HC Deb 19 April 1972 vol 835 cc705-16

2.0 a.m.

Dr. Edmund Marshall (Goole)

The port and town of Goole, which I have the honour to represent, is only some 150 years old. Until the 1820s there was little to speak of there. But then, with

the building of the Aire and Calder Navigation system of canals reaching the river Ouse at Goole, the place became the hub of a waterway network stretching far across the West Riding. At the confluence of the canal and the river, the Aire and Calder Navigation developed the dock estate, round which the town grew. The traditional basic trade was the transfer of coal brought down the canals from Yorkshire pits for shipment either abroad or round the coast. Goole thrived on its advantages of being the country's most inland port. But without the canals and the coal trade, and without the docks, there would never have been a town of Goole.

In 1947 the ownership of the Aire and Calder Navigation passed into public hands, so that today the canals with their commercial freight services belong to the British Waterways Board and the docks to the British Transport Docks Board, which is also the navigation authority for the lower reaches of the Ouse. Public ownership of these facilities ought to have been greatly to Goole's advantage, enabling the heavy dependence of the town on the docks and canals to be reflected in the policies of the respective boards. But this hope has diminished over the years with the growing independence of the boards and the abdication of all responsibility for board policies by the present Government, whose attitude generally is that public enterprise should be run on unmitigated commercial lines.

These trends have been accompanied by a steady fall in the coal trade, due partly to the contraction of coal output and partly to the collapse of coastal trade in coal for gas manufacture and electricity generation. I wonder whether anybody ultimately responsible for fuel policies ever gave a thought to the impact of his decisions on ports like Goole. Solid fuel shipments through Goole have declined from 1,494,376 tons in 1969 to 839,798 tons in 1971, with a further drop likely in the present year. A contraction at this rate in the staple trade of any port threatens to have widespread social repercussions.

In these circumstances the people of Goole are keenly searching for new trade. With an unemployment rate in the town of 6.6 per cent. and a large daily exodus of manpower, no opportunity can be lost of bringing business to the port. The British Waterways Board is developing facilities under the names of BACAT and LASH which enable canal barges to be shipped overseas aboard specially built ocean-going vessels, ready for further journeys on inland waterways round the world. Goods could thus be transferred from Barnsley to Basle or from Leeds to St. Louis in the same barge all the way. Obviously, Goole would be a key centre for such trade.

Yet the Government are threatening to dismantle the British Waterways Board, belittling the board's commercial activities, and may even sell off the freight services to private interests. Any fragmentation of the inland waterways network would threaten to diminish one of Goole's traditional sources of trade. In the interests of Goole, the Govern- ment should keep their hands off the present structure of the British Waterways Board.

Meanwhile, severe blows to Goole's chances of attracting more shipping trade have been dealt by the British Transport Docks Board. Last July the dues for vessels using the docks were raised by 20 per cent., and the board has recently announced a further increase of 10 per cent. to be applied from 1st May this year. Changes on this scale do not accord with the Government's undertaking that price increases in the nationalised industries should be limited to the CBI norm of 5 per cent. per year.

The Government have paid no attention to their own calls for price restraint. Instead, they have insisted that the docks board fix prices at levels calculated to enable each individual port to balance its books, and they have rejected the suggestion that the board should adopt policies of cross-subsidisation to help small towns which are heavily dependent on their local dock trade.

In Goole's case, the last available financial accounts, which are for the year 1970, show on the docks an operating surplus of £12,000, but payment of interest charges of £70.000 has led to a final deficit of £58,000. These interest charges, derived through the marvels and mysteries of accountancy, could be wiped out by a single stroke of Government initiative, as has happened elsewhere among nationalised industries.

Such action by the Government would complement the policy announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Budget Statement on 21st March: namely, that a new system of regional development grants would also be available for schemes which safeguard existing employment and for straightforward modernisation."—[Official Report, 21st March, 1972; Vol. 833, c. 1367.]

To safeguard employment in Goole docks the Government should now wipe out the outstanding debt of the British Transport Docks Board, thereby removing any need for increased dues. I call upon the Government to take this action immediately and prove the seriousness of their intentions to give extra help to intermediate areas. Without action of that kind, the problems of Goole will persist.

It is unlikely that these increased dues will help the docks board to balance its books; they are more likely to diminish trade and make the situation in the long run even worse. Although the port is well reputed for quick turn around times and good labour relations, there axe signs that the increased dues will drive shippers away.

In the last fortnight, for example, the weekly service run by the Board Export Line to Delfzijl in the northern Netherlands, which has used Goole Docks for 40 years, has been transferred elsewhere solely on account of the increased dues. What is more, many vessels which might have been expected to bring trade to Goole are now using private unregistered river quays on the River Ouse at Selby and Howden Dyke and on the River Trent at Burton upon Stather. In the six months January to June, 1971, there were 1,200 berthings at these private quays. The growing use of these wharves, with their cut-price dues because they are not covered by national dock agreements, particularly injures Goole, since these places cater only for vessels of small draught on which Goole is wholly dependent.

Ports which can accommodate vessels of deeper draught are little affected by this diversion of smaller vessels. Perhaps the Government believe that these pirate ports provide healthy competition, but no such competition can be fair when Goole is saddled with heavy interest charges. The river quays would provide competition on equal terms only if they, too, were brought within the ownership of the British Transport Docks Board.

Furthermore, dock dues at Goole include amounts payable in respect of a toll on the River Ouse, introduced by those (Lower) Improvement Act, 1884. At present there is no collection of this toll for vessels using the Ouse to reach the unregistered quays higher up the river, and so again trade in Goole docks suffers from unfair discrimination in this way.

The Government should enable the docks board to levy the Ouse toll on these vessels which bypass Goole. Indeed, the whole question of river dues payable on all vessels on the Lower Ouse and Lower Trent is something to which the Govern- ment, through the BTDB, should give detailed attention, fixing a level of dues which ensures that competition from unregistered quays is on a fair basis.

To sum up, I should like on behalf of the whole community of Goole to ask the Government to reduce the difficulties now facing the port through no fault of its own. If the Government refuse to take action, my constituents can only assume that it is the policy of the Government that the roots of Goole's whole existence should be eaten away.

2.12 a.m.

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

The hon. Member for Goole (Dr. Marshall) has spoken about a number of difficult problems of which I accept he has considerable personal knowledge, and I do not blame him in the least for making a number of quite good constituency points, even though his economics are very shaky.

The hon. Gentleman's constituency includes the port of Goole, to which I paid a flying visit last week, flying quite low over the quays there in order to see something of the Trent and Ouse from the air. Goole, like the other main Humber ports, is administered by the British Transport Docks Board, and its difficulties, which have been exercising the mind of the hon. Gentleman and, indeed, my own for several months, are common to all the board's Humber ports, and not least to the great port of Hull.

During my visit last week I was impressed, above all else, on the transport side by the contrast between this whole area's splendid potential—the great rivers, a magnificent estuary, the vast new industries of steel, chemicals, petroleum, and so on, and its location directly opposite the Common Market port of Rotterdam—and the much less impressive, even the lagging, condition of its shipbuilding and ports industries.

The hon. Gentleman knows that the commercial situation of the Humber ports, including both Goole and Hull, has been deteriorating steadily for some years. Costs have been rising, and traffic, taken as a whole, has been falling though there have been some exceptions. The reasons for this decline are complex, and I am sure that it would be rash of me to try to pinpoint particular causes, but the House may recall that we had an Adjournment debate earlier this year about the situation of the Humber ports, arising out of a proposal by the BTDB to close to William Wright and Albert Docks at Hull.

The Board had reached that decision because of the mounting losses at Hull, which, I am sorry to say, will be shown to have risen to about £900,000 last year when its accounts are published, and that happened despite all the efforts of the Board to reduce costs and increase revenue.

I emphasise again tonight what I said in the last debate; namely, that the Government are just as much concerned as hon. Gentlemen opposite about the human and social problems involved in dock closures and reduced activity at our ports. We care a great deal about the present and future employment prospects on Humberside, including in the Port of Goole.

Only last week I met union representatives on board the ferry across the Humber. I was glad to meet them. I wish again to make it clear that decisions about the future of the ports and the day-to-day management at Goole must be a matter for the board and its local management committees.

The hon. Gentleman said that this was abdication on the part of the Government.

Dr. Marshall rose——

Mr. Griffiths

"Abdication" was the word that the hon. Member used. Does he really imagine that Ministers and civil servants in Whitehall offices are capable of running the day-to-day operations of a port? If he imagines such a thing, I must inform him that he is out of touch with commercial activity.

Dr. Marshall

The Government have abdicated their political responsibility in this matter.

Mr. Griffiths

That is a matter of opinion. It would be wrong for Ministers or officials to seek to interfere in either the day-to-day running of the port, or, indeed, the board's decisions about the capacity and location of the docks it thinks are needed, or are not needed, to meet its requirements.

Since my talk with the union leaders I have made inquiries, and I am satisfied that the board is in no way lacking in recognition of the human problems involved. So far as possible it is trying to deal with redundancies, where they occur, in a humane fashion and by voluntary severance agreements covering the port as a whole.

It is fair to add that the situation of the Humber ports would, in any case, have been difficult over recent years because of the general trade recession, from which, happily, there are signs that we are now emerging. I am bound to add, however, that the difficulties of these ports have been made worse by needless industrial disputes.

I need not tonight weary the House by listing all of them, but the hon. Gentleman will know that there have been a whole series of one-day strikes, frequently without notice, and that there are cases where bans have been placed on the mobility of labour as between one particular part of a hatch of a ship and another and unofficial bans on containers. The situation is that if shippers cannot count on good service and the prompt handling of their goods they will take their trade away from those ports, which will suffer the consequences.

Goole, which is situated near the mouth of the Yorkshire Ouse, is a port traditionally associated with coal traffic, which has been steadily declining, though it is still important. The port also handles other bulk cargoes, such as ores, chemicals, timber and general cargoes including wool and foodstuffs. In recent years the management has aimed at diversifying the port's trade, and a new development in this context has been the successful import of motor cars from France.

Mention of Goole's traditional traffics brings me to the various points upon which the hon. Gentleman laid stress. One was waterways. I agree absolutely with him that the prospects for BACAT and LASH may well be good. I am very interested to see whether we can achieve progress with these techniques in this country. But I must reject the hon. Gentleman's suggestion that we are proposing in any way to run down the commercial aspects of the British waterways. Only the day before yesterday I met the commercial carriers at the Department of the Environment and had a detailed discussion with them. I was able to tell them that if they are able, with the British Waterways Board, to put forward any sensible, viable schemes for the promotion of commercial traffic on the waterways, my Department will be very glad to look at them and, hopefully, will seek to help them wherever possible. There is no question of our writing down or writing off the commercial development of the waterways wherever that is appropriate and commercially viable.

The hon. Gentleman also spoke of price restraint in the ports and complained of some rise in the charges in Goole. The charges are imposed simply to enable the port to pay its way; and it is very difficult for the port to pay its way. But I hope the hon. Gentleman is not suggesting that it should not try. His remedy was to wipe out the British Transport Docks Board's debt. This is one of those facile solutions so frequently put forward from the benches opposite. But I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman would apply the same logic to the private companies operating some of the private docks that he has complained about. Would he write off their debt as well? Is it not a fact that they, too, must carry the capital charges of their business?

The hon. Gentleman said that all would be different if the Government would intervene, write off the debts and allow the British Transport Docks Board to start again. However, the British Transport Docks Board welcomes the opportunity to manage its business in a commercial fashion. That is the only real test of whether or not the traffic can be carried in a sensible way.

I now refer to the growing use of private riverside wharves on the Humber, the Ouse and the Trent. The hon. Gentleman mentioned some figures. It is difficult to be sure of the actual amount of movement, but there can be little doubt, I think, that trade over those wharves has increased appreciably in the last year or two. By now it is substantial, though in absolute terms the increase can easily be exaggerated in relation to the total traffic of the Humber.

The hon. Gentleman asked, in effect, what the Government propose to do about the situation. Regarding the use of riverside wharves, clearly there can be no question of Government intervention. The decision on what port facilities to use must be a matter for the commercial judgment of traders and ship owners themselves. There may be many reasons for their choice: convenience, price, and reliability of service. But only they can make it. It is not the business of Government to try to make their decisions for them. Indeed, my right hon. Friend has no locus to intervene, even if he wanted to. He has no power to do so.

So I hope that the hon. Gentleman will recognise that traders have, and must have, the right and the freedom to decide for themselves whether they should use the facilities offered by Goole or by any other of the British Transport Docks Board ports. It is for them to judge and decide whether the services provided by the riverside wharves are more or less suitable and attractive to their business.

A better solution to the problem of the riverside wharves is for the regular ports to offer a better service, and that means simply improving the performance at the board's Humber ports as well. It requires better relations between mangement and labour so that the port users can feel confident of obtaining a first class service, and over recent years that is exactly what they have been unable to count on.

For all who care for these ports and all who have an interest in them—the docks board, other port employers, representatives of the port workers and users and indeed, the hon. Gentleman—the right solution must surely be to co-operate in their own interests so as to revive and improve the fortunes of their port.

I believe that the future can be a good one, for in one sense Goole, with the other Humber ports, is already start-ting to benefit from the brighter prospects of Britain's entry into the European Economic Community.

I mentioned the import of French cars intended for distribution in the north of England and Scotland. This began in Goole tentatively only a few months ago, and I understand that it is now going very well. There should be good prospects of increased traffic for the Humber in other directions. The area is well situated geographically in relation to the Low Countries, Germany and Scandinavia. It is at the end of the belt of ports streching from the Humber to Southampton which can be expected to derive most benefit from this country's joining the European Community.

Moreover, the Humber has immense natural advantages—deep water and good modern port facilities, and it is strategically well placed in relation to the Midlands and the industrial North. The road links to these areas will soon be greatly improved by the completion of the M62, which was accorded special priority in the Government's recent White Paper. The Humber Bridge will also provide an entirely new link between the two sides of the river.

So the prospects of increased traffic are there, for the Humber, for Goole, and for the whole country. The port should benefit from the Common Market, and I believe that, provided only that managements and employees are ready to meet the challenges of our time—I mean by that to meet competition from all comers, including the riverside wharves—there is no real reason why they cannot make a better future for those who work in the ports and for their region as a whole, and in so doing benefit the nation.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-seven minutes past Two o'clock