HC Deb 03 May 1960 vol 622 cc1043-52

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

11.35 p.m.

Mr. J. C. Jennings (Burton)

Some time ago a photograph was published in the Press showing my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport helping an old lady across the road. This was a commendable action, quite in keeping with my right hon. Friend's character. I hold him in very high regard. Tonight, I want to ask him to help another old lady, not across the road but to keep on the road—the railroad. Her name is "Jinnie"—"Tutbury Jinnie"; and she is 111 years old. She is held in very great affection by thousands of residents in the Burton and Tutbury area. If I might parody an old music hall song, I should say that the sentiment expressed by these thousands of people in Burton and Tutbury would be expressed in the first lines: If you knew Jinnie like I knew Jinnie, Oh boy, oh what a girl! That is exactly how they feel. "Tutbury Jinnie" has been a fine lady in her time. At some time in her 111 years she has held the record for the fastest time in a straight stretch of 4½ miles between Burton and Tutbury, even with two intermediate stops in those days. She runs between Burton and Tutbury. She sets out from Burton to Tutbury and then makes the return journey. One way she pulls and the other she pushes. She is known as "the old Pull-and-Push" If my right hon. Friend comes to Burton we shall not take him down to the "Old Bull and Bush," but before we entertain him in one or more of our famous breweries we will take him for a ride on the old Pull-and-Push, the grand old lady of the line,"Tutbury Jinnie."

The Minister must come soon, because she is doomed to die on 11th June. She has kept the strait and narrow way for many many years. Now the British Transport Commission is forcing the old lady, aged 111, to go off the rails. She is sentenced to death.

I have been facetious for the last few moments, but let me now be very serious and describe how she has been sentenced to death. I have come to the opinion that it was not a fair trial, if "trial" can be the name given to the sub-committee of the area transport users' consultative committee. In view of what I am about to say, I ask for a suspension of the sentence and a new trial and a new jury.

How was this decision unjust? I will not weary my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary with all the reasons which were put forward by the objectors. They put a very strong case. I want to advance four new reasons why the operative date for the cessation of this train service between Burton and Tutbury should be postponed. The first is that I am of the considered opinion that justice has not been done, nor has it been seen to be done.

I have here a Press report of the proceedings which were held in November. There was present at the proceedings a very highly placed railway official from the Birmingham area, who gave some most damaging evidence. He is described in the Press report as the British Transport Commission "representative". Will my hon. Friend make inquiries and satisfy me—afterwards if he cannot do it tonight—whether the word "representative" means that this highly placed railway official was a member of the sub-committee dealing with this case? His evidence was damaging to the objectors. In the inquiry he acted as defending counsel for the Transport Commission and answered the objections put forward by the various bodies and individuals objecting to the proposals.

I am informed by a very responsible body that after the objectors were asked to withdraw, having stated their case, he stayed behind, presumably with the members of the sub-committee. Was he a member of the sub-committee? In staying behind, did he take part in the discussions which led to the recommendation to the area committee, and finally to the Central Consultative Committee, to cancel the service? If that is so, is it not true that, in addition to being defending counsel to the Transport Commission, he helped to act as judge and jury in the decision?

I have said that his evidence was damaging. In his evidence he said: … only twelve people a day used the Tutbury-Burton service during weekdays". That is not true, and I have evidence here to prove it in a memorandum from the Commission. The actual figures are an average of 10 or 12 per train. There are eight trains a day each way, making 16 trains in all. Therefore, there are on an average 160 passengers from Monday to Friday and about 191 on Saturday, making, in round figures, 1,000 passenger journeys a week. That is one piece of evidence Which, if he is reported correctly, is completely wrong.

Then he said: … there were still not enough people travelling to fill a bus. Diesel services were very expensive, and the Commission would need ten or twelve times more passengers for such a service to break even". That makes nonsense of railway finance and economics, if it is true. The figures I have given are a round 1,000 a week. If what he says is true, it means that 12,000 passenger journeys a week from Tutbury to Burton or vice versa are needed to make the service pay.

This is an iniquitous system. One has the suspicion that there is far too close a tie-up between the transport users' consultative committees and the Transport Commission. This is not the first time that I have said this in the House. I said it in a previous Adjournment debate, when I gave irrefutable evidence that the Transport Commission had forestalled the decision of the committee by at least two months. This case is typical of the whole unjust working of the transport users' consultative committees.

The question of injustice and justice not being seen to be done is the chief reason why I ask my hon. Friend to look into the question I have raised. If he is satisfied that what I am asking about is true, will he ask his right hon. Friend the Minister to order a fresh inquiry? I suggest that my right hon. Friend should, therefore, postpone the operative date until he has had another look at this. He should then have another official inquiry without the highly placed Transport Commission official presumably being one of those who influenced the decision to close the service.

Secondly, in view of my right hon. Friend's decision to appoint what are euphemistically called "Four Wise Men" to study the finance and structure of British railways, it is logical to ask him, seeing that branch lines are part and parcel of the whole system, both finance and structure, to postpone closing any more branch lines until the "Four Wise Men" have reported.

If the criterion is financial loss—and in every case of the closure of a branch line that I know of we have been informed that it is—where does the rest of the railway system stand? Can we prove that every main line is working at a profit? If a main line is not working at a profit, is the same criterion to be adopted, and that line closed? Of course, that is nonsense, but the Minister should now hold his hand in regard to branch lines, and the "Tutbury Jinnie" gives him the chance.

My third reason is that 11th June is well into the holiday season. Tutbury is in the unique position of being a key-point for passengers from Derbyshire and south-west England. It is the gateway for many to the North-West and North Wales. Here, right in the holiday season, the service is to be taken off. That means that people going to Burton, instead of taking the "Tutbury Jinnie" at a cost of 1s., will have to go to Derby, which is on one side of an isosceles triangle, and come back along the other side of the triangle, at a cost of 2s. 7d., single and 5s. 8d. return. What enterprising businessman would close down a shop at the height of the buying and selling season?

The fourth reason, which I have already given, is the number of passengers who use this little line. The figures given by the Commission and by other people are vague, but it is established that there are at least 1,000 passengers a week. That is no negligible number—it is appreciable—and those figures are confirmed by considerable research undertaken by the Burton District Trades Council, to which body I am indebted for them.

What will happen? My right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport has been waging a campaign for some months on road safety and congestion. On 11th June, at one fell swoop, 1,000 passengers are to be flung on to the roads between Burton and Tutbury, and we shall get congestion in an already over-congested town. The real answer is for the Commission to run a rail bus; a single-unit diesel service, with a one-man crew, as is done in other countries. For those reasons, I implore my right hon. Friend to reconsider his decision.

11.47 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. John Hay)

When my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Mr. Jennings) first gave notice of his intention to raise tonight the case of the "Tutbury Jinnie," and I was told about it, I had a wild moment in which I thought that possibly my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport had at last become responsible for one of Mr. Emmet's more inspired creations, but, as my hon. Friend has said, the "Tutbury Jinnie" is a small railway of great and respectable ancestry which now, under the pressure of economic conditions in the modern world, is doomed to die.

As he has said, it runs along a link line between Burton-on-Trent and Tutbury. Burton is on the Derby—Birmingham main line, and Tutbury is on the main Derby—Crewe line, and this provides the link. The line is nearly six miles in length, double track, and there are eight trains a day on week days only.

At the very outset, I should like to clear up one doubt in my hon. Friend's mind about the number of passengers. He quoted a newspaper report that information was given to the transport users' consultative committee to the effect that only 10 people per week, I think it was—

Mr. Jennings

Twelve per day.

Mr. Hay

—that 12 per day used this service. I have before me the information which was supplied in writing to the committee, and it is quite clear beyond any doubt whatever that 10 per journey was mentioned. I think that, no doubt by inadvertence, the Press report was wrong.

But 10 people per journey, with eight journeys per day, gives only 1,000 people per week travelling on the line. I can put the matter in perspective, I think, by saying that the Commission calculates—I have seen the figures—that it loses about £7,300 per year net on running this line for that number of passengers.

This is not an area, as so often one finds in these cases, where there are virtually no other means of transport. As my hon. Friend knows, it is an area which is fairly highly developed, and there are many bus services, details of which I have here, which run between Burton-on-Trent and Tutbury. If the "Tutbury Jinnie" has to be withdrawn, this will not mean that people living in Burton or Tutbury will have no other form of transport between those two points. There are other alternatives, and these were put to the transport users' consultative committee when it considered the case.

The proposal to withdraw the service was made by the British Transport Commission in the spring of last year. Almost a year ago exactly, on 29th April, 1959, the West Midlands Transport Users' Consultative Committee received the proposal and opened its consideration of it. It heard then representatives of several local authorities which objected to the proposal for closure. Since those representatives argued that insufficient time had been allowed for full consideration to be given to the objections, the committee, I am informed, decided that it would defer a decision until an inquiry had been held in Burton-on-Trent.

For various reasons, the holding of the inquiry was deferred until 25th November, 1959. Then, several members of the committee, as my hon. Friend has said, formed what was virtually a small sub-committee to hold the inquiry. Of the objectors, three local authorities, the Burton-on-Trent and District Trades Council and one member of the public attended. The upshot of it all was that the sub-committee endorsed the proposal by the Transport Commission to withdraw the service, and that view was reported back to the West Midlands Transport Users' Consultative Committee on 16th January. That committee agreed with the view taken by the subcommittee holding the inquiry, and, as is the normal practice, with which my hon. Friend is familiar, the decision was forwarded to the Central Transport Users' Consultative Committee which has as one of its functions the filtering, if I may use that expression, of the decisions reached by the area committees.

The Central Transport Users' Consultative Committee had no observations to make on this proposal, and, on 15th March, 1960, it approved it. It made no recommendation to the Minister of Transport, as it is entitled to do under the Statute. This has a significance to which I shall return in a moment or two. The result is that, at the moment, the service is due to be withdrawn on 13th June. The timing may be unfortunate from the point of view of those in Burton and district who wish to use the service on holidays, but I should explain that there is no particular significance in the date except that if coincides with the opening of the summer timetables. I think that it is generally convenient, if a service has to be withdrawn, that it should not be done when the new timetables have just come into force.

I do not think that I can really go into great detail with my hon. Friend tonight about the various figures and statistics which were given by the Transport Commission to the inquiry and to the transport users' consultative committee. This is really the kind of matter which the committees themselves were set up to consider. That is their function. Their purpose is to come to a conclusion about the validity or otherwise of the figures and the information given by the Commission in support of the proposal for closure.

As, I think, many hon. Members know, these committees are intended to be and are representative of users. They represent the interests of those who use the services and one would have imagined that, normally, they would have some bias, if bias there is, against the Commission and in favour of the maintenance of the services which they are using. I think that we are entitled to say, with that sort of composition, that if a committee says that it approves of a proposal made by the Commission for closure or withdrawal of a service then there must be a very conclusive case. In any event, my right hon. Friend has no locus standi in examining the figures and details put before the committee.

I come next to the allegation which my hon. Friend made about the proceedings in this case by the West Midlands Transport Users' Consultative Committee. As I understood him, he was claiming that the Transport Commission's representative on the committee took an active part in the proceedings before the inquiry by, in effect, presenting the case for withdrawal of the service, cross-questioning the objectors and then, after the objectors had withdrawn, remaining as a member of the committee to decide the issue before the committee.

I should like, first, to make one or two observations on this situation. To begin with, it is quite proper for the Transport Commission to have a representative on a transport users' consultative committee. The power is contained in Section 6 (4) of the Transport Act, 1947, which specifically provides that Every such Committee … shall consist of such number of persons appointed by the Minister as the Minister may from time to time determine … including members … appointed from among persons nominated by the Commission…. I think that it follows from that that a person on the committee as a representative of the Commission is entitled, in his capacity as a member of the committee, to take part in the proceedings and participate in reaching a decision. It follows, therefore, that as a member he is just as entitled as all the other members of the committee to question objectors and raise any point that he wishes. It must follow from the fact that the statute enables a representative of the Commission to be there.

There is something which I only wish that the public would grasp more than it does at present. Proceedings before these committees are not in any way equivalent to a judicial proceeding. As the House knows, the intention always has been that they should carry out their work on practical, informal, consultative lines and that there should not be a sort of judge and jury atmosphere, as my hon. Friend suggested, but a round table informal discussion about the proposal.

In the light of these facts it would seem to me, on the face of it, unlikely that anything took place in this case which was in any way improper. But I think that the House would require points of this kind to be put absolutely beyond a peradventure, because it is right to say that in the proceedings of these committees there must be not only the form of fair dealing, but also the substance, for what is involved is not only public acceptance of the validity and usefulness of the committees but the reputation of the committees and the reputation of individuals who, unlike us, are not here to answer for themselves.

My hon. Friend suggests that my right hon. Friend should look into this matter. I have taken advice and I believe that under the Act it is open to my right hon. Friend to require the Central Transport Users' Consultative Committee to investigate any case where any real impropriety is alleged. I do not know whether my hon. Friend would wish him to go as far as that, but I will gladly bring to the attention of my right hon. Friend what he said about this case and about the way the proceedings were conducted. We will look into that. I will certainly let my hon. Friend know as soon as I can what our conclusion is, but I cannot tell him tonight what it will be. We will have to consider what he has said.

Mr. Jennings

What I am asking is about this gentleman, whom I do not know and who was doing his job. Was he actually a member of the sub-committee, and if so, after putting the case for the Commission against the objectors, did he then stay on and adjudicate?

Mr. Hay

I thought that I had made clear that this gentleman is a member of the committee. As such, he is entitled to be there. Whether or not there was anything improper in his putting the case for the Commission and then staying behind after all the objectors had withdrawn is a matter I would like to discuss with my right hon. Friend, and which we will certainly look into. I will write to my hon. Friend.

I must make it clear that whatever may result from this investigation it cannot affect the withdrawal of the service. With the best will in the world, I cannot respond to my hon. Friend's appeal to suspend the sentence. The Minister has no power to give other than a general direction to the Commission under Section 4 (1) of the Transport Act, 1947. This question of withdrawal of individual services and of the closure of individual branch lines cannot be said to affect the national interest, which is what is laid down in the Statute as being requisite where a direction of this kind is given.

The Minister's power to direct the Commission as a result of the consultative committee procedure is exercisable only in those cases where the Central Transport Users' Consultative Committee makes a recommendation to him to that effect. In this case, the Central Committee has made no recommendation, and, therefore, the Minister's powers under that Section do not come into play. He has no legal power under the Statute to intervene and give any kind of orders or directions to the Commission.

My hon. Friend made a suggestion about the group which is advising us about the future of the railways, and asked whether it would be possible for all branch line closures to be suspended until that group had completed its work. The task of the group is to consider broad problems of the finance, organisation and working of the Commission and to advise the Minister and the Commission. Apart from the nature of its work it cannot be expected to deal with individual cases of branch line closures.

The Prime Minister, in his statement announcing our general policy towards the railways, made it clear that inconvenience to the public was bound to occur as a result of the alteration in the structure of the Commission and of its services.

Finally, I do not think that we should lightly require the Commission to postpone or defer reductions in its uneconomic services until we make things move forward on this front after the advisory group gives its views. We are at the moment, as a nation, subsidising the railways, since the Budget, to the tune of £90 million this year. Every reduction that can be made will help to lighten the taxpayers' load.

That is really all that I have to say, but I will look into points which have been raised tonight in the hope that that will give my hon. Friend some satisfaction.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at five minutes past Twelve o'clock.