HC Deb 08 July 1958 vol 591 cc355-66

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

10.57 p.m.

Major Sir Frank Markham (Buckingham)

I wish to call attention to the building, repair and maintenance programme of British Railways. It is common knowledge in this House that British Railways is one of the greatest employers of labour in the country, with its 800,000 men in various grades and categories. What is not so much appreciated is that British Railways is responsible for the life and death of several towns that were called into existence by the railways in the construction days of last century.

Today there are railways centres like Wolverton that are almost solely devoted to railway work, where there is no alternative employment for miles around and, in consequence, the responsibilities of the British Transport Commission to places like Wolverton and others are those not merely of seeing that work is done and of arranging for programmes, but of practically the entire future of an area which includes Wolverton and Stony Stratford and probably a dozen villages around.

Lately, there have been a great number of rumours in Wolverton and other railways centres about the future of the British Railways construction programme. All of those rumours are pessimistic. It is my hope that some of them will be dissipated by the Minister's statement tonight.

As a result of some early rumours, I raised the question in the House on 22nd April last, and was very ably supported with splendid background information by the hon. Member for Swindon (Mr. F. Noel-Baker) who is here tonight. The hon. Member again referred to some of these rumours and alarms when he moved a Private Member's Motion on 9th May. I may add that no worthwhile information was gained as a result. In addition to that, our local Press, that is to say, the Wolverton Express and the Bucks Standard have both been in constant touch with the public relations officer at Euston, trying to get information about the British Railways programme for Wolverton. Time after time the answer has come back, "No information is available."

It is this attitude that is provoking this anxiety, and I feel that the British Transport Commission ought to put an end to these rumours and alarms at once by a statement as to its 1959 programme. On 5th June, I wrote to Sir Brian Robertson, asking if he would give me this information, and I will quote from his letter in reply, dated 25th June. He wrote: We appreciate the anxiety of men at Wolverton and other workshops in regard to the amount of work to be undertaken in the future, particularly in view of the necessity to reduce maintenance expenditure. All railway and contractors' workshops are bound to be affected in some degree, but I can certainly say quite definitely, that Wolverton are at least getting their fair share of the available work. Our 1959 building programme is still under consideration". There is not much information there, and what there is is contradictory. In one sentence he speaks about the necessity to reduce maintenance expenditure". and then the letter goes on to say that Wolverton are at least getting their fair share of the available work. The available work is in the region of £90 million worth of orders for locomotives and carriage and wagon stock every year. It is my contention that the British Transport Commission really must know—if it does not know, it certainly ought to know—what its building programme will be, roughly, for five or ten years ahead. In the building programme there should be reasonable priority given to the Commission's own workshops, because these workshops are prohibited by law from seeking any work outside that of their masters and owners, the nationalised British Transport Commission. They may not sell a single nut or bolt; they may not repair a wagon of any kind for anyone but their own masters. There is no other form of industry in the country so restricted as are the railway workshops from the exercise of proper initiative.

The British Transport Commission is not giving the information. It may be that it has it, but it will not divulge it except after tremendous Parliamentary pressure. If that is to continue, I can promise the Commission that not only I but many hon. Members will use Adjournment after Adjournment to raise the matter, and we will take every conceivable opportunity of harassing the life out of the Ministers of the day until we get the Transport Commission to give us the information for which we ask.

There is one ray of light. Last week, on 4th July, it was announced that twenty-six new electric trains were to be built at Wolverton. These, of course, are two-car sets. That is a little, and it will not go very far. The British Transport Commission should be able to tell us what the programme will be not for the next three or four months but certainly for the next twelve months or two years. As I have said, for these rumours, for this alarm and despondency, the British Transport Commission is responsible, because it will not tell the country and the people interested in the particular localities what its plans are.

We have before us, recently issued to Parliament, the Report of the British Transport Commission for 1957. It was printed on 26th June. There is in that Report no word at all about the British Railways workshops. That is a most extraordinary omission. In all future reports, some reference should be made to those workshops and the future programme which they will be invited to undertake.

I have three questions to put to my hon. Friend, of which I have given him notice. I hope that, with his pertinacity and cheerfulness, he can give us the answers we are hoping for. First, what will be the 1959 programme of railway construction, and will it keep Wolverton up to full strength? Secondly, will the British Transport Commission make it a rule that reasonable priority for all its construction, repairs and maintenance shall be afforded to British Transport Commission workshops? Thirdly, will the reports of the Transport Commission in future give somewhat more attention to the railway workshops than has been given in the past?

It is becoming quite unbearable that we cannot get information from the British Transport Commission without bringing tremendous Parliamentary pressure to bear upon it. That sort of situation is rotten to the core. In addition to asking my hon. Friend to give us, who are responsible for these areas, the information we want, I want him to bring all the pressure he can upon the Transport Commission to let the public know as soon as possible what the future programmes are to be for these great railway centres of the country.

11.5 p.m.

Mr. Francis Noel-Baker (Swindon)

The hon. and gallant Member for Buckingham (Sir F. Markham) has done a great service in raising this question once again. This is a matter in which many railway workshops in many parts of the country are interested, in my constituency no less than in his, although in Swindon we are perhaps luckier than Wolverton in the sense that although the workshops were created by the Great Western Railway, only about half the adult male population are employed by the Western Region now, while the remainder are in other firms in the locality.

The House may recall that the last time we discussed this question was, as the hon. and gallant Member said, an 9th May, when the House accepted a Motion drawing attention to the need for making further provision for the health, welfare and safety of railway workers, and included a phrase to ensure that their interests, as well as those of the railway users, were fully considered while modernisation was taking place.

As the hon. and gallant Gentleman has said, there is very widespread anxiety in all railway towns about the future of railway workshops. Even since the last debate, redundancy has occurred in a number of places. I am told, for example, that in the York Carriage and Wagon works, 210 men, in the Doncaster Locomotive Works, 78 men, in the Stratford Locomotive Works, 73 men, and in the Gorton Locomotive Works, 40 men have been declared redundant since we last discussed this question in the House.

Those figures naturally cause a good deal of alarm and despondency in the railway workshops. At the same time, what they have been hearing lately about the modernisation programme and its effects on them, and what they have been seeing about the curtailment of railway services has, naturally, alarmed them a good deal. They were very worried, as was the British Transport Commission, about the effects of the recent cuts in capital expenditure.

It is not unfair to add that their apprehensions are not decreased by the ambivalent attitude of the Government towards the nationalised industries. I do not want to make a political speech, but it is not surprising that men watching what is said by leading Conservative speakers on party platforms, about nationalisation and the nationalised industries, are wondering whether the nationalised railway workshops are being given fair treatment. If they are, it is up to the Minister and his Joint Parliamentary Secretary and the Transport Commission to make that abundantly plain.

It is known that there will be a very considerable curtailment of work in the railway workshops as the modernisation programme goes ahead. There will be drastic reductions of locomotives and wagon and coaching stock, as a result of the faster and more efficient trains. The men recognise that these things cannot be stopped and that their sectional interests must give way to the public interest in that respect.

What they demand is that at the earliest possible moment they should know what is to happen in their workshops, and that they should be given logical explanations for the problems which are facing them at present. I and the majority of the men in the worshops, and certainly the members of the workshop committees, appreciate that the British Transport Commission is facing major problems. For example, not enough is yet known about the performance of diesel locomotives in this country for the Transport Commission to be able to produce a final policy of standardisation of locomotives, and there are several other technical problems relating to modernisation, for example, the heating of coaching stock, which still have to be settled.

All the same, the men are anxious to know as much as can be told to them by the British Transport Commission and the Government. When work which they are capable of doing goes outside to private enterprise, at least they should be told the reasons for such an action. They accept that in some cases there are very sound economic reasons, but there are other cases where the facts are very obscure, and where they should be given them.

I should like to give four examples, very briefly. First, there is the situation in the Crewe works where, I understand, there has been a reduction of staff, although work which the men think they are capable of doing is going out to private contractors. Capstans, which are maintained by the outdoor machinery department, and which used to be overhauled at the Crewe works, are now being dealt with outside. The explanation given is that the price charged by the Crewe workshops is £300, whereas private enterprise can do the job for £100. There is a strong feeling that the reason for this is the exorbitant charges made to the outdoor machinery department by the stores department in the region. This is a matter which, if the Joint Parliamentary Secretary cannot go into it this evening, at least deserves an answer in the very near future.

At Crewe is the only steel foundry belonging to British Railways, but the steel castings used in connection with the diesel building programme are now being bought from outside. The men do not understand why this should be so. If there is an economic reason for it, they find it difficult to understand why private firms should be able to do this work more cheaply than they themselves when their rates of wages are lower than outside. For example, the rate of a railway moulder is 10s. a week lower than the rate paid in private industry. This matter is giving them very great concern.

Again, in Crewe there is a good deal of apprehension because it has one of the best white-metalling plants in the country, which will be affected when the new engine-building programme ceases. While diesel engines are being repaired at Crewe the metalling of the big end of the main shaft bearings is being sent out to private contractors. The men wonder why this is so. If there is a reasonable economic explanation, they have not been told about it.

Perhaps I may be forgiven for referring, with the permission of my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby, South (Mr. P. Noel-Baker), to a matter of which I am sure he is aware, which affects the great railway works in his constituency. At the time of the railway disaster at Harrow and Wealdstone a prototype set of automatic train control equipment was produced by Derby locomotive works, and sixty-six sets of this equipment were produced there. In the early part of this year tenders were invited from private contractors for a further 2,000 of these units, which had been pioneered by the Derby workshops, and the men there do not understand why this work has not come to them.

Those are a few examples of occurrences affecting the railway workshops which have caused a good deal of apprehension and dissatisfaction among the men. I have not referred to problems affecting my constituency, because I wanted to make it plain to the Joint Parliamentary Secretary that I was not simply making a constituency speech, but that I think that all who are concerned with the railway industry are very worried about the situation.

The most important contribution that the hon. Gentleman can make this evening is to tell the House when the Commission will state its policy for the railway workshops, and when we are to get an announcement about the immediate future. If he can do that satisfactorily this evening, he will be doing the men in the railway industry a very great service.

11.13 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation (Mr. G. R. H. Nugent)

I must congratulate my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Buckingham (Sir F. Markham) on his good fortune in securing the Adjournment tonight in order to raise the problem, which has been troubling his mind about the Wolverton works, in his constituency at Buckingham. I am more familiar with the problems raised by the hon. Member for Swindon (Mr. F. Noel-Baker), because we discussed them on a previous occasion, as he said.

Perhaps I should start with the point about the lack of information provided by the Commission, because it touches on something said by my hon. and gallant Friend and the hon. Member for Swindon. My hon. and gallant Friend complained about it, and the hon. Member for Swindon also cited several examples where he feels the workers were not kept sufficiently in the picture and where there was no convincing case why the contracts were put to private industry outside instead of going to the railway workshops concerned at Crewe and Derby.

The general reply I must make to both these points may not be satisfactory to my hon. and gallant Friend and the hon. Member for Swindon, but I am sure they will see the force of it. The British Transport Commission is responsible for the day-to-day management of the transport system of railways and inland waterways that come under its control. Parliament has specifically defined that it is responsible for the day-to-day management. My right hon. Friend, the Minister of Transport, and I, to my limited extent, are responsible only for matters of general policy and principle, and it is therefore extremely difficult for me or, indeed, any Minister, to stand here and give satisfactory replies to points which are essentially matters of commercial policy.

The Transport Commission in deciding how it places its contracts has to use its commercial judgment on where it will get the best value from the point of view of quality, price, date of delivery, and so on. As these matters arise in the course of day-to-day management, it is impossible to deal with them here, and I believe that if I or any other Minister tried to do so we should, on the long view, be completely prejudicing any chance the Commission has of efficient management of the railways.

Therefore, I would ask both hon. Members to recognize that if the Commission is to have a reasonable chance of making a commercial success of something that is enormously difficult, we must give it a chance to use its commercial judgment and not ask it to parade matters which no other commercial concern in the country can possibly do.

Mr. F. Noel-Baker

I appreciate the force of what the hon. Gentleman says, and he may perhaps have misunderstood us. We are asking not for more information on detailed points of commercial policy across the Floor of the House, but that the management should take the men much more into their confidence, as progressive managements do throughout modern, efficient industry, in connection with problems affecting the livelihood and future prospects of those men.

Mr. Nugent

We may have been confused, but at any rate I am glad the hon. Gentleman accepts my general point, and I hope my hon. and gallant Friend, the Member for Buckingham does, too. But if that principle is accepted, it restricts considerably what I can say from here. I should like to clear the mind of the hon. Member for Swindon on one point. He accused us of taking an ambivalent attitude towards nationalised industries, because we as a party are against nationalisation, and he questioned whether the railway workshops were being given fair treatment. He really must accept the point that we as a Government have been responsible for financing this enormous modernisation scheme, involving some £1,500 million, plus another £250 million to finance the deficit.

We are the Government who have done that. Hon. Members opposite have produced words. We have produced the cash to do it, and whatever may be our reservations about nationalised industries generally, no one can accuse us of not giving this industry a chance. If it were not for the fact that we had provided the finance for the modernisation scheme, goodness knows what would be the prospect not only for the railways but for the railway workshops. I would, therefore, ask the hon. Member to think again before making an accusation of that kind. We are the people who are giving these men a future; and, whatever words may come from hon. Members opposite, it is substance that has come from this side. We are giving these people a reasonable prospect.

To come to the points made by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Buckingham—and, among them, the general point made by the hon. Member for Swindon about redundancy figures—any figures of redundancy are serious, and I accept that. Each one of these men we are talking about is important and his living is important, but when the hon. Member speaks of 40 in one workshop or 80 in another I ask him to remember the general perspective of which I reminded him in the debate in May. There are about 126,000 people employed in the railway workshops. From the beginning of 1957 when 126,762 were employed in the railway workshops until 18th May this year, the last figure I have, the change was only about 600 men; there were 126,129. So the broad figure of employment over this very large number of men and women employed shows extremely little change over that period of nearly eighteen months. Therefore, although I accept that each one's case is a matter of anxiety, I hope the hon. Member will feel that in the broad perspective the redundancy figure is not one which should give very great anxiety.

Mr. F. Noel-Baker

Even those figures show that between January and May this year there was a reduction of 2,000, which alarms people in Wiltshire.

Mr. Nugent

The figures have gone up in the meantime. Certainly for the end of 1957 the figure went up to 128,000, and it went down in May to 126,000, but in these very big figures I do not think that the reduction over the long period is one which should give rise to very serious anxiety.

To turn to my hon. and gallant Friend's general points, the British Transport Commission's policy for the railway workshops was laid down in 1956, and the three points were mentioned in the debate in May, which I think I may repeat to the House now. They were, first of all that the maintenance work should continue to be carried out as far as possible in the railway workshops; secondly, that the railway workshops would be used for the construction of new equipment to the extent that they were laid out and equipped for this purpose and so long as they could produce on an economic basis; thirdly, that power units for diesel and electric locomotives would generally be purchased from outside industry.

At the same time the Commission said in regard to private industry that manufacturing organisations were assured that the Commission desired to work with them in close co-operation to achieve the success of the modernisation plan.

As I have said before, and as I think I should say again, in the last six months particularly I have had more than one complaint from private industry that in the adjustments of the programme which took place this year and in the cuts which took place in the early part of this year it was the private firms which suffered the greater part of the cuts. They have complained rather strongly about this and made the point, which has great validity, that it is they who support the export trade. My hon. and gallant Friend rightly says that the Commission cannot take part in that. Nevertheless, the export trade is not a matter of just picking apples off the tree. It is a very competitive trade, and it is not easy for these industries to compete in that very competitive trade on such a very narrow domestic basis. This is one of the features they have to accept, but naturally they are sensitive to these changes.

The Commission pointed out in its 1957 Report that the acceleration of the modernisation plan—and contrary to the general impression the plan has been greatly accelerated over the original intentions—has now obliged the Commission to review the general policy which it laid down in 1956 and had expected to last for five years. It has been obliged to review it before the end of that five years because of the acceleration of the plan. Obviously the general principles which I have repeated again tonight are likely to remain much the same in the future, but the application may change according to changed conditions as the Commission has to meet them.

The present position nationally, as the Commission's Report for 1957 shows, is that in 1957 there was some increase in the building of freight wagons and a small decrease in coaching stock. During the current year, 1958, the coaching stock will be a little up on 1957 and the plans are that the 1959 figures, next year, will be roughly in line with the 1958 figures, that is to say somewhat up on 1957. On the other hand, freight wagon building is being reduced somewhat this year, 1958, and similarly next year, 1959. This is broadly in conformity with the Commission's recently announced cut of some 100,000 in its total fleet of freight wagons.

As hon. and right hon. Members know, the bigger wagons, faster transit and quicker turn-round are all having generally the effect that the total fleet of freight wagons needed is smaller. The natural corollary is that the amount of maintenance needed on freight wagons will be smaller too. In the Wolverton works, the effect, broadly reflecting the national position, is some decrease in the building of freight wagons and in maintenance work, but some increase in the building of coaching stock, including in particular more electric multiple units and sleeping cars. Therefore, in the overall picture, the total volume of work at Wolverton should be maintained at full capacity both for this year and next.

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock and the debate having counted for half an hour, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at twenty-seven minutes past Eleven o'clock.