LONDON TRANSPORT

HC Deb 09 February 1966 vol 724 cc481-8

7.19 p.m.

Sir Anthony Meyer (Eton and Slough)

May I turn the House's attention for a few minutes to Class IV, Vote 15 (K), Grant to London Transport Board, an increase of £3,850,000. This Supplementary Estimate relates to London Transport's need for additional subsidy on account of the previous Minister of Transport's insistence on delaying the fare increases which were asked for by London Transport last year.

The reason why London Transport has to seek an increased subsidy is, I submit, not merely because it was not allowed to raise fares when it wanted to. Indeed, increased fares are likely in due course to require still higher subsidies, because the level of fares is already acting as a deterrent to potential bus travellers. This is particularly true in areas of relatively low housing density such as my own constituency of Slough which, to its misfortune, comes within the London Transport area; or, to be more exact, half of it does, and the other half is in the Thames Valley area. There are restrictions on the extent to which one operator can make incursions into the other's territory, which is very inconvenient for those who live in the London Transport area where one of the biggest housing estates is.

Mr. Speaker

Order. We cannot discuss on this Bill the relations between the London Transport Board and other operators, unless this Question is related to the Supplementary Estimate.

Sir A. Meyer

I am very much obliged, Mr. Speaker. To return to the Estimates which are before us, already the single fare to the main shopping centre from the surrounding housing estates is something more than 1s., and sometimes a good deal more than 1s. This is certainly beginning to have a deterrent effect on potential bus users. This was brought out by the results of a poll which was carried out by the Slough Junior Chamber of Commerce.

I take leave to doubt whether, if London Transport had been able to secure permission to raise the fares when it wanted to, it would in fact have avoided the necessity to seek an additional subsidy. There is, however, another reason why London Transport has to come to the House again and again for increased subsidies. This reason stems from the nature of London Transport and the nature of the task laid upon it as the monopoly undertaking for the London area. In order to deal with the very heavy pressure of passengers at two brief and widely spaced periods of the day, London Transport needs a very large number of buses and crews and a very large administrative body to look after them.

As regards the crews, there is almost certainly room for many more economies in the way of single manning of buses, fixed fares, standee buses, and so on, than the transport unions have been willing to allow London Transport to make on any very extensive scale. But, even if economies could be made on these lines, London Transport would still be faced with the difficulty that it needs large resources for two brief periods during the day and that for the rest of the time these resources are largely idle.

The consequence of this is bound to be bad for London Transport's finances, because this is clearly a most uneconomical way of using labour. It also leads to a still more unfortunate result. This pattern of traffic compels London Transport, as it does any other very large transport undertaking, to make extensive use of the split shift system. This is intensely and very naturally unpopular with those who have to work it. I must say that I would not like to have to do it myself. Indeed, I have been told by a senior member of London Transport in my area that it is the split shift system rather than the level of wages which makes it so difficult for London Transport to recruit the staff which it needs, particularly in areas of high employment.

Mr. Speaker

Order. We cannot discuss the virtues or vices of the split shift system, except as linked to the fare increases which the grant in the Supplementary Estimate prevented the London Transport Board from making.

Sir A. Meyer

I am very much obliged, Mr. Speaker. I was trying to show that this was one of the factors which caused London Transport to have to raise its fairs and seek an increased subsidy. If London Transport has difficulty in recruiting crews, it has to cut down the schedules or, worse still, is unable to stick to its advertised schedules. This is the sorest point of all, because a man who has waited on two days for an advertised bus which does not come thereafter makes other arrangements to get to work and London Transport has lost his custom, money and goodwill. We in this House have to put the subsidy up again. The upshot is that a more and more expensive service is becoming less and less satisfactory. I know that it is bad in central London, but I assure hon. Members that in outlying parts of the London Transport area, such as Slough and other areas like it, it is very much worse.

This vicious spiral of higher fares and higher subsidies, few passengers and fewer buses, will get us nowhere. I am convinced that a remedy can and must be found. Surely the aim should be to even out the load on London Transport so that it can operate at roughly the same level throughout the day. Something towards this end can be achieved by staggering hours of work. I do not believe that we have anywhere near reached the maximum which can be achieved in this way, though we may have achieved the maximum which can be brought about by exhortation and it may be that the need now is for incentives and deterrents.

There are two other ways in which something can be done to even out the load. The first is to allow firms to provide their own transport facilities for getting some of their people to and from work, for these by definition are the people who travel in the rush hour and so bring about this intolerable peak load. At present, London Transport will not give the necessary consent to firms to operate their own buses, unless they provide the service free. Firms cannot do this, because it produces intolerable inequalities in remuneration between those employees who can use the firm's transport and those who cannot.

The other thing which can be done is to allow private operators to operate along London Transport routes or, if this is quite unacceptable, between London Transport routes. I know the argument to the effect that this creams off the best of the traffic—the profitable traffic for London Transport, but surely this is nonsense. This heavy peak hour traffic is precisely the traffic which is causing London Transport to operate uneconomically.

So it may well be asked how a private operator stepping in to cream off this traffic can make a profit where London Transport cannot. The answer is simple. If it is a private operator operating on a small scale—a garage proprietor with five or six buses—he sends his buses out in the morning to take the peak load along a route which has been allotted to him. In the middle of the day, the drivers return to the garage and repair customers' vehicles and do ordinary engineering work. Out they go in the evening again for the evening rush hour, and at night the buses are used for excursions. In this way a small enterprise can make 100 per cent. use of the capital and labour which it employs, in a way which London Transport, through no fault of its own, cannot possibly do.

If we just stick at the point of saying that we cannot accept any kind of competition with London Transport because this will make its finances even worse than they are at present, the only result which will be achieved is still higher subsidies, still fewer buses, and a still worse service. I appeal to the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to urge his right hon. Friend to look again at the whole philosophy behind London Transport and see whether the time has not come for a radical new approach to this problem to enable people at last to get to work on time.

7.28 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. Stephen Swingler)

Mr. Speaker, I understand from your Ruling that our discussion tonight is a very narrow one. Therefore, I cannot go into all the problems afflicting the London Transport Board. The hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Sir A. Meyer) referred once or twice, I think, to increased subsidy. I should like to make it plain that what we are discussing is a special grant to the London Transport Board which had never previously been made, on account of a special decision by the Government that the Board should not make fare increases, for which it had proposed to apply to the London Transport Tribunal, in the particular situation existing in the middle of 1965. This was a special situation, as I think the hon. Gentleman said. Subsequently the Board has been permitted to go ahead and make fare increases in the London passenger transport area.

My right hon. Friend the previous Minister of Transport took this special step, with the agreement of the Government, so that there should be a pause for investigation of the affairs of London Transport which were at that time being examined by a Select Committee. The Select Committee on Nationalised Industries chose in the last Session to scrutinise the affairs of the London Transport Board.

The Government decided, because of that situation, that it was necessary to make a particular examination of the situation of London Transport, and because my right hon. Friend was engaged in discussion with the Greater London Council and other authorities about measures of traffic restraint and control in the Greater London area this special grant of £3,850,000 to the London Transport Board is included in the estimates to cover the Board against this loss.

No doubt, Mr. Speaker, you will direct me if I transgress outside the rules of order, but this brings up for consideration the causes of the situation which impelled the Board at that time to ask for another run of fare increases in addition to the regular annual fare increases which have been going on for a decade. There has been a regular annual loss of traffic by the Board and there has been a regular transfer from public transport to private transport in the peak hours during a decade, or even longer.

I cannot go further into these questions, which were probed somewhat in the debate arising out of the Select Committee's Report on the London Transport Board when this grant then also fell for consideration. But in reply to what the hon. Member for Eton and Slough has said, I should like to say that we must make up our minds whether we want to have an adequate and efficient public transport system or not. It is no good arguing against these measures, or other measures which are under consideration, for the assistance of the public transport system and at the same time arguing, as the hon. Member has done, that we should deliberately organise the subtraction of traffic and passengers from the public transport system by other means.

We know that there are a number of causes of this situation, one of which is the increasing number of private vehicles being used, causing buses to move less efficiently, less regularly, and less punctually and causing the Board to be less financially viable or to apply for more and more fare increases.

One of the things which we have to do, therefore, is not only to consider for the future how to reconcile the two aims put forward, that we should have a London Transport Board operating in an area that includes part of the hon. Gentleman's constituency, and has done so for many years—that is the aim of providing an adequate public service—with, at the same time, a service that is paying its way.

This was one of the problems inherited by the present Government which fell for urgent consideration in 1965 and which impelled my right hon. Friend, with Government support, to make this grant and which we now also continue urgently to consider. There are two parts of this. One part, which my right hon. Friend is pursuing energetically at the moment, consists of discussions with authorities like the Greater London Council on the reduction of traffic congestion, the better control of parking policy and the better disciplining of private transport in the area. The other part consists of measures to improve and make more attractive the London Transport services to attract more passengers.

Under that heading we certainly have to consider the question of fare increases. A number of points mentioned by the hon. Member for Eton and Slough are, as he knows very well, matters of the managerial responsibility of the London Transport Board. They are the subject of discussion between the Board and the trade unions—on the increase of productivity, ways and means of improving the service, and ways of exercising administrative economies to make the system more efficient.

In spite of criticisms made about the reduction of services and the difficulties about recruitment of manpower for the bus services, the hon. Member will know that during the recent period, as I have had cause to tell him in correspondence about his own constituency, some improvements have been made. Some improvement has been made, for example, in Slough. At the request of the Slough Borough Council, the London Transport Board, in conjunction with Thames Valley, has recently brought into operation a new cross-town route. The Board has also recently introduced an express coach service from Windsor to London with a new, more comfortable type of coach. I simply give these as an illustration of the fact that the story is not all on one side about declining and deteriorating services.

London Transport Board has been making efforts to improve its techniques and to increase its services, in some cases for the benefit of the citizens represented by the hon. Member. We admit straight away that this situation confronts us with great difficulty and all those who believe that this great city must have an efficient and attractive public transport system. Those concerned are confronted especially with financial difficulties today.

We know that in spite of the fare increases which have taken place it is still likely that the Board may require financial help in 1966 on current levels of fares and costs. My right hon. Friend will have to consider that situation and she may have to bring forward in due course proposals to the House on how we are to meet it. This will depend on what progress we make in the twin effort to get better traffic management in and around the London area, a better deployment of traffic generally which, as my right hon. Friend said, is bound to mean some additional restraints upon the use of private cars, which create more congestion and therefore make more difficult the movement and the efficiency of public transport. We propose to combine with these urgent measures to improve the public transport system itself.

We know that this is not an easy matter because of the Board's difficulty in recruiting the manpower which it needs in a situation where there is a very high level of employment and where it is often difficult for busmen to find homes convenient to their places of work, and because the job of driving and conducting the buses has been made so much less attractive over many years now by the build-up of traffic congestion and the difficulties of organising an efficient system.

I can make no further announcement tonight. My right hon. Friend has recently had urgent consultations with the Greater London Council about better traffic controls and she is in continual consultation with the London Transport Board in an effort to assist the Board in the improvement of its services and the reorganisation of its financial structure. I therefore believe that my right hon. Friend was justified last year in deciding on the postponement of the fares increases in order to give more time to the consideration of these measures, in spite of running the Board into the red. We hope in the very near future to make an additional announcement under the two headings which will avoid this sort of situation cropping up in the future.

Mr. David Webster (Weston-super-Mare)

Has the Minister accepted the Select Committee's recommendation that there should be a stronger financial element on the London Transport Board? Can he tell us anything further about that?

Mr. Swingler

No decision has yet been taken upon that point, but the recommendations of the Select Committee are being discussed between my right hon. Friend—who has not had too much time but has had many crises in the few weeks she has been at the Ministry—and the Board, and she hopes very shortly to make announcements about these recommendations and about other proposals which she has in mind.