RAILWAYS (WORKSHOPS, ST. HELENS) (Hansard, 25 June 1963)

§ Mr. Leslie Spriggs (St. Helens)
I informed the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport of the points I shall raise this evening with the object of keeping my speech down to the shortest possible minimum, but that does not mean that this matter is not very important. It affects some very good people, constituents of mine who are highly trained personnel of the Railways Board, some of whom have been working as employees of the railways since they were privately owned.
If ever there was a case for the retention of a railway workshop it is that of the St. Helens sheet works, even if we leave out the social consequences and consider the economic redundancy and unemployment position at St. Helens and Horwich. Earlier today I spoke to the Ministry of Labour and checked up the position. On 10th June, 1963, there were registered unemployed at St. Helens 1,076 men and 1,232 women, making a total of 2,308, or 4 per cent. of the insured population. At Horwich on that date there were 58 men and 25 females signing on the employment exchange, a total of 83, or 1 per cent. of the insured population. How can the Railways Board justify closing the workshop in St. Helens when there is so much unemployment in the town? Even after the closures have taken effect in Horwich, unemployment will be more severe in my constituency. Indeed, last winter the percentage rose to 5.1 per cent.
Just before the announcement of the Board's intentions was made, £12,000 was spent on repairs, maintenance and machinery at the St. Helens sheet works. All the machinery was then taken down and transferred to Horwich, but there is not a trained man or a building to deal with this type of heavy work at the Horwich Locomotive Works, because a special structure is needed to take such heavy machinery and to handle the type of work done in sheet production which I have mentioned. The staff would have to be brought in a special 1298 train for this special kind of work. It is very heavy work and machinists are required who have been trained over the years. Quite a number of men who have served their time in this kind of work find it very heavy, and if untrained people were brought in to carry out the repairs of these heavy wagon sheets, many mistakes would be made.
At present, repair work is held up because key staff at the St. Helens sheet works, having a feeling of insecurity, are getting out while the going is good. A number of the key staff have already left. Some are still working there, and I understand that quite a number of women—21 machinists—are still there. The management told them after the announcement that the works were to be closed that alternative jobs would be offered to them all, but unfortunately the management subsequently cancelled this offer and said that it no longer applied to the women. Those who choose to transfer will be away from their homes for about 13 hours a day, four hours of them travelling to and from the new place of work, if they transfer to Horwich.
The chairman of the Railways Board, Dr. Beeching, told me that only five men have so far decided to move to Horwich. I can assure him that if he insists on sending the staff over this route by rail to their work at Horwich, very few could stand the long hours of travelling, especially after a day's work in the winter. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will tell me tonight that a coach will be provided to run my constituents direct to Horwich and to return them to Sutton, St. Helens, where they live, each working day. If Dr. Beeching will do this, and will move quickly, he will retain some of his staff, who are highly trained. If he does not, there is a serious danger of his losing the best of his staff at the works in my constituency.
I asked Dr. Beeching to tell me what he intended to do about such staff if his proposals to close certain branch lines affected train services to Horwich after their transfer, but the answer was not forthcoming. Perhaps we shall hear something about this aspect of the service to Horwich from the Parliamentary Secretary.
It is also necessary to look at the possibilities from January, 1964, when the Horwich Locomotive Works commences 1299 staff redundancy. How will this affect my constituents then, in particular the labourers who come into the category of last-in, first out? Unless firm and sympathetic answers are given to me and to these workers, there can be no feeling of security if they go to the jobs offered.
I make that short plea to the Parliamentary Secretary, hoping that he has got the answers to some of the problems which I put to him over the telephone and later sent to him in correspondence. This is one of those things which I believe should never have happened. I believe the St. Helens sheet works could have been retained on full production if some initiative had been used to get orders from other sections of the transport undertaking for the goods, the wagon sheets and such like, for their use. I am afraid that there has been too much apathy towards this aspect of the industry. More could have been done. We have left it too late. Many thousands of people will suffer. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will obtain some assurance from the chairman and from the Railways Board that, where redundancies have to take place, every measure will be taken to see to it that the least possible suffering and inconvenience are caused to those concerned.

§ The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. T. G. D. Galbraith)
In reply to the hon. Gentleman the Member for St. Helens (Mr. Spriggs), I think that perhaps the best thing to do will be to begin by briefly setting out the background of the proposals to close the wagon sheet works at St. Helens.
On 19th September, 1962, as I think the hon. Gentleman knows, the British Transport Commission, which was then responsible for British Railways and their workshops, announced its plans for the future both of its main workshops and of a number of works such as St. Helens where tarpaulin wagon sheets are made and where they are also repaired. Because the requirements for wagon sheets were expected to fall by about one-half in the next five years a programme of closures had to be worked out. I was not quite certain, in listening to the hon. Gentleman, 1300 whether he realised that there is this fall in the demand for wagon sheets because there is to be a reduction in the numbers of open wagons. Therefore, it is obvious, if there are not so many open wagons, that there will not be the need for these sheets.
As part of this, it was decided that the work done at St. Helens would be transferred to the main railway workshop at Horwich. The hon. Gentleman suggested that this was perhaps the wrong way to do things, but, of course, it is more economic to run one large workshop than a small one and a large one. It was also decided that the staff at St. Helens would be offered any vacancies which existed at Horwich. So much then for the railways' plan.
I think that at this point I ought to make clear to the hon. Gentleman the respective responsibilities of the railway management and the Government in a matter of this kind. As I am sure the House realises, plans for the rationalisation of the railway workshops, whether they be the main workshops or wagon sheet works like the one at St. Helens, have to be made in the light of the detailed operational needs of the railways, and they are thus the responsibility of the statutory body appointed to run the railways. In September, 1962, this was the British Transport Commission. Now, of course, it is the British Railways Board.
If it is clear that the workshop undertaking must contract because there is insufficient work to keep capacity fully employed—I do not think that there is any argument about that here, because there is already a good supply of these sheets and, as Dr. Beeching told the hon. Gentleman in his letter to him, attempts to find work from other nationalised industries have been declining—it is for the management to select the works which are to be retained and those which are to be run down or closed.
When, therefore, the Plan for Main Workshops was published, the Government gave it general endorsement as being in accordance with the railways' statutory duties to conduct their business efficiently and on a sound financial footing, but the Government could not, and did not, lay down the details of the plan. These matters are obviously the responsibility of management.
1301 Thus, the specific points made by the hon. Gentleman are all essentially matters for the Railways Board, not only because the Board must decide where the work is to be done, but because staff relations and conditions are entirely its concern and not the responsibility of the Government, though my right hon. Friends the Minister of Labour and the President of the Board of Trade are doing what they can to help the general situation in St. Helens and the north-west area.
In spite of what I have said about the responsibility, I will, however, try to help the hon. Gentleman by dealing with the points he has raised, not only tonight, but in the telephone call which he was kind enough to make to me, on the basis of the information which I have been able to obtain from the Railways Board.
The first point made by the hon. Gentleman was with regard to the difficulties of travelling between St. Helens and Horwich. He said that these difficulties have made the staff at St. Helens reluctant to accept the offer of transfer which the railways have made. I realise that travel between St. Helens and Horwich is not an easy matter, and, though the distance is only between 15 and 18 miles, the journey by existing transport facilities can take over two hours to complete.
I am also aware that the plan for reshaping British Railways proposes the closure of the main station at St. Helens—Shaw Street—and also the closure of Wigan Central, so that the rail link between St. Helens and Horwich, such as it is, would disappear altogether if these closures took place, but I must say that the outcome of these proposals, because they are still only proposals, is uncertain, because the closures must go through the statutory procedures laid down in the Transport Act, 1962.
The hon. Gentleman suggested that the answer to the problem might be a special bus or some sort of direct communication. I understand that the Railways Board has written to the hon. Gentleman saying that it had it in mind to arrange for a bus if the numbers accepting the transfer justified it. The position at present, however, is apparently that members of the staff who first made this suggestion to the management lost interest in the scheme and left the works and the matter has not been raised again 1302 by the rest of the staff. However, if interest in this matter is revived, it is something which the staff would have to take up again with the management.
As to the cost of this travel, if it is by bus, free residential travel on British Railways is one of the normal concessions granted where men are transferred to another post is this does not involve them moving their homes. The Railways Board tells me that in a case where suitable rail facilities were not available reimbursement of additional bus fares would be granted. So much for the travel aspect of the matter.
Let me now turn to the second main point raised by the hon. Member, concerning the future prospects of staff who did not accept transfer. Naturally, these people wondered whether their jobs would be secure once they had gone to Horwich, and I think that the Hon. Member suggested that some of the staff were deterred from accepting transfer because they felt that as newcomers to Horwich they would be the first to be redundant in the event of any staff reductions there. He wondered whether it was possible for me to give any indication of the degree of security of employment at Horwich which would attach to any staff who transferred.
As I am sure the hon. Member realises, questions of seniority and juniority for redundancy purposes can be settled only between management and staff. Indeed, the railways and the unions have between them agreed various procedures which differ from locality to locality, and are often extremely complicated. I have made inquiries of the Railways Board, and I understand that sheet repairers who transfer carry their seniority with them. I hope that this information will reassure the hon. Member, at least in relation to those grades. The Railways Board, however, says that there is no similar security for labourers, about whom the hon. Gentleman was worried, and it seems that the vacancies that exist at Horwich for labourers are only on a temporary basis.
Naturally, any of those who decide to transfer to Horwich and subsequently become redundant will qualify for the normal redundancy compensation provided under the agreements. I should 1303 mention, in case there is any misunderstanding, that redundancy compensation under the agreements applies equally to female staff—to whom the hon. Gentleman also referred. This is important, because my information from the Railways Board, which is the same as he has had locally, is that there is unfortunately no work at Horwich for the women machinists now employed at St. Helens, because those women are employed in making new sheets, the demand for which at present is insufficient to provide work at Horwich for women. Indeed, as I have already said, there is an abundant supply of these new sheets.
This brings me to another point which I do not think the hon. Gentleman touched on this evening, but which he mentioned to me on the telephone. That is the question of supervisors, to which I believe he would like an answer. At present, it appears that the supervisors are not properly aware of the arrangements negotiated by their unions with the railways. This agreement was made last March, and its main provisions are as follows.
First, not less than three months' personal notice of impending redundancy is to be given. Secondly, all men under 60 will be offered a suitable workshop supervisory vacancy in their own class or a lower class or category in their own region or in other regions, but they can choose, if they like, to take discharge on compensation. Thirdly, workshop supervisors who are transferred to a lower class or category retain the rate of pay of their former class, and can proceed to the maximum of their former scale in due course. There are also provisions for free residential travel, lodging allowances, and financial assistance towards the costs involved in transfer, as for wages staff.
Those men who have earlier service in the wages grades which has not earned them benefits under the salaried superannuation schemes will get lump-sum compensation in respect of that service in exactly the same way as is provided for the wages grades. Again, when a man does not immediately find employment, he will get his unemployment pay made up to two-thirds of his former rate for a period depending upon his age and service. Of course, if a man is already receiving his pension, the rate at which 1304 continuing payments are made will be reduced by that amount.
Where a man who is entitled to benefits under the salaried superannuation scheme is discharged before he is 60. those benefits, subject to the fund rules, will be payable when he reaches 60. If, in addition, he is at least 55 at the date of discharge, he can obtain an advance of the gratuity due to him under the scheme, though he must wait until he is 60 before he has the annuity. Supervisors with expectations under other existing arrangements will receive payments based as nearly as possible on the arrangements which I have described for supervisors generally.
As I think the hon. Member knows, there is nothing secret about these arrangements. They received considerable publicity when they were negotiated, and they were fully covered in the Transport Salaried Staff Journal of April. 1963. Therefore, the information exists in print, but if any of the staff at St. Helens, as the hon. Member suggested when he spoke to me, are not aware of the arrangements and how they affect them personally, I know that the management will be very ready and willing to give them any information they require.
I should say that the arrangements apply specifically to workshop supervisors but I am informed that comparable arrangements are now being actively negotiated between the railways and the unions in respect of salaried staff generally, and any salaried staff at St. Helens not covered by the agreement for supervisors will get the terms of the other agreement like the supervisors, they are, in any case, pensionable at 60.
I appreciate the hon. Member's concern on behalf of his constituents about these matters and the closure of this work, the offer of employment at Horwich, and the doubts about the supervisors. In the same way as I appreciate the concern, so I am informed does the Railways Board, but, unfortunately, there are always problems of this kind in cases of this nature, where the changed pattern of the railways, or any industry, make it necessary to have closures. As far as railway staff are concerned, I know that any such problems, in accordance with instructions issued by the Railways Board 1305 to local managements, will be dealt with sympathetically and individually. The House will be interested to know that the railways have appointed a director of resettlement whose task will be to see that this is done efficiently and thoughtfully for men as individuals.
I think that I have covered more or less all the points raised by the hon. Member. If there is anything which he has found complicated and does not understand or which I have not made clear to him, and if, after considering what I have said and discussing it with his constituents, there are still points which are not clear, perhaps the hon. Member will either get in touch with the Railways Board or will tell me. I will see that any points of difficulty are brought to the attention of the Board, which is responsible for all management matters affecting its staff—and it is management matters that we have been dicussing this evening.

§ Mr. Spriggs
May I draw attention to the fact that the staff concerned have never heard of any offer of road transport between St. Helens and Horwich?

§ Mr. Galbraith
The hon. Member must appreciate that I am acting as a spokesman for the Board. This is not something which is run by the Ministry of Transport. My information is that at one stage some of these workers, about to be transferred, raised the problem of transport and asked whether it was possible to have a bus. While this was being discussed, these particular workers lost interest and took jobs elsewhere. No other members of the staff have raised it.
What I was saying to the hon. Gentleman was that, if there were members of the staff who wished to transfer and who were still interested, the matter would be considered if they would raise it with the management again. Of course, I cannot bind the Board; it would, obviously, depend on numbers and all sorts of considerations like that. If there are members of the staff who are interested in a bus, they ought, as was done previously, to raise the question with the management.