HC Deb 24 June 1964 vol 697 cc581-92

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

12.47 a.m.

Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine (Rye)

According to my calculations, since midnight we have dealt with 56 Amendments of the Hire-Purchase (No. 2) Bill. Many of them dealt with Scotland and it may be that the Minister will derive more benefit from that than I have.

I now ask the House to turn its attention to the problem of the closure of the Bexhill, West-Crowhurst railway, and to the four matters which I wish to raise with the Minister.

I raised the first with him at Question Time a short time ago. Since then he has been good enough to write me twice at some length about the points I put to him on that occasion. I must briefly refer to them again, because the Answers so far given to me are not entirely satisfactory to my constituents and it would be helpful if these matters could be explained more clearly.

On 12th February, in reply to a Parliamentary Question, my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport divided the possibility of the announcements which were to follow from the proposals for closures of railways into two classes, when he said: The Railways Board are likely to propose for closure in the next few months a number of passenger services to holiday resorts. He went on to say that in three cases …my consent will not take effect before 1st October. The other category he dealt with in this way: Closure proposals which have already been published by the Board are at various stages of consideration. In making my decision on each of these I shall bear in mind its possible effect on holiday travel arrangements this summer."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 12th February, 1964; Vol. 689, c. 70.] Thus, in neither of those categories did he refer purely to closures; in the first he referred to proposals for closure and in the second to closure proposals.

By 12th February there was no doubt whatever that there was a closure proposal for this railway. On 3rd March, the Minister issued a statement concerning the first set of closures which he was announcing. That statement included these words: The Minister had recently agreed with Dr. Beeching that rail closures affecting holiday resorts published after 12th February would not come into effect until after the holiday season was over. The difference between that statement and the earlier statements which had been given in answer to Questions was that the statement of 3rd March referred quite clearly to rail closures, whereas the other two statements referred to proposals for closure and closure proposals.

My constituents felt that when the Minister referred to rail closures, that meant the announcement of a closure. When the announcement came for this railway to be closed, they felt that it fell under the statement the Minister made on 3rd March as a rail closure which would not come into effect until after the holiday period was over. They felt, and some of them still feel, that the Minister had gone back on the word which he gave on 3rd March and that this closure should not in any event have taken place until after the holiday period was over.

The second point which I ask the Minister to consider is that there are still a number of my constituents who feel that the appearance before the transport users' consultative committee was purely a matter of endorsing a decision which had already been taken by the Minister. They feel that the committee was a rubber stamp for the Minister and that even after the committee had found, in this case, that there was hardship, the Minister overruled what the committee recommended to him and decided that, although there was hardship, he would, nevertheless, close the railway.

I have had a little experience in dealing with the question of hardship before the courts. I find it difficult to decide what the Minister is looking for in these cases. There might be serious hardship for one person or for a small body of people, but the problem which the Minister has to decide is whether it is hardship of the degree for which he is looking. There are constituents of mine who feel that although hardship was found by the consultative committee, the Minister disregarded that finding.

The third point to which I should like the Minister to direct his attention is that at these hearings it is impossible for questions of finance to be raised. We know that advice has been given to the Minister by a distinguished accountant and that the figures provided at the inquiry were in his view adequate for the purpose of the inquiry. There is, nevertheless, the strong feeling that if it were possible for the figures to be challenged at the hearing, if they could be dealt with as in a court, with cross-examination and, possibly, alternative suggestions of how the railway might be managed or what economies might be effected, the deficiency in this case could have been reduced to such small dimensions that either the Minister would have been driven to the conclusion that the railway should not be closed or, alternatively, that it would be of such a nature that, possibly, with the help of the Bexhill Council or in some other way, the deficiency might have been met.

The last thing that I would like to ask the Minister is just to look at the memorandum which was left at his Ministry on 11th June by a deputation from the Season Ticket Holders' Association. A letter has been received saying that many of these points may be dealt with tonight, or in the alternative that those not dealt with tonight will be dealt with in subsequent correspondence. Therefore, it would be quite wrong for me to try to introduce into this debate any of the details set out in that memorandum.

On this, there are just two things I would like to say. One is that some of the evidence which has been obtained by the transport users' consultative committee since the closure took place makes it rather difficult to discover just what has happened to the people who were travelling on the railway. At the inquiry the evidence was that 44 people were travelling on the 4.20 train; on 18th June only six apparently appeared at St. Leonard's, and there is no indication as to what has happened to the remainder.

Secondly, I would like to ask the Minister to bear in mind the following views which have been expressed in a letter to me from the secretary of the Season Ticket Holders' Association. He says: When the handling of coal or other freight is 'rationalised' at one centre, every effort seems to be made to keep the traders happy. When passengers are 'raionalised', car parks are not available at the outset, reasonable bus services to all parts of the town are not in operation, the change-over stations are not made ready to cope with the new traffic, and connections by rail are not provided for passengers living near the other two local stations in the town. These are the four points I want to bring to the attention of the Minister, and I hope that he may be able to deal with some or all of them in the time which is available.

12.58 a.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. T. G. D. Galbraith)

As my hon. Friend the Member for Rye (Mr. Godman Irvine) has said, tonight's debate is really a continuation of the exchange which took place between us at Question Time on May 13. My hon. Friend then suggested that my right hon. Friend had made a pledge to close no lines affecting holiday resorts until after the summer, and he has repeated that tonight.

I tried to explain to my hon. Friend that he had got this wrong, but he was not satisfied and so here we are tonight again debating the Bexhill, West-Crowhurst line. My hon. Friend has been very persistent in his campaign to keep this line open, and, clearly, his constituents have a doughty champion who is always on the alert to protect their interests. He raised the matter, first of all, as far back as 30th April last year, during the two-day debate on the Beeching Plan, and since then he has been very active in the representations he has made. Curiously enough, this is actually a help to us because it makes it doubly certain that my right hon. Friend is fully aware of every aspect of the situation when he comes to make up his mind.

Before I deal with the details of the Bexhill, West-Crowhurst line, I want to say a word about the suggestion which has been made that in allowing this, or indeed, any other holiday line, to close before the summer, my right hon. Friend has been guilty of a breach of faith. This was really the most important point in the remarks made by my hon. Friend.

This suggestion seems to me not to stand up to examination. As I told my hon. Friend in answer to his question, the idea of a breach of faith must be based on a complete misunderstanding of the situation, and although, in a way, I am sorry that he did not accept what I said then, at least tonight he has given me another opportunity to spell out the facts and, I hope, once and for all remove the sense of grievance which still seems to exist.

I should like to begin by quoting what my right hon. Friend said on 12th February in reply to a Question from his hon. Friend the Member for Antrim, North (Mr. H. Clark): I recognise that many people will want to be certain of their holiday travel arrangements in advance. The Railways Board are likely to propose for closure in the next few months a number of passenger services to holiday resorts. Owing to the requirements of the statutory procedure I should not in any case be able to announce my decision on these proposals until well into the summer. I have accordingly arranged with the Board that where, after studying the T.U.C.C. report and all other relevant factors, I consent to any such proposal, my consent will not take effect before 1st October. This is of course without prejudice to whether I grant or refuse my consent in any particular case. Closure: proposals which have already been published by the Board are at various stages of consideration. In making my decision on each of these I shall bear in mind its possible effect on holiday travel arrangements this summer."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 12th Feb., 1964; Vol. 689, c. 70.] That is what my right hon. Friend said, and from this it is clear that all he was stating was that proposals made by the Board after 12th February would not result in a closure at the earliest until 1st October, but that for proposals made before 12th February my right hon. Friend had complete freedom of action to agree to a closure at whatever date he thought right. In other words, a distinction was made between proposals which were in the pipeline on 12th February and those which were not.

As my hon. Friend knows, the Bexhill, West-Crowhurst proposal was published as long ago as 8th June, 1963. There was, therefore, no question of its closure coming as a surprise. Holiday makers had ample notice, and for this reason it is in an utterly different category from new proposals made after 12th February which might give intending holiday makers little warning and no time to make alternative arrangements.

But in spite of this, it has been suggested that even if the statement made by my right hon. Friend in the House drew a clear distinction between cases in the pipeline before 12th February and those proposed after this date, the handout, to which my hon. Friend referred, which was circulated at the Press conference held on 3rd March, when my right hon. Friend announced his decision on a bunch of railway closures, did not repeat this distinction and made holiday resorts feel that, irrespective of when the proposal was made, there would be no closures this season. This was the interpretation which my hon. Friend was seeking to read into this hand-out.

What that statement to the Press of 3rd March said was: He"— that is, my right hon. Friend— had recently agreed with Dr. Beeching that rail closures affecting holiday resorts, published after 12th February, would not come into effect until after the holiday period was over". If this were the first statement on the subject I can see that it is just possible that it might be taken as referring to closure decisions and not closure proposals. But when my right hon. Friend had made a categorical statement of his policy in the House a few weeks before, I find it very difficult to understand how people could believe that the whole policy would be completely reversed—because that is what that interpretation means—in a casual Press hand-out when the original basic statement had been announced formally in the House.

However, let me make quite clear what the position was and what the position is—because there has been no change. Holiday resorts are divided into two classes—those where the rail closure proposal was made before 12th February and those where it was made after 12th February. If the proposal was made after 12th February, then there could be no closure until 1st October at the earliest. If, on the other hand, the proposal was made before 12th February, then my right hon. Friend has complete freedom to agree to the closure at an earlier date if on the merits he thinks that that is right, and it is into this category, the pre- 12th February category, that my hon. Friend's line falls.

I do not consider that the holiday aspect of the case in respect of Bexhill is a very good one, because this closure does not deprive Bexhill of a railway at all. As my hon. Friend is well aware, the train service from London to Bexhill, Central, via Hastings, is still in use, and holiday makers can get to Bexhill much as they have always done. The suggestion that the closure of the Bexhill, West-Crowhurst branch line makes Bexhill less accessible to tourists and less attractive is, if I may say so, something of a red herring.

Mr. Godman Irvine

I follow that, but that is not what my constituents understood the Minister to be saying. What the Minister was saying was that resorts would find that their railways would continue until the end.

Mr. Galbraith

What my right hon. Friend was saying was that holiday resorts would be treated in a particular way according to whether the proposal had been made before or after 12th February.

I was pointing out that I did not think that Bexhill was a holiday resort. I say that because the number of travellers on the branch line that is closed did not show the summer peaks customary with holiday resorts. There was a steady load throughout the year, indicating that the line catered for commuter traffic rather than for holiday makers.

So much for the allegation that there was a breach of faith. There was not, and I hope that my hon. Friend will accept that. If there was any misunderstanding, I am sorry about it, but there has been no change in the Government's or my right hon. Friend's policy on this matter.

I turn now to another of the points raised by my hon. Friend, about finance. This is something which is raised in many other cases. It is said that the grounds for closing the line could not have been sustained if the full financial figures had been made available. I think that my hon. Friend knows what the procedure is. First, the railways on their own initiative—and I must stress that it has nothing to do with the Minister or with the Government—decide in the light of their own commercial judgment which lines they wish to close. The calculations which lead to this decision are clearly a function of management which the Transport Act, 1962, laid fairly and squarely on the shoulders of the Railways Board. It is the Board's responsibility, and nobody else's and it has freedom to exercise this responsibility as it thinks best.

Nevertheless, in spite of that fact, and in view of the public's interest in the financial aspect of closure cases, the House will recall that last year my right hon. Friend appointed a distinguished accountant, Sir William Carrington, to carry out an independent investigation. My hon. Friend referred to this in his speech.

In his report, a copy of which is in the Library, Sir William said that the method of calculation used by the Board was in principle soundly based and that the figures were entirely appropriate for the T.U.C.C.'s purposes. I should say what has often been said before, that the figures are given to the T.U.C.C. because it asks for them, not because it is under any statutory duty to investigate them, but because it wants them as a kind of background information giving a sort of indication of the size of the problem against which it can measure the cost of any alternative services which it might be considering.

Just as the railways are free and independent to make a commercial judgment on the finances of the situation as they see it, so the T.U.C.C. is free and independent to make its assessment of hardship, and that is its only duty. It has nothing to do with finance, but purely hardship. The T.U.C.C.s are the creatures neither of the railways nor of my right hon. Friend. They do not endorse the Minister's decisions, because the Minister has no view at all on any closure proposal until he gets the T.U.C.C.'s report. This means that the T.U.C.C.s cannot endorse the Minister's views, because he has not got any.

As for rubber-stamping, I have read about 100 T.U.C.C. reports and I can assure my hon. Friend that the last thing that a T.U.C.C. does is to rubber-stamp anything. I wish people would not use that expression so much with regard to these closures. It is not true to say that the T.U.C.C.s rubber-stamp the Minister's views, or Dr. Beeching's views. The T.U.C.C.s go about their task with a great sense of responsibility, and in the most searching way. They consider every objection lodged with them—those in writing just as much as those made orally by objectors at the public hearings—and they make the most careful assessment before reporting to the Minister.

On the Bexhill, West—Crowhurst proposal, the T.U.C.C. made it quite clear that there would be difficulties for certain travellers if the closure went through. It was as a result of this, and of his own examination, that my right hon. Friend decided that he could allow the closure to take place only if certain conditions, designed to remove the difficulties as far as possible, were fulfilled.

Now I want to say something about those difficulties which the T.U.C.C. highlighted, and which were also referred to in the memorandum sent to my right hon. Friend—to which my hon. Friend has referred—by the Season Ticket Holders' Association from his area. I shall not be able to deal with all the points, some of which are detailed, and refer to management matters, but I shall see that as full an answer as possible is sent to this organisation by letter.

One of the most important points raised, which was also raised by the T.U.C.C, was the increased journey time for commuters to London. As originally proposed this would have meant, on average, an extra hour's travelling each day, using Bexhill, Central and changing at Hastings. We thought that this was too long, especially as 130 of the 250 season ticket holders lived at Sidley and points even further from Bexhill, Central.

So the conditions laid down by my right hon. Friend ensure that at peak hours the train journey between Bexhill and London will not take more than an extra 12 minutes, and by providing two additional buses in the evening the increased travelling times on the peak hour trains amount to between 28 minutes and 16 minutes only from London to Sidley. When we remember that those who commute from Bexhill to London have been prepared to put up with substantially longer journeys than is usual for commuters—about two hours each way—I do not think that these additions of a few minutes are much out of the way.

Then there is the question of the extra cost. I admit that people travelling from Sidley to London will have to pay 7d. each way for a bus to Bexhill, Central. Over a year this amounts to about £15 extra, but on top of a season ticket, which costs £128 a year anyway, this increase of just over 10 per cent. is not very substantial. In any case, had the Ministe r decided, on grounds of hardship or for any other reason, to refuse permission to close the line, the railways would almost certainly have considered increasing the fares. That must be borne in mind.

Nevertheless, we decided that the effect on season ticket holders should be cut down as much as possible. For this reason we welcome the various undertakings by the Board to do this. They help the season ticket holders. This shows clearly that the Board, the T.U.C.C. and the Minister, in their respective functions, pay very close attention to the needs and difficulties of local users when they are considering proposals which, if carried through, will save taxpayers a considerable sum of money. What is never really appreciated is that the Board does not propose closures unless there are substantial sums of money at stake. Here the railways expect closure to save them over £28,000 a year, a very substantial sum of money.

This amounts to a subsidy of £47 per year per person using the line, and when sums like this are at stake I think that my right hon. Friend is quite entitled to agree to alternatives even though these make the journey a little longer and a little more expensive. But though this may be inconvenient, by no stretch of the imagination can these extensions be held to amount to hardship.

The area is not denuded of trains and, indeed, there is a good public transport service, perhaps not ideal for commuters but for the general traveller very serviceable indeed. I therefore think that my right hon. Friend has discharged his duties fairly. Decisions in these matters are never easy and ideal solutions are never really possible, but I would like to assure my hon. Friend that his constituents' views have been considered most sympathetically. Indeed, if he had any doubt on that, the very length of time that it has taken to reach a decision should prove that they have been gone into very carefully.

We weighed the various conflicting interests. My hon. Friend said that his constituents did not understand how the decisions were reached. We had to weigh the conflicting issues, the financial position of the railways, the possible hardship to the traveller—that is where the transport users' consultative committee comes in—and the wider economic and social consequences for the district, and that is the point where the Minister and the Government come in, and we took the views of other Ministers.

This is not something that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport decides on his own. We took into account the views of other Ministers on the result that closure might have on the district. It was only after a great deal of thought that we decided in the national interest that the continued existence of this branch line could not be justified when the alternatives provided were so good, when judged by any reasonable objective standard.

I quite agree that my hon. Friend's constituents would not see it in this light, but I hope that this explanation will help my hon. Friend and will show his constituents that their views were not ridden over roughshod, but were very carefully considered. I do not, as I say, expect them to agree with everything that I have said, but I hope that I have explained to them how we have reached our decision and that it is a fair one.

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

Adjourned at eighteen minutes past One o'clock.

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