If the vehicle is adapted for more than eight passengers, a certificate of fitness is needed; if for less, no certificate is needed. To get a road service licence, an operator must apply to the traffic commissioners; their application must be published and an opportunity given far objections to be expressed.
My hon. Friend asked why all this is necessary. I would refer to his comments about the general problem of rural transport. As he rightly says, with the ever-increasing number of private vehicles there is inevitably less and less passenger traffic for public transport, both road and rail, especially in rural areas. This problem has inevitably intensified during the last five or ten years.
As I have said, road operators must apply to the traffic commissioners before closing down a service as well as before opening up a new one. In deciding whether to agree to an application to withdraw a service, the traffic commissioners have regard, among other things, to the amount of unremunerative services which the applicant transport undertaker is already carrying. If the applicant is already carrying a good deal, the Traffic Commissioners must take care not to weigh it down to a point where it is handicapped out of business.
In my hon. Friend's area, one of the bus companies, the United Counties Company, already has as much as 60–65 per cent. of its services unremunerative, and it is clear that it is very near the danger line. What is also clear is that any further deterioration in the traffics will inevitably cause those services to be considerably restricted.
If the kind of informal service described by my hon. Friend, though small in itself, were allowed to proceed without check, it would inevitably cream off some of the traffic and so gravely prejudice regular services to the detriment of all in the rural areas. Hence the need for the law as it now is, and the procedure as described. Even if the service is tiny, publication is needed, and that gives an opportunity for objection 1363 by regular undertakers if they feel that they are affected.
It is probable that in such an instance as this there would be no objection by existing undertakings, but if there is an objection the traffic commissioner will always treat the application, as all applications, sympathetically and with understanding. If the application is not granted, there is provision for appeal to the Minister if the applicant is dissatisfied.
I agree that it seems an elaborate procedure, but I ask my hon. Friend to recognise the absolute necessity to protect the existing services from erosion, from a creaming of their traffic, which would make more and more of their services unremunerative and, possibly, finally, put them in danger of destruction altogether.
It is for that reason, in the general interests of his constituents in rural areas, that this procedure is put there. I assure him that it is operated in the most sympathetic and understanding way possible and is certainly not intended as an additional piece of bureaucracy. I regret that in the remaining seconds I am not able 1364 to reply to my hon. Frend's other points, but I will gladly do so in a letter to him as soon as I can.
§ 10.30 p.m.
§ Mr. Rupert Speir (Hexham)Will not my hon. Friend consider whether the Post Office could not help in this matter? Is it not a fact that in continental countries post offices are allowed themselves to run buses, which carry mails, and that they also give contracts to local bus operators? Could not action of that kind be taken in this country? I understand that it is done in Scotland. There might be much more co-ordination and amalgamation of services in this country, if only the Post Office and the Ministry of Transport would get together and consider this problem. Can my hon. Friend give an undertaking on that matter?
§ The Question having been proposed after 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 twenty-nine minutes to Eleven o'clock.