PUBLIC TRANSPORT SERVICES (WYCOMBE) (Hansard, 27 October 1966)

§ Mr. John Hall (Wycombe)

Mr. Speaker, I must apologise to you and to those hon. Members who may be called upon to remain for detaining you after this very long sitting. It is only because the matter on which I have to speak is of some importance to my constituency that I venture to do it at all.

This is one of the very few occasions on which there is something to be said for the habit which I understand is followed by the American Congress, where one can write a speech into the official record. This is an occasion on which I wish that I could have done that, and I am sure that the Minister has a prepared speech in reply which could have been written in as well, enabling us all to get home a little earlier.

As I cannot do that, I want to put before the Minister the case for my constituency. At the outset, I should make it clear that I am dealing mainly with road transport within my constituency, and not with the rail facilities which serve it. The rail facilities are another problem altogether, and I do not think that the improvement of those rail facilities within the constituency would do very much to solve the problem which I wish to draw to the attention of the Minister.

The main population centres in the constituency are High Wycombe and the rapidly growing Flackwell Heath in the south-east, Marlow in the south and Princes Risborough in the north. Numerous villages and hamlets over the area of some 150 to 160 square miles constituting my constituency look, in the main, to those population centres because they are the shopping and social centres, although there are some villages and hamlets in the north and south, which look to Aylesbury and Henley respectively.

1565 In the main, these centres are linked by bus services largely provided by the Thames Valley Traction Company. There are, as in most constituencies of this kind, villages which have no bus service at all. The village of Dunsmore, high above Chequers, which is in my constituency, has no bus service and never has had as far as I am aware. There are people living on that hill who have never been further than Aylesbury. In my own village of Marsh we have a bus service two or three times a week and we manage to adapt ourselves to it. Inadequate as the services have been, they have been reasonably reliable and they have met the basic needs of the community. But over the last two or three years the services have become chaotic. It is mainly a question of services failing to run. I have had a mounting volume of complaints from constituents and local authorities about the deterioration in the transport facilities.

The major complaint has been that services fail to run. Buses on scheduled services do not turn up and this produces disastrous results. The last bus might not materialise and one is left stranded or one may have to wait for many hours. Workmen are late for work and lose time because the bus on which they rely does not appear. People miss their trains and their appointments, but more serious is the fact that in lonely country areas women sometimes have to wait for an hour or more.

A further complaint which I have received relates the reduction of services and inadequate connections. I can understand the reason why the Thames Valley Traction Company Limited has to reduce some services and finds difficulty in maintaining proper connections between one town and another but this can lead to difficulty and hardship. I had one example given to me recently. A lady constituent has to take her child to a hospital for dental treatment. High Wycombe hospital does not have a dental department although it will have in due course. This lady takes her child from Hughenden to Stoke Mandeville, a distance of 10 miles. To get to her appointment at 2 o'clock she has to leave home at 10 o'clock. It takes four hours to travel 10 miles and she does this week after week. There are many people in a similar position. To travel in my constituency by bus 1566 one has to start very early to make sure one gets a connection.

Representations have been made to the bus company by High Wycombe Borough Council and High Wycombe Rural District Council, myself and others. The company has been co-operative but it has indicated its helplessness in the face of a shortage of staff and increasing traffic congestion. Neighbouring areas are suffering from similar problems.

Early in 1965, Eton Rural District Council initiated a meeting with other local authorities to try to overcome the problem. Following the meeting a resolution was sent to the Minister of Transport, which said: That this meeting, representative of eight local authorities of urban and rural areas, recognises that bus services are deteriorating to a point where they are neither economic nor adequate services, and requests the Minister of Transport to institute a full inquiry to determine:—

1. The present and possible future needs for buses;
2. How these needs may be economically met."

That was sent to the Minister of Transport, and at a further meeting held by these eight local authorities it was decided to ask the Minister to receive a deputation from them, accompanied by the hon. Members who represent those constituencies. The Minister declined to receive such a deputation, and although I believe that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell) and others have been pressing this for some time, so far they have not met with any success. In July of this year the High Wycombe Borough Council and Rural District Council, and Marlow and Beaconsfield Rural District Councils decided to support the action of the Eton group. They pressed for a meeting, but still without success.

I appreciate that this is a national problem, and not only a local one, but it is one which must be solved, because the deteriorating transport service is doing two things: first, it is forcing those who can afford to do so to buy cars, or to use cars, thereby adding to the congestion on the roads when otherwise they would be satisfied to use public services. Secondly it is forcing people who have no transport of their own out of the rural areas into the towns. If people live in areas where there are no public transport 1567 facilities and it is necessary to have some form of transport to get into nearby towns, there is constant pressure, especially by the women folk, for the family to move into a town where they are nearer the facilities which they require.

I have no immediate solution to offer, and I appreciate that it is a very difficult problem. I suggest that we might examine the possibility of introducing small one-man minibuses which might deal with some of the services. We might be prepared to grant more private licences and see whether some individuals might be prepared to run bus services over some of the routes. Above all, we must make sure that we stabilise the existing services so that when there is a timetable it is kept to. We must make sure that if a bus is supposed to run on a certain day at a certain hour, it turns up. If the bus service in my village was as irregular as it is in many parts of my constituency, I should wait for the bus on Wednesday and not be able to get it until the following Friday, because if the bus did not come on Wednesday there would not be another one until Friday. This situation is not tolerable, and I ask the Minister to respond to the request which has been made to him by those local authorities and meet them to see whether it is possible to find some solution to the problem.

The hon. Gentleman may feel that this is a problem which should be solved by private bus companies operating over these routes, but they are, in the main, faced with problems outside their control. They are faced with labour shortages, about which they can do little, and with the problem of traffic congestion, which again is a matter which can yield to some extent to Government policy.

I urge the Minister to change his mind and be prepared to receive a deputation from these local authorities, accompanied by the hon. Members concerned, so that together we may try to find some solution to this difficult, and in my constituency serious, problem.

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

The hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. John Hall) has painted a 1568 picture which, I regret to say, is characteristic of many parts of the country. As the hon. Gentleman said, this problem is not new to us in the Ministry. I know from personal experience and from my constituency, quite apart from the correspondence which I have received, that the kind of difficulties which the hon. Gentleman has described with regard to transport services in the rural areas are being experienced in many parts of the country.

The Ministry not only has the utmost sympathy with the people who are suffering inconvenience and hardship on account of the shortcoming of public transport in these areas, but we are determined that some changes must be made to reverse the trends of recent years in the deterioration of public transport in these areas.

The problems affecting the bus industry are well known and I will summarise them briefly. First, I will give some local illustrations of the position. Many bus operators are today especially affected by shortages of staff. It is the shortage of staff that so often accounts for the unreliability of the scheduled services. Secondly, services in the urban areas are suffering from increasing traffic congestion, and are therefore deteriorating. Thirdly, their costs, especially their labour costs, have risen steeply in recent times. On the other hand, the number of passengers being carried has fallen because of the increased competition from private cars, with the spread of car ownership.

The hon. Member's constituency poses some particular problems in this respect. His constituency, geographically, is largely rural, and shares the problems that affect rural areas in general. In addition, it lies on the fringe of the London area, with the special problems which that contiguity raises. High Wycombe itself is an important urban centre that is suffering from the usual problems of congestion. There are two principal bus operators here, both under national ownership—the Thames Valley Traction Company, whose services cover most of the constituency, and the London Transport Board, whose services are confined to the south-eastern portion of the area, particularly in the immediate vicinity of High Wycombe.

1569 The Ministry, on account of representations made by the hon. Member and other Members in this area, has been in close touch with those operators, although I must make it plain—as I so often have to do on Adjournment debates—that the Ministry is not running buses. We are not operating managerially the services provided. That is the reason why the Minister sometimes resists receiving deputations on subjects which have to do with the day-to-day managerial and operational problems of those who are charged with the responsibility of providing services.

The Thames Valley Traction Company, at its High Wycombe Depôt, is at the moment suffering a shortage of 16 per cent. of the complement of drivers and 18 per cent. of the complement of conductors which it requires to operate the necessary services. We know that recruitment in the bus industry is difficult today, particularly in places where more attractive alternative employment is available, and it is especially difficult to keep and recruit staff where housing shortage is a deterrent. This shortage of staff means that those operators have no spare crews available, so that if members of the staff do not turn up because of illness, delay, or something of that kind, services cannot be covered and have to be withdrawn at very short notice, or without any notice.

I understand that the Thames Valley Traction Company has tried to overcome these difficulties in a variety of ways—for example, by the introduction of one-man operated services, which my right hon. Friend is extremely interested to encourage and about which she has issued new regulations. Five such services are now operating in the Aylesbury—High Wycombe—Marlow area. When all else fails, the company has had to streamline its operations in the worst-affected areas by the straightforward reduction of those services which are in least demand. These reductions have led recently to improved reliability, but the company is exposed to emergencies, like an increased rate of sickness, which are beyond its control.

Let me put the matter in perspective. A year ago, the company operated 14½ million vehicle miles a year. Over the past 12 months, it has reduced its services by less than 250,000 vehicle miles 1570 over the whole area, 70,000 miles of the reduction in the High Wycombe district.

There has been a 10 per cent. shortage of drivers in L.T.B. garages serving the High Wycombe routes for some time, and during the summer it reached the serious figure of 17 per cent. It has now fallen, however, to below 5 per cent., and is no longer regarded by the London Transport Board as a serious problem. We therefore hope—this might be some crumb of comfort to the hon. Gentleman and his constituents—that this improvement can be maintained, to make the services more reliable. The L.T.B. has heavy responsibilities in this area and the maintenance of its services is a matter of management for the undertaking, subject to the statutory licensing and consent procedures.

Traffic congestion is one of the most serious problems for bus operators, particularly in this area. It is particularly bad in High Wycombe itself and has a cumulative effect over a wide area. Unfortunately, there is no suitable diversion for traffic on the A40 trunk road through the town centre. This seriously affects local traffic at rush hours and on week ends and holidays. It causes particular difficulty for the Thames Valley service from Aylesbury and Windsor, which has now had to be split at High Wycombe and operated in two separate sections, with some obvious disadvantages.

The position should improve substantially, however, over the next two years, when the motorway by-pass and the inner relief roads in the town have been built. In the meantime, as a result of discussions which we have had to ease the congestion, the borough council has introduced several waiting restrictions on the A40 in the centre of the town.

In the White Paper on transport policy issued by my right hon. Friend in July, we recognised that public transport must be strengthened by more than one method of approach. This applies to the tackling of the problem in all areas, including the hon. Gentleman's. We are determined to focus all our efforts on a number of things. First of all, we must achieve technical improvements. Technical improvements in public transport can offset the comparatively high labour costs of bus operations, especially the extension of one-man operation. My right hon. Friend is extremely keen to bring about 1571 the extension of one-man operation and the technical improvements involved. She has, therefore, set up a working group of operators, manufacturers and trade union representatives to examine all the technical and operational problems. We hope to get a move on in raising the standard of technical operation to reduce the comparative costs.

Secondly, we want to bring about a better co-ordination of the services, between different bus operators and between bus and rail operators. That is why my right hon. Friend has enlisted the help of the regional economic planning councils in determining the best machinery for the achievement of this co-ordination. We are proposing, in the short-term, voluntary co-ordinating committees at regional level, including the representatives of regional councils, transport operators of all kinds, local authorities, users and trade unionists. My right hon. Friend has invited nominations for membership of these regional transport co-ordinating committees and will, within the next couple of weeks, have another meeting with the chairmen of the regional economic planning councils. We want to get these committees set up throughout the country as rapidly as possible, to build on the operators' already existing machinery and experience in trying to bring about a better co-ordination of the use of available resources.

Thirdly, we must use traffic management measures throughout the country to enable the buses to operate more efficiently. One reason why we want these regional transport co-ordinating committees in areas like Buckinghamshire is to advise us better on the kind of traffic management measures that could be directed to assisting the operation of public transport in the most efficient manner.

Fourthly, the Government have announced plans to deal with the problem of rural buses. Where bus services decline under the pressure of diminishing demand, combined with rising costs, the problem of the minority who do not have access to cars and who need public transport on social grounds must be tackled in a radical way.

The Government see this as a problem in which the local community must take a hand. The White Paper proposes 1572 financial assistance by local authorities and central Government jointly in cases where there is a need which cannot be reasonably met otherwise. The local authority associations have been asked for their views on the working out of the proposed legislation for this and I take the point made by the hon. Gentleman about mini-buses and so on. Conventional bus services are not necessarily the answer where the remaining public need is small. A working party, including the representatives of local authorities and bus operators, is exploring alternatives, such as welfare car pool schemes, the better use of school buses and an extended use of G.P.O. mail vans by fare-paying passengers, and other things of that kind.

We hope, after the next few months, to be able to report measures which we will take in this sphere, combined with the introduction of the powers given to local authorities and my right hon. Friend, to make grants, enabling rural public transport to be maintained. As the House knows, the Ministry of Transport and the London Transport Board are undertaking a joint survey of the London Transport Board's financial needs and commercial policies and the operating and management problems arising from them.

This review is being carried out with the help of outside consultants, whom we have appointed under the guidance of a directing group over which I am presiding. This group includes three senior officials from the Department, three representatives from the Board, including the Chairman, and three independent members. We hope to complete this review by about the middle of next year. Among the other things which the consultants have been asked to consider urgently is the examination of changes in the operating practices of the London Transport Board, which might affect either the profitability or the social usefulness of the bus services provided.

We agree with the hon. Gentleman that for much too long public transport has been allowed to decline, to the great inconvenience of those who rely upon it and to the detriment of the community as a whole, and especially to those communities in remote urban areas or those communities in areas where traffic congestion has become a very urgent problem. I hope that we have shown in the White 1573 Paper on Transport Policy that we are determined to strike at the roots of this decay. We are determined to rehabilitate public transport and to expand it. We have undertaken to introduce legislative proposals to enable assistance to be given, through local authorities as well as central Government——