HC Deb 27 July 1971 vol 822 cc454-67

4.44 a.m.

Mr. John Farr (Harborough)

I felt I had to seize this opportunity of raising the subject of rural transport in Leicestershire because of a recent heading in one of the local newspapers to the effect that the Midland Red Bus Co., which has a virtual monopoly in the county, is to axe another eight rural services at the end of this month.

This decision represents all the anxieties and worries we have had in the county for many years on this subject. I want to express the dissatisfaction of many people in the county with public transport, outline one or two of the causes of this dissatisfaction, and have the temerity to suggest where the solution lies.

Public rural transport in Leicestershire has been doing a vanishing act in the last 10 to 15 years. Ten years ago we had 28 railway stations where real live trains stopped frequently. Today we have two in operation in the constituency. The only alternative, bus transport, is operated mainly by the National Bus Company-owned Midland Red. Its activity has steadily diminished and its prices have steadily increased over the years. One of the results was shown in a recent survey by the county council—no fewer than 50 communities, up to a size of 1,000 souls, had no public transport.

One tends to accept this situation as inevitable. People seem to think that as we get more and more affluent—in or out of the Common Market—and get more motor cars, so the need for rural transport decreases. They tend to forget the hardship of sections of the community who are completely cut off from public transport. I could give many examples, but I will confine myself to describing the general tenor of the hardship.

Particularly numerous are the expressions of concern to me by pensioners who cannot get their pensions. Some of these small villages have no post office and so they might have to go to the next village or even further—yet there is no public transport. They have to become supplicants or scroungers of lifts from friends, or they have to arrange for someone else to collect their pensions. Large numbers of them cannot drive or afford to buy a car. This section of the community rely particularly on public transport.

Another hard hit section are the very young and housewives with young families in isolated communities. If the husband takes the car to work, the wife has to shop from a mobile grocery. That is an inadequate way to live and causes a great deal of inconvenience. People cannot afford to take a taxi to shop, pick up pensions or visit doctors, who are increasingly concentrated in towns or very populous areas.

Over the last few years, I have noticed the effect which this form of isolation is having on village life. The character is changing, whether we like it or not. The village now is tending gradually to become the place where only people with motor cars can live in comfort, acting as a sort of commuter centre to the neighbouring towns, and people without motor cars are tending to be forced away. Because of their isolation, and for other causes which curtail village life and activities, such as the closing of village schools, they have to abandon their village and go, perhaps, to live near relatives in the town.

In the several debates on rural transport which we have had over the years, there has been a general expression of view from both sides, including the Front Benches, that a good public rural transport system is essential to the countryside. Yet, despite recognition by both parties of the need to provide a decent public rural transport system, I can only record that during the same time the situation has deteriorated, with public transport either not being available at all or being beyond the purse of people of fragile means who would wish to use it.

I come now to a few suggestions of help to remedy the situation. The Government have an interest in all the methods which I shall propose, though some lie more directly within the power of authorities other than the Government. In the forefront of my mind in this connection at present is the Post Office. I pay tribute to the helpful attitude of the managing director of the Post Office towards the possibility of providing a postal bus service in Leicestershire and elsewhere in the country. Such a service operates in certain parts of the United Kingdom already.

The Post Office has been most helpful in looking carefully into suggestions which we have put to it from Leicestershire, and we have a letter from the Post Office now saying that it will consider any recommendations which the County of Leicester might make for the provision of postal buses on specific routes. These detailed recommendations have not yet gone from the county, but they will go, and I am sure that they will receive sympathetic consideration by the Post Office.

The postal bus is a familiar part of the scene in the countryside in parts of the Continent, and, as I say, it is operating in several places in the United Kingdom. Its extended use should be carefully considered, for it could offer alleviation of the problem, if not a complete solution, where the interests of the Post Office and of the villagers who would wish to use it can be brought to coincide.

Next, I suggest that more effective use should be made of the powers under the Transport Act, 1968, which authorised local authorities to make a grant to local bus companies to subsidise a service or services. It provided that any subsidy made by a local authority to an uneconomic route may be half repaid by the Government through grants. In this respect I must pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, whom I am glad to see here at this early hour, for the helpful way in which he has dealt with the correspondence I have had with him in connection with the operation of the Act. This particular Section is a useful one because it places the responsibility for providing financial assistance to local bus companies upon those to whom it belongs, namely, the local authority which knows the background to the case.

Many people are still under the misapprehension that a 50 per cent. grant is all they will receive. I would particularly like to thank my hon. Friend for his letter of 21st July. I can condense it by saying that the purpose of the letter, which I regard as most valuable, was to point out to me, and perhaps others, that some local authorities, by virtue of the rate support grant which they attract from central government, instead of having their support of an economic bus service subsidised to the extent of 50 per cent., would have such subsidy to the extent of over 60 per cent. As far as I understand it, it could be well over two-thirds.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Eldon Griffiths)

indicated assent.

Mr. Fair

I am glad to have my hon. Friend's confirmation of this important point. If the local authorities were more aware of that we might have a better response from them in implementing this part of the Act. How can the Government help directly? I will not raise matters of taxation, which would be out of order, but there is one anomaly which I could not let pass and that is the extraordinary situation whereby a bus undertaking owned and operated by a local authority is corporation tax free and yet a bus undertaking operating in any other way, owned by say, the Midland Red, by the National Bus Company or by a private company, attracts and must pay the tax.

I am in order in calling attention to this anomaly. What it means in my constituency is that hundreds of thousands of people living in Leicester, are served by a bus company owned by the city which pays no corporation tax. Yet my constituents in the adjoining county are served by the National Bus Company, the Midland Red, which has to pay corporation tax to the extent of thousands of pounds annually. It means that every one of my constituents who travels by Midland Red in Leicestershire is directly paying a proportion of the very large sum which Midland Red has to pay in corporation tax and yet the city brethren, just over the border in Leicester, escape corporation tax altogether and are carried at a cheaper rate.

This is an extraordinary anomaly. One would be safe in asuming that it is easier and more efficient to convey people within a city boundary, where routes are shorter and population is denser, than in the country, where routes are longer and population more sparse, and that therefore financial assistance in the way of some form of tax relief was needed for the country services. Yet the emphasis is the other way round. I tabled a new Clause to the Finance Bill which was not selected, so I hope that if my hon. Friend grasps the purport of my argument he will have a word with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on this anomaly.

Another direct action by the Government which could assist us in arresting the decline of public transport in rural areas is in connection with a review of the powers of the traffic commissioners. I have been in correspondence with my hon. Friend also on this matter, when I drew his attention to the case of Thistle Coaches and its application to run a new bus service from Lutterworth to Bar-well. The commissioners, strange to relate, granted the company's request despite opposition by the Midland Red, which, although it did not run a similar route, felt it its duty to oppose the application. However, the commissioners hedged their consent with almost impossible conditions relating to the picking up and setting down of passengers, and after a week or so of running the service Thistle Coaches had to abandon it because the conditions were so difficult to comply with.

In the past 10 years, the countryside has been stripped of many forms of rural transport; yet it is still more difficult for an independent bus operator to break a monopoly company's stranglehold than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. In the Thistle case, the extraordinary thing is that the Midland Red felt that it must oppose the application even though it was not running a comparable route. The time has come for the activities of the traffic commissioners to be investigated.

My hon. Friend wrote to me on 21st June in reply to representations I had made to him about what I might call the "dead hand" of the traffic commissioners. He said that he was considering reducing unnecessary controls, that investigations had taken place and that in due course a decision on the lifting of controls on private bus operators would be announced. We in Leicestershire and many other rural areas are looking forward to an early and encouraging announcement from the Department.

I shall not read out a host of letters tonight—this is not the time for that—but I can honestly say that I have had dozens of letters from local councillors in my constituency all asking for the small man, the mini bus operator, the small private coach operator, to be allowed to provide a service in competition with the nationalised giants. I can speak with some authority only about the Midland Red Company, which is a wholy-owned subsidiary of the National Bus Company. It has a dog-in-the-manger attitude to any application by a private bus company for routes in Leicestershire, but that attitude is out of date and not in the public interest. With private enterprise allowed to renew its interest in the provision of fare-paying services on rural routes, the situation could be transformed.

I hope my hon. Friend appreciates that the independents are very anxious to help. The small operators and small coach owners coming from the locality are generally far more efficient. It always disappoints me to see on tiny country roads in Leicestershire a vast 48-seater coach, owned by the National Bus Company, trundling along and practically empty. Why not allow the mini coach operator to do the job in his own area using his own people? He knows the roads and he does not block them to every passer by, and he knows the times when local people want to travel.

I should like to thank my hon. Friend for listening to my few comments. One final aspect of interest is the use of the, railways which have been closed down, and in Leicestershire we have a number. In several instances the lines have been removed and we are left with a strip running for miles through the countryside. Sometimes it is sold off to farmers or local authorities for development. One suggestion for dealing with part of the old Great Central line between Lutterworth and Leicester is that it should be turned into a car-testing track, and there have been other suggestions.

There is a good suggestion for another railway line which has been completely closed for about ten years. This is between Rugby, Peterborough and Market Harborough. This would make a very pleasant walk for many people from the town who would like to walk out into the country and enjoy everything that the countryside can give.

The writer of a letter in which that suggestion was made said that people should be able to walk along these routes without interfering with agriculture and he added that townspeople would like the opportunity of using disused railway lines for the purpose. He asked me to put the matter to my hon. Friend and the local authority concerned, because he felt that it would be a useful and healthy walk for townspeople without interfering with detailed agricultural activities and without being run over by motor cars on our speedy motorways. At the same time as being rural walks for townspeople, they would be useful regions for preserving flora and areas where wild life could continue to exist to some extent. He hoped that we should be able to make some arrangement for these lines to pass on the heritage for future generations. This is a good idea. It is probably not strictly within the ambit of my original subject, but I thought that while pleading for Leicestershire rural transport, I would add a plea for the future use of derelict railway lines with which my constituency is now littered.

5.10 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Eldon Griffiths)

I am happy that my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) has been able to raise this important subject on a day and in a week when the Government are able to announce further important steps towards helping rural people who do not own motor cars in their public transport problems. My hon. Friend has fairly and effectively painted a picture of the difficulties faced by some of his constituents, especially those in small villages, as a result largely of the deterioration—he described it as the vanishing—of rural bus services. My right hon. Friend and I am sympathetic not only to the problems that my hon. Friend has outlined but also to many of the solutions which he has proposed.

But we are not only sympathetic. We are doing something about it, and to a great extent on the lines proposed by my hon. Friend. For one thing, as my hon. Friend knows, the Government provide a fuel grant for the bus industry and help on the capital side for the purchase of new buses, too. Where appropriate we also willingly pay not only half the cost of rural bus grants under Section 34 of the 1968 Act, but in addition, we pay rate support in respect of a local authority's contribution.

I remind my hon. Friend—he might well pass this on to some of his constituents—that grants need not be restricted to revenue support. They can equally be used for capital purposes, such as the purchase of a new bus. Moreover, they are not confined to "regular" bus services. They can extend to any service, regular or irregular, by bus, mini-bus or hired car, which is, in the opinion of the local authority, for the benefit of people living in the rural areas and which is covered by a road service licence. These grants are very flexible and I assure my hon. Friend that when the applications come to my Department, they are dealt with at once. There is no extensive red tape in this matter.

Beyond that, we have recently made available to the National Bus Company very substantial loans, running to many millions, to meet some of its deficits. I recently had the satisfaction of asking the House to amend the drivers' hours regulations, and I am sure that this has been a help to rural bus services also.

Today, however—as it is now 5.15 a.m., perhaps I should say yesterday—we have taken another quite important step with the publication of the pilot studies on rural transport in two counties, Devon and West Suffolk. Without giving away any secrets, I can tell my hon. Friend that all being well, later this week my right hon. Friend hopes to make known further major proposals based in part on those studies, which are published today, and on the Government's general consideration of how best to help the rural bus to stay in business.

I say "stay in business" because the bus industry, and not only in rural areas, is literally fighting for its life. The transport climate is changing and a great deal of the business of the bus is being taken away by the more flexible and convenient motor car. The whole bus industry is buffeted by inflation and the result in many areas, especially rural districts, of which my hon. Friend has spoken, is that bus companies find it increasingly difficult to keep their conventional buses on our rural roads. Country people, as he rightly said, are being hard hit.

It is a measure of the decline in the bus industry that in the early 'fifties its passengers made about 16,000 million journeys each year; today they make no more than 10,000 million journeys, and that is a decline of just over two-fifths. Over the same period there has been a fivefold increase in the number of private cars. The car's competition is accelerating, so that while car ownership has more than doubled since 1960, passenger demand on the buses has gone down to close to one-third. So the bus industry, I am afraid, is operating in quite different and very much more difficult conditions than 10 or even five years ago. It is having to drive up a hill which is getting steeper in front of it all the time.

The main factors operating against the bus can be set out quite simply. The first is that because the number of bus passengers is declining, bus services have had to be scaled down or, in some cases, withdrawn. As a result, the overhead costs are spread over a much smaller number of journeys, so that for those who still travel on the buses fares have gone up steeply.

The second factor is rising costs, and I remind my hon. Friend that of the costs of bus operation more than two-thirds is wages. This makes the bus industry particularly vulnerable to the ravages of wage inflation. The National Bus Company, for example, had to face wage increases of 5 per cent. in September, 1969; 9 per cent. in March, 1970, and a further 10 per cent. this year. The result inevitably is still higher fares, and these higher fares in turn mean still more passenger loss.

The third problem is operational difficulties. More cars on the road mean more traffic congestion, and the buses, in particular, suffer from traffic delays. So bus services become more irregular and less reliable for their customers, and these difficulties are aggravated by staff shortages—shortages which were made worse by the drivers hours Regulations introduced by the previous Government, though assisted, I believe, by the amendments we made so recently.

All these various factors—operational difficulties, competition from the motor car and pressures of wage inflation—interact on each other, and Midland Red, which runs the bulk of rural services in my hon. Friend's constituency and throughout Leicestershire, illustrates the problem. Its revenues fell by £502,000 in 1970, while its expenditure rose by £738,000. So an estimated operating surplus of about £570,000 for 1970 became an actual operating loss of £669,000. No company, private or public, can possibly go on at that rate, so Midland Red, like other bus companies elsewhere, has not only raised its fares but has cut its services.

I perfectly understand that this produces both hardship and, I think, anger, among bus passengers, but it is simply no good ignoring the situation of the bus operator. We cannot have five times more cars and still keep the same number of buses.

It was against this background that we recognised the hardship of the particular groups which my hon. Friend has identified in rural areas. I think here particularly of the isolated rural elderly, often cut off, as my hon. Friend rightly says. I think, too, of the young who do not have motor cars themselves, and who are often cut off from entertainment or social activities in the evenings. And I think of the housewife, including the wife in the family where the husband may use the car to go to work but who is not able herself to move by public transport during the balance of the day.

It is because the Government were genuinely concerned about the situation of these particular categories of people—and, indeed, country folk generally—that we set up last year the two pilot studies in West Suffolk and Devon, so that we could find out what the position really was for those who do not have private cars, and are dependent for mobility on some form of public transport. The studies have been published, and copies are now available in the Vote Office. Despite the geographical differences between West Suffolk and Devon, there is a remarkable similarity in their conclusions. I quote just one short paragraph from the West Suffolk Report, which says that the elderly: . . need to get to a Post Office regularly to draw their pension and have reasonable regular access to shops for their weekly needs. They need to be able to visit a doctor when necessary and to get to a chemist to have prescriptions made up. It is probably amongst elderly people too that difficulties of visiting a partner or relative in hospital are most prevalent … My hon. Friend will agree that those who have reached those conclusions are genuinely aware of the human need that is created.

The studies bring out four or five main points. First, there is still a rôle for the bus in rural areas, though it is more limited than in the past. Second, unprofitable bus services will need to be supported by local authorities under the rural bus grant scheme. Third, where demand is too small to justify the conventional bus, the large bus trundling empty around the lanes, it should be possible to devise ways and means of putting the available motor cars to better use to meet the individual fragmented and often irregular needs of people without cars. Fourth, there is scope for the greater use of mini-buses, whether on regular runs or to meet a specific requirement. The studies also bring out that postal bus services might well be explored locally where circumstances are favourable, though the surveys do not support the notion that there is unlimited scope for them. I was glad to hear what my hon. Friend said about the co-operation of the postmaster in Leicestershire. I shall be very interested to' hear the conclusions his county council reaches on the matter. Though there is some scope for postal buses, there may not be so much as my hon. Friend suggested.

Above all, the surveys bring out the vital rôle local authorities have to play in the matter. The main decisions on rural bus grant are theirs, and they have a powerful leverage through their control of such ancillary transport activities as school buses and other welfare bus services. There is a need to take a grip on the total transport system and try to organise these things better to suit the local needs. What strikes me about the surveys is that there is in total more transport than ever before in the rural areas, but most of it is motor cars, and the question is how to make better use of that transport.

The Steering Groups make a number of suggestions, and I hope that my hon. Friend will consider them carefully. I am sure that he will find them interesting. They make some useful suggestions which I hope local authorities will take up. For example, can we organise and regularise the giving of lifts in cars? Can the idea of a social car service which has been developed in Lincolnshire be used elsewhere? Can local people—I think here particularly of the voluntary organisations—devise some form of clearing house for providing information both to those willing to give lifts and those seeking to obtain them? Cannot the idea of tokens, to be provided, for example, to the elderly, be developed at a local level?

None of this is to say that the rural bus is finished. On the contrary, the surveys make it clear that there is still an important rôle for the bus, but its use increasingly will depend on local authority assistance through the rural bus grant. The local authorities are by far the best placed to take an overall look at the transport facilities available because of their interest in school and welfare services, and so on, as well as in the Section 34 grant. But the crucial point which is brought out so clearly by the surveys is that the time has come when we must reduce the restrictions on the availability of transport which local authorities and others in future may choose to support, and that is why the Government have been reviewing the licensing system which originated at a time of rapid expansion in the bus industry and has contributed largely to the route system as we know it but which is no longer as relevant as it was to the new circumstances of today.

Therefore, we have concluded that in the present position of the bus industry there is no longer a clear case for such rigid controls as have existed in the rural areas. The emphasis must now be placed on much more informal arrangements involving a multiplicity of small operators perhaps and a great deal more private enterprise. My right hon. Friend will therefore be announcing shortly further important proposals for revising the licensing system and these will be particularly aimed at helping the rural areas. If I may appropriate my hon. Friend's phrase, we shall be seeking to remove what he described as the dead hand. I ask him to await my right hon. Friend's statement rather than ask me to comment on the problem of Thistle Coaches in respect of which an appeal has been made to the Secretary of State.

I wish to say a few words about the problems in Leicestershire which my hon. Friend mentioned. He will know that the Leicestershire authorities have set up a rural bus committee, coordinated by the county council. The Midland Red Company has co-operated with this committee in reviewing those services which are losing money to see whether they can be modified so as to reduce or even to eliminate the need for grant. I understand that the list of routes requiring assistance has been reduced to eight—my hon. Friend referred to eight proposed to be closed—and of these the local authority has decided not to support five. I fear it is probable that those five will be withdrawn.

However, the remaining three will receive temporary grant while the long term needs are investigated. It may well be that against the background of today's and further announcements by the Government the county council will wish to look very carefully at those remaining routes—the Leicester-Hungarton, Leicester-Hallaton-Market Harborough and Leicester-Medbourne routes. Midland Red has indicated to the county council that generally it will not oppose small operator's who wish to take over routes which it has abandoned, but obviously each case has to be considered independently.

I understand that the Leicester County Council is appointing a rural transport co-ordinating officer—and I welcome its decision—whose job it will be to look into the long-term travel needs of the county. This is the sort of development which the Government hope to see, and I believe that it will assist in dealing with the problem my hon. Friend has mentioned.

Mr. Farr

Would my hon. Friend, tomorrow or the next day, look at my remarks about corporation tax, which I think were interesting?

Mr. Griffiths

I had not forgotten them and I will look at them. But I think that my hon. Friend will find that the proposals which my right hon. Friend has in mind, although they do not cover that point, will be helpful in general.

My hon. Friend's suggestion about the disused railway lines is very close to my heart. It is open to local authorities to approach British Railways about its disposal policy and to get a first option on land and to give the appropriate planning permission for the kinds of use which my hon. Friend has in mind. The Countryside Commission and most certainly the new Sports Council will be anxious to see these potential linear parks or bridleways or areas of ecological value brought into the maximum possible use.

My hon. Friend has done his constituents, Leicestershire in general and the whole cause of rural transport a great service in raising this matter so eloquently.