NARBOROUGH RAILWAY STATION (Hansard, 9 December 1968)

§ Mr. John Farr (Harborough)

Nar-borough is a station on the Leicester to Birmingham line which was closed on 4th March, this year, and that fact alone makes this debate unusual, because I am not seeking to prevent a closure, but trying to secure the re-opening of Narborough Station. I would not be attempting this course unless there were firm and unusual grounds for this action to be taken.

As the Parliamentary Secretary knows, all the usual closure procedures were followed by the Railways Board. The proposal to close the station was advertised, there was the appropriate T.U.C.C. hearing and the closure of Narborough and other stations on the Birmingham-Leicester line was confirmed by the Minister on economic grounds. Due to extreme local pressure and the numbers—about 2,500 weekly—using the line, Blaby Rural District Council and parish councils which were affected decided to organise a petition which was signed by more than 1,300 regular users of the service and sent to British Railways who in reply on 9th January, this year, said that the financial position did not justify retention of the local stations.

I want here to pay a compliment to Blaby Rural District Council, because, with great perseverance and initiative, it decided to find out what was the financial position in relation to one of the stations due to be closed on 4th March of this year. I refer, of course, to Narborough.

A deputation from the rural district council met the Divisional Manager of British Railways on 28th February to discuss the matter. As a result of that meeting, which was held in the council offices at Blaby, the council received the following letter from the Divisional Manager dated 19th March. He refers to the council's earlier letter, and continues: I now enclose a firm proposal giving details of the train services I would be able to provide from Narborough station, together 176 with the station terminal costs which your council will be called upon to provide to establish this service. The most suitable date for the implementation of these proposals would be 6th May, 1968, when our summer timetable alterations come into being, and, should the decision of your council be that they are prepared to finance this service, I should require at least a month from the date of such decision to get things moving. I should be grateful if you could bear this in mind. I also enclose details as promised showing the cheap day fares which were operative prior to the withdrawal of services. I want to call special attention to certain phrases used in that letter. It is not an ambiguous letter. In the first paragraph, it states quite clearly that he is enclosing "a firm proposal". In the second paragraph, he goes so far as to suggest a date for the recommencing of train services to Narborough. He even encloses specific details of the proposed timetable up to 4th May and that after 6th May of this year, should the council accept the proposals. He also details the contributions which the council would be required to make to keep this facility: namely, if the station were staffed from Monday to Friday, £1,300 per annum; and if it were staffed from Monday to Saturday, £1,500 per annum.

The members of the council were delighted to receive that letter, but they discussed it amongst themselves to decide how best to relieve their ratepayers of the sum of money that they were required to find, namely, £1,500. Accordingly, they conducted correspondence with British Railways for a week or two until, as a result of what the Railways Board wrote on 24th May, the council agreed formally and notified the Railways Board that the outline given by British Railways of the services that they would provide in their letter of 19th March was accepted, and they asked for a legal agreement to be entered into with the Railways Board.

So the matter rested for four weeks, until 21st June, when they were told out of the blue that British Railways would not proceed, as the reopening of Narborough station, in the words of the Divisional Manager, … would alter the characteristics of the line and might encourage other local authorities to apply to have their own local stations reopened. 177 It is not too much to say that the whole district was incensed when this complete about turn of policy by the Railways Board was received and made public. The council had been submitted firm proposals by the responsible Divisional Manager, and, so taken aback by this volte face was the council that, not unnaturally, they asked me for help.

I wrote to the Minister, and the Joint Parliamentary Secretary, who is to reply to the debate tonight, in his letter of 1st August told me that the responsibility for such affairs rested with the Railways Board. I accordingly wrote to the Chairman of the Railways Board, and on 9th October he replied saying that the responsibility for such affairs rested with the General Manager of the specific region within which Narborough railway station falls.

On 14th November, a deputation from the council and myself were lucky enough to have a meeting with the General Manager of the region at Euston. The General Manager was very courteous. He listened with care and attention to the proposals which were put to him by the council. But, at the end, he firmly told the council that the Railways Board was not prepared to reconsider its decision to close down Narborough station, pointing out that it was not so much a matter of finance, but a matter of policy that was involved.

My reason for being here tonight is to try to put to the House my own view, which simply is that Blaby Rural District Council has been kicked from pillar to post in this business. Narborough station is closed; a firm offer is received from the Railways Board to reopen it; and, as soon as this is accepted by the council, the Railways Board withdraw the offer.

As I have said, the negotiations were conducted at the appropriate local level—that is, Divisional Manager—and the arrangements made by the Divisional Manager should be honoured by the Railways Board.

Let me put this to the Minister. If the Joint Parliamentary Secretary tonight were to have a decision that he had properly taken publicly annulled by the Minister of Transport, confusion would reign at St. Christopher House. It would be unheard of for a Minister publicly to refute an arrangement which had been 178 entered into by his deputy. Surely I am not being unreasonable in asking that the same principle should apply here. A great public monopoly like British Railways must play to the rules. I ask the Minister, as he has the power, to direct the Railways Board to reopen Narborough station on the basis which has already been agreed.

§ The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. Neil Carmichael)

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) for raising the subject of the closure of Narborough station.

I know very well that there was a great deal of local dissatisfaction at the decision of my right hon. Friend the First Secretary, when she was Minister of Transport in August, 1967, to give consent to the Railways Board's proposals for the closure of a number of small intermediate stations—one of which was Narborough—between Birmingham and Leicester.

I sympathise with the feelings of the hon. Member and his constituents at no longer having a rail passenger service calling at Narborough station. But this must be seen in a wider perspective than the purely local one.

First, let me reiterate that the decision to give consent to closure of Narborough station was taken only after very full consideration of all the issues involved. Detailed information on the use made of Narborough station, the views of the East Midlands Transport Users' Consultative Committee on hardship which would result from closure, and advice from the Regional Economic Planning Council and from my right hon. Friend's colleagues concerned with particular aspects such as future development, industry and employment, were available to us.

We recognised that the alternative use of buses would not necessarily be as convenient as the rail service. This was well recognised and was explained at the time. The question was whether the difference would be such as to cause undue hardship.

The fact remains that when the Minister was looking at this case originally she was concerned not only with the economies to be achieved from the individual station closures, but the sort of service 179 that would be of the greatest benefit for the majority of people using the service over the whole area. It was in the light of all these factors that consent to closure of Narborough and the other stations was given.

Following the enactment of the Transport Bill, it might be argued that the situation has changed since consent was given to closure of Narborough station, to the extent that the Minister has more direct responsibility for the way this service is operated in that he will be grant-aiding the total service. But this does not alter the fact that the Minister must still look at the benefits of the service as a whole. Social needs of the area were taken into account when deciding to give consent to closure, and my right hon. Friend has no reason to think that the situation has changed since the closure decision was given in 1967.

Indeed, as part of the examination of this case which led up to the announcement by my right hon. Friend on 15th November that this service would be one of those which he is going to grant-aid from 1st January next year, we did look at the sort of people using the service, and considered quite firmly that a limited-stop service would provide much greater benefits than the previous local stopping service.

I recognise that this kind of argument may seem rather irrelevant when the hon. Gentleman is referring to only one out of what were 17 stations on the route between Nottingham and Birmingham. But, although this point is the sole subject of our debate tonight, I should tell the House that we have already had similar approaches in respect of three other stations on the Nottingham-Birmingham route.

The Minister in considering the social needs of the services would not be doing his duty if he ended up with the old 180 service reinstated. He is convinced that he gets the best value for money—and we must remember that it is grant-aided—from the way in which the present service is operated. My right hon. Friend is completely unconvinced that there is any case for spending Government money on reopening Narborough Station as compared with all the other claims he has to consider under Section 39 of the Transport Act.

He can certainly make no promises at all, but, if there were to be general local agreement—and by that I mean general agreement locally—that it would improve the facilities for local people if just one or two stations were re-opened on this route, and if it were clear that any agreement would not be the precursor of similar claims to any other closed stations, and provided that there were local agreement to pay the additional grant required to re-open and maintain them, then I think my right hon. Friend would be prepared to consult the Transport Users' Consultative Committee for the area with a view to considering whether the increase to local amenities would offset the slight disadvantages caused to longer distance travellers by these additional stops.

I feel that that is as far as I can go on behalf of my right hon. Friend. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will consider the proposition which I have made, and will take it back to his local people to see what they think of it. I stress that we really mean a general agreement, in order to avoid the continual raising of cases for all the 17 stations along the line. I hope that, following the history of this line, the hon. Gentleman may be a little grateful at least for the efforts we have tried to make on his behalf.