§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. E. Wakefield.]
§ 11.17 p.m.
§ Mr. Raymond Gower (Barry)Once again, I feel it my duty to raise a constituency problem, the problem affecting the docks at Barry, which are owned by the British Transport Commission.
I regret that circumstances have obliged me to be rather a nuisance to successive Ministers of Transport, as well as to other Ministers, in this connection, but I think that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary has already sufficient information to make him realise the very large problem which the Port of Barry and, indeed, most of the South Wales ports have faced since the end of the last war. Their difficulties have attracted the attention not only of the local authorities in those areas, but also that of the various Members of Parliamen, successive Ministers for Welsh Affairs, and a special panel of the Council for Wales.
All these ports have suffered in some degree from the steady, progressive decline in their former export trade in coal, on which their pre-war prosperity was largely based. Especially has this been the case at Barry, but I must add that many of my remarks could be applied with almost equal force to Cardiff and other South Wales ports.
I should like, first, to remind my hon. Friend that in the early years of this century the docks at Barry were, for a time, the greatest coal exporting centre of the whole world; and that, for several years, coal exports were measured in millions of tons. The contrast with that, and the position as it is today, is revealed by some figures published in the Western Mail this morning.
The figure of trade through the Port of Barry for the period 1st January to 27th March last year is given as 319,359 tons, and for the same period of this year as 341,078 tons. On these figures the annual trade would be only about £1,200,000 or £1,300,000. When I remind my hon. Friend that before the war, in the days of great coal exports, the trade was running at £7 million or £8 million, he will appreciate the immensity of the problem.
1045 Since the last war, while the overseas exports gradually disappeared, we retained a valuable and not insignificant business in the coastal movement of coal from the South Wales coalfield to power stations at Battersea and elsewhere, but even this coastal trade is now disappearing. Moreover, I would remind my hon. Friend that in recent weeks we have lost the ships of the Reserve Fleet and, though it was not directly connected with the docks trade, the Supplementary Reserve Depot of the War Department.
I think that I can reasonably say that the docks at Barry have served Britain well in times of war and peace. Between 1939 and 1945, while other United Kingdom ports were being heavily bombed, massive shipments of general cargo, military and civil, moved in and out of our docks. Moreover, the workers there have demonstrated, not only during the war but since, the adaptability and versatility in dealing with unfamiliar cargoes. We have also had very few labour disputes or stoppages of any kind. Labour relations in the port have been excellent. There has been none of the serious strikes which have often affected the Mersey and the Port of London. Labour relations in South Wales generally have been rather better than in the rest of the United Kingdom, certainly in the docks.
Despite some needs and deficiencies, the facilities at the docks there are excellent. It would be a pity—I think that my hon. Friend would agree with this— if, in future, proper use were not made of the splendid docks and facilities. Why, then, it may be asked, with these advantages have we not found it easy to attract new trade and new cargoes? Efforts to do so have not been wanting, and there has been admirable co-operation between the Barry Council, the Barry Development Committee, the Barry Chamber of Trade, industrialists and trade unionists, by persons of all political parties.
The partial nature of our success can be explained only by certain disadvantages, most of which could be, and should be, remedied. First, we have had the handicap of railway rates less favourable than those in docks in other parts of the United Kingdom. It has been more expensive to send the same sort of load by rail to Barry than to the Merseyside or to the Port of London. In this field 1046 the position has been improved, though not completely. I should like my hon. Friend to say something about this.
Secondly, loads sent by road have had to go along the very poor roadways from South Wales to the industrial Midlands and the West Country. The Government and my right hon. Friend and his predecessors at the Ministry of Transport seem to have recognised this need. The new road construction will ease the flow of road traffic to and from the South Wales ports. But even here I have a complaint. Surely the Ross Spur and the Heads of the Valley scheme should have been based on roads with four lanes of traffic, and not three. When we are to have this large expenditure it seems false economy to limit it to three lanes of traffic.
I have already referred to railway rates. There is also the question of dock charges. Compared with most other United Kingdom ports, the South Wales docks have always been in the most disadvantageous position. Even more injurious has been the fact that the customs for the apportionment of loading and other charges between shippers and exporters have always been less favourable at Barry and other South Wales ports than at other ports in the United Kingdom with one or two exceptions. There have been for many years prolonged negotiations about them. Even now a complete solution has not been found. I certainly hope that my hon. Friend will have some encouraging news about this tonight.
The next point I wish to raise is the necessary improvement of the docks installations at Barry. My constituents and Barry Council and organisations in the area are grateful for the improvements which the Transport Commission has already carried out in the last couple of years at a cost of approximately £250,000. But such expenditure seems almost insignificant compared with the ambitious modernisation and improvements which I understand, are to be carried out at Avonmouth, where the docks are not owned by the Commission. I hope that both the Commission and my hon. Friend will bear this in mind.
I have been looking through a memorandum submitted in 1956 by Barry Council and the Barry Development Committee to the Industrial Association of Wales and Monmouthshire. That 1047 memorandum set out the improvements to the docks at Barry then deemed necessary to make a highly efficient general cargo port. There are three docks there with a total water area of 114 acres and a normal depth of 32 feet. It was stated that it was absolutely necessary that the breakwater should be extended seawards to provide a larger and wider entrance channel suitable for modern size tonnage. It suggested that dredging would be essential to give access at all tides. It was then considered necessary that the basin to No. 3 docks should be extended to make a lock of about 130 feet by 1,000 feet, and the widening of the junction between No. 1 and No. 2 docks to a width of 130 feet was advocated.
Another point was that improved shedding accommodation, better storage and transit sheds are urgently required. The memorandum also called for the incorporation of the timber posed at the eastern end of No. 2 dock to increase the deep water area. Most of these improvements are as urgently required today as they were in 1956, when the memorandum was submitted.
It has been suggested in some quarters that if the Commission feels that this duty is not one which it can pursue, then, alternatively, it should lease the docks in South Wales to a South Wales port authority. But that might well be a counsel of defeat. I feel that there is a great future for these docks. I hope that the Commission will look at the problem in the same light.
During the past year or two we have had one or two bright signs. Due to local initiative, with the energetic help of the docks manager at Barry, for whom no praise could be too high, and with the good will of the fruit importing firm of Geest Industries, Ltd., a valuable new regular import trade of bananas and other fruits has been obtained and, I think, will become a permanent feature of the docks.
If the anomalies and disabilities to which I have referred could be removed soon, and if the docks could be modernised along the lines I have suggested, Barry people would be able to tackle the important job of getting new trade, business and cargoes with reasonable hopes of success.
§ 11.28 p.m.
§ The Jont Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. John Hay)May I, at the outset, briefly explain the position of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport in relation to the matter raised tonight? Barry is one of the five major ports in South Wales administered by the Docks Division of the British Transport Commission. Apart from the Minister's general responsibility for the ports and shipping of this country, the development of ports by the authorities which own or control them is a matter in which he has no powers.
In the case of the Commission's ports, their development is a matter entirely for the Commission. The Ministers powers are limited by Statute to the general oversight of their programmes of reorganisation or development involving a substantial outlay on capital account. Section 4 (2) of the Transport Act, 1947, requires the Commission, when framing programmes of that kind, to act on lines settled from time to time with the approval of the Minister. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Barry (Mr. Gower) appreciates that it follows from this that the choice of which port they shall use is a matter entirely for shipowners and shippers themselves, because neither the Government nor the Commission have any powers to direct traffic through a certain port.
As my hon. Friend has said, like many other South Wales ports Barry was built up on the coal export trade. Before 1914, no less than 11 million tons of coal were shipped from Barry in a single year, but by 1948 that figure had fallen to 2 million tons, and last year it was down to 500,000 tons. This trend is general throughout the country, but in South Wales the decline has been accentuated by the recent decision of the Central Electricity Generating Board to take the coal it needs for its South of England power stations from the coalfields of the North-East of England instead of from South Wales. This is a purely commercial decision by the Board, and neither my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport nor my right hon. Friend the Minister of Power has any power to interfere with that decision.
The fact that the coal trade has declined throws up into high relief the 1049 desirability of finding some alternative type of trade to keep the port going. My hon. Friend has referred to the need for this. This is something that the Commission, which owns the docks and which, naturally, has a good deal of money involved in them, is trying to do everything in its power to encourage. As my hon. Friend said in the closing passages of his speech, although the coal trade has declined other types of trade have improved. Imports through Barry have risen from 339,000 tons in 1948 to 591,000 tons in 1959, and exports other than coal in those same years have risen from 96,000 tons to 146,000 tons. These are reasonably promising figures in all the circumstances.
Apart from coal, the chief traffic now going through the port consists of petroleum, grain and flour, but we welcome the promising new development to which my hon. Friend referred—the banana trade which is now developing, promoted by the firm of Geest Industries Ltd. My hon. Friend asked what the Commission was doing in this situation. I think he knows that the Commission has recently introduced a good deal of new equipment at Barry. It has modernised one quay, with a length of about 570 ft. It has equipped it with five 10-ton electric grab cranes for bulk cargoes, at a total cost of over £250,000, so it is clear from that alone that the Commission is not simply sitting and waiting for trade to develop before modernising the port. It is trying its best, within its limitations, to make the port attractive both to importers and exporters.
In view of the criticisms that my hon. Friend made, and the desirability, as he suggested, of further improving and modernising the docks, I must tell him that the Commission considers that the present storage facilities and the other buildings at the docks are fully adequate for the present requirements of trade through Barry, for the foreseeable future. I cannot go beyond that tonight, except to say that I have no doubt that my hon. Friend's remarks and suggestions will be taken up and noted by the Commission, as always happens when these debates on the Commission's affairs take place in the House.
Another promising feature in this rather difficult picture is the development of other industry in the area. A 1050 number of industries have recently been started in the area, including a firm called Super Oil Seals, another called J. and R. Freeman, which manufactures cigars, and Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds. I understand these firms are not in Barry itself, but in the surrounding area. I think that my hon. Friend will agree that new industries of this kind, where they are developing, will add to the employment prospects of the locality and lead to an improvement in the general industrial conditions. They could, therefore, have some beneficial effect upon the docks, although not necessarily in the short term. It is always possible that new industries will help to produce more traffic through these docks.
My hon. Friend referred to the question of dock rates and railway charges. It is often claimed that these rates and charges are unfair as respects South Wales ports generally. I should like to make two observations on that. As I think the House will appreciate, charges shared with shipping companies are a matter for negotiation with the individual companies. The Government cannot interfere in this matter, but we have used our good offices on two occasions to try to bring the parties together to settle their differences. I am very glad to be able to tell the House that negotiations are now going on between the Industrial Association of South Wales and Monmouthshire, which represents the shippers, and the British Liner Committee.
My second observation is that as from 1st May last year, as I expect my hon. Friend knows, British Railways introduced a new railway rates agreement. This will have the effect of including in the rail charge the cost of certain operations in the docks, which, I imagine, were paid for separately prior to the agreement. On the question of charges, I must emphasise that the division of the dock charges is a matter for the commercial interests concerned and not one in which the Minister of Transport can interfere.
I next come to the points raised by my hon. Friend concerning the need for better road facilities leading to South Wales from London and the Midlands, the object being to give better opportunities for exporters to make use of ports like Barry. This is a question 1051 which is very much in our minds. My hon. Friend will be aware of the proposals we have for the South Wales radial road which will be a motorway from London to the new Severn Bridge and thence into South Wales by way of a motorway by-pass to Newport. Another new road link is the proposed motorway between Birmingham and South Wales. This will comprise the Northern section of the Birmingham— Bristol motorway, the Ross Spur motorway now under construction and from then on dual carriageways on the Ross to Newport trunk road. The trunk roads westwards to Swansea via the Heads of the Valley road, the first stage of which is under construction, will be improved. In addition, the trunk road between Cardiff and Merthyr Tydfil will be constructed in stages.
There is a great deal I could say about this, but I think that I can claim that these roads will provide first-class communications between the industrial centres of South Wales and the Midlands. In answer to the query concerning the capacity of the roads and the complaint that we were building them to three-lane instead of four-lane standards, I should say that that has not been done lightly, but for two reasons. The first is that in some cases we have difficulty in trying to obtain necessary land for geographical reasons. Secondly, it is because we are advised by those whose job it is to forecast these matters that even with substantial growth of traffic using these roads in future nothing more than three-lane carriageways will be needed We have to accept that advice.
There is no doubt, as my hon. Friend said, that the South Wales ports are 1052 meeting a great many difficulties at present. Having been built up so largely on the export of coal, they are, naturally, in difficulties as that type of trade declines. The Transport Commission and all other interested parties, the shipowners, importers and exporters among them, have made every effort on a commercial basis to promote new trade. Their efforts are, I think, having some success. As an indication of their success, I point out that the total exports of commodities other than coal passing through the South Wales ports have now increased by three times their pre-war tonnage. This may not be a very great deal, but at least it is something. It is certainly better than nothing. I am sure that this is the right course for the Commission to take.
The South Wales ports have good facilities and many attractions to their credit. Barry, in particular, is convenient to Cardiff, with a good natural entrance and good port facilities. The new bulk discharging berth is among the most advanced of its kind in the country. The Commission is doing what it can to encourage the use of the port, while we in the Ministry of Transport are getting on as quickly as we can with the improvement of land communications.
In all this I think that there is cause for reasonable optimism as to the future of the South Wales ports in general, and Barry in particular. We shall certainly do all we can to help in any ways which seem to us appropriate and feasible.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at nineteen minutes to Twelve o'clock.