HC Deb 05 July 1972 vol 840 cc711-20

11.12 p.m.

Sir Richard Thompson (Croydon, South)

I propose to use my good fortune in the ballot to raise a matter of great constituency importance for Croydon, namely, the threatened closure of the West Croydon-Wimbledon railway, [Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."]. From the enthusiastic response to these sentiments shown by hon. Members who are leaving the Chamber, we have learned that the matter is of high importance not only in Croydon but throughout the United Kingdom.

I must warn my hon. Friend the Undersecretary that I have a formidable track record in the matter of keeping open branch lines. It is just about a decade ago that an earlier Minister for Transport, misguidedly as it happens, decided to place under threat of closure the Wood-side—Sanderstead line in my constituency. We fought a battle for a year. I remind my hon. Friend that on 18th December, 1963, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Mr. Marples), then Minister for Transport, conceded to me that this line should not be closed. He added a little piece to the effect that he would review the situation after three years if it were not paying by then. Nine years have slipped by and the line is still open so we know that he decided wisely.

Today I am speaking for the Croydon Transport Users' Association, assisted by the Merton Transport Users' Association, which this very day have presented their case to the Transport Users' Consultative Committee in Wimbledon, opposing the closure of the line. I want to commend the public spirit of these two voluntary bodies. They have conducted researches and polls, held meetings and taken counts. In short, they have thoroughly researched the question whether the users of the line were prepared to tolerate its closure, and the answer they have received is an emphatic "No". My constituents before the TUCC have to prove hardship if they have any hope of keeping the line open. Although I do not want to go into detail into their arguments, I shall summarise them before going on to some of the wider aspects of the matter.

The people affected by the closure of the line are about 1,500 daily commuters and more than 1,000 other passengers drawn from a wide area. If the passenger services are withdrawn, certain things will happen which, in my submission, amply prove the case of hardship. First, three-quarters of these passengers, mostly the commuters, will pay up to 50p more per week in order to get to and from their work. Secondly, anyone who formerly used the line will have a longer and more tiring journey. Thirdly, we shall see a serious increase in the already intolerable road congestion in Croydon, Mitcham and Wimbledon in the rush hour and on Saturdays. Fourthly, the so-called alternative routes, which I have no doubt my hon. Friend the Undersecretary of State will trot out, are slower, less reliable, usually more costly and always less direct. Fifthly, there will be a loss of easy and convenient access to the social, recreational and shopping facilities which make Croydon, the largest of the London boroughs, a magnet for miles around. Sixthly, this will cause the closure of passenger services which will cause particular hardships to special classes of people who use the line. I am referring to school children who make their daily double journey, handicapped people attending the training centre in Mitcham—a very important group—and almost everyone living on the Bedding-ton Lane estate who have no other means of public transport.

I am certain that the British Railways will counter all this by claiming that the line does not pay. It is never difficult to compile figures which the travelling public cannot challenge showing that any particular activity is making a loss. No one can challenge the process which decides which factors are taken into account. There is an old Chinese proverb which says that in a besieged city the cook never starves. British Rail will, if necessary, all find a means of showing that a particular activity does not pay.

Branch lines have never paid by themselves. They must be considered as part of an integrated system which has to be considered overall. The costs of branch lines cannot be isolated.

Let me turn to British Rail's own data on the statistics for operating the line. These show that on Mondays to Fridays 12,671 passenger-miles are travelled every day. Weekly seasons range from 23p to 48p per mile, and monthly seasons from 83p to £1.9p per mile. Let us give the benefit of the doubt to British Rail. Let us take the lower figure; 12,500 daily passenger-miles bring in £125,000 per annum. That is if one does it on 12 monthly seasons—that is to say, assuming that the commuters take out monthly tickets. If one assumes that they take out weekly tickets, which are pro rata more expensive, then the figure comes to £145,000, ignoring altogether Saturday revenue. This shows that we have been given an underestimate of the revenue from the line.

If the line closes for passenger services, according to the Merton survey, some 30 per cent, of the passengers are likely to travel still by rail via Sutton. If they did this, it would produce about £10,000 per annum additional revenue to British Rail. But the rest of the passengers who do not choose to go this way will be forced on to the buses. The revenue of £105,000 they used to pay will be totally lost to British Rail—a net loss of well over £95,000 a year.

Let us look at the flyblown old argument that closure will result in great economies. Of course, it will not. Signalmen, level crossing operators and track maintenance staff will still be required for the freight traffic for which the line, at any rate for some time, is proposed to be kept open.

While we are talking about freight traffic, here is a most astonishing thing. I have discovered that the coal for Croydon B power station actually arrives by road—this notwithstanding the fact that the railway track runs through its back yard and there are ample sidings and unloading facilities. Is not this an astonishing thing? One nationalised industry, the National Coal Board, supplies another nationalised industry, the Electricity Generating Board. One would think they would be reasonable and use a third nationalised industry, British Rail, to take the raw material from the mines to the power station. But one would be quite wrong. This coal all comes from Northumberland. It is taken to the coast. It is loaded into coasters. It is ferried down the North Sea. It makes its way up the Medway. It is discharged at Kings-north and then it is fed into lorries which congest the roads of Croydon, the A20 and the South-East of England in order to supply Croydon B power station.

One would think it was within the wit of British Rail to contrive to send this raw material, given its vast elaborate network, to a guaranteed customer somehow or other by rail. I do not altogether criticise the Croydon power station. It has a duty to get its supplies there as cheaply and as conveniently as possible. I suppose it is found that this can be done much better by hiring lorries. But if British Rail wants to improve the economic return from this line, why does it not fix up a system of freight rates which will enable the coal to be brought all the way by rail, as any rational person would think it ought to be?

I say to my hon. Friend that there is no evidence that this line is not covering its costs. The central overheads in the account, which it is so difficult to challenge, are irrelevant because they will not be reduced by the closure. Nobody imagines that great numbers of staff will be sacked by British Rail because passenger services are withdrawn on the Croydon to Wimbledon line. In any case, these overheads, or a share of them, will afterwards be transferred to all the other services, which will correspondingly become less profitable.

I hope that my hon. Friend, when he considers these matters, will look beyond petty economies which save nothing, infuriate regular passengers, and drive yet more people on to the roads. Let him put all that aside and look to his overall strategy for dealing with commuters.

This is the general part of the case I want to make against the closure of this line. No amount of road building in Greater London will help commuters. We are close to saturation now, and every year sees more cars piling on to our roads. In these circumstances my hon. Friend should be promoting his suburban rail services, not abandoning them. Once closed, the line will lanquish for a bit, I suppose carrying a small and dwindling amount of traffic, and then be lost for ever, but the problem of the commuters will remain and get worse.

Let my hon. Friend learn from the experience of the United States where a great many great cities, having allowed their suburban rail services to dwindle away, are now busy re-establishing them and looking desperately round for new public transport to solve the commuter problem. Indeed, the whole point of the recent Transpo exhibition in the States, at which, I am glad to say, British Rail was represented, and which, I believe, officials of my hon. Friend's Ministry attended, was to encourage research into and development of commuter services.

I wonder whether my hon. Friend realises that the two largest car manufacturers in the world, General Motors and Ford, now accept that urban congestion has reached a point which imposes a limit on the future use and, therefore, of future sales of motor cars. In other words, if those giants want to stay in business they have to find something else to manufacture. So it is that, with Government support and subsidy, they are spending enormous sums on research into alternative means of shifting commuters into and out of the cities of today and tomorrow. That is happening in the United States now—in the United States, the land of the motor car. And what has happened there is very likely to be repeated after a short interval in this country.

My hon. Friend should understand that, unlike country branch lines—I am not making a general case for keeping them all open—which often no longer serve large populations and where, clearly, motor transport is more convenient and quicker, urban branch lines like this one ought to be kept open because they do and they can make a great contribution to the relief of the commuter problem. Instead of their being allowed to wither, every effort should be made to attract passengers by improved services, by better publicity, if necessary by differential fares.

A short time ago I put down a Question to my right hon. Friend that, if he were in difficulty over this line, instead of chopping services he might think the other way and perhaps offer half fares to get some of the customers back and to attract more. All I got to that was a curt, "No.". Nevertheless, there is the germ of an idea. If a service is running down, people should not conclude that it is necessarily doomed to death. They should use their wits to try to improve the service, including, if necessary, an adjustment in fares to attract passengers.

The time is coming when congestion at peak hours will bring road transport to a standstill. Therefore, do not let us delude ourselves that X railway passengers can be diverted to cars or buses. Let us remember, too, that Croydon is and was deliberately planned to be the largest shopping employment and communications centre in London outside the central area. It has the communications. Let us put them to good use.

I ask my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary to allow the line to remain open, just as his predecessor did with another line which has justified his faith in it.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Reginald Eyre)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South (Sir R. Thompson) for his clear exposition of the problems posed by the Wimbledon to West Croydon railway service, the future of which is currently under consideration, and also for his remarks about the broader aspects of rail closures. This will give me a welcome opportunity to explain the position more fully and, I hope, help to clear away any misunderstandings that may have arisen.

My hon. Friend has made the general point that the closure of minor rail services should be considered not in isolation but against the background of the rail services as a whole and that the London commuter services in particular should be preserved against the possibility of their being needed in the eventuality of restrictions being imposed on the use of private cars in the inner London area. I can assure him that proposals to withdraw individual passenger services are never considered in isolation.

The financial assessments that are made as an essential preliminary in these matters always take account of contributory revenue that would be lost on associated rail passenger services which would no longer have the benefit of passengers using the connections provided by the particular service considered for closure and the increased operating costs which would fall on the other services which shared the use, and therefore the cost, of track and signalling facilities.

In the London area in particular, the services are closely inter-related in the London commuter network. This is reflected, for example, in the arrangements for paying grant under Section 39 of the Transport Act, 1968, to meet the cost of unremunerative services which need to be maintained for social reasons. For the London commuter network, of which the Wimbledon-West Croydon service forms a part, the services are not grant-aided specifically but an overall payment is made covering the unremunerative burden for the network as a whole. But this is not to say that it would be wrong to prune the network or make other adjustments to it from time to time. The operation of these services is reviewed annually to determine what investment should be made to help towards achieving an economically viable service network and to the same end consideration is given to the possibility of modifying the existing services or eliminating those marginal services for which the consumer need might more economically and efficiently be served by other modes of transport.

Now turn to the particular case of the Wimbledon-West Croydon rail passenger service which is the central point of the debate initiated by my hon. Friend. This is a suburban branch line service, providing connections with main-line or semi-fast London services at Wimbledon, Mitcham Junction and West Croydon. Average usage of the eight stations comprised in the service is about 1,700 passengers a day each way, which is low compared with other suburban services of its type. It is one of the heavier loss makers in the Railway Board's London and South-Eastern railway services which are, of course, part of the London commuter network.

These services, as I have already said, form a complex network which for planning purposes is regarded as a single entity. The economics of operating the network is closely linked with policies for the quality of service, investment and Government grants both on capital and on revenue account. These policies together form an element in a general approach directed towards achieving a suitable balance between public and private transport in the area.

My hon. Friend can rest assured that, during the course of the closure procedures, British Rail will be providing my right hon. Friend with very full information, on a well-established basis, about the financial and economic considerations involved. Part of this assessment, which can usefully be made public, is the savings which can be made in real resource terms—that is to say, the physical assets such as station buildings, track, signalling and rolling stock and the longer term cost of renewals.

It was simple indicators such as this which suggested that a closer examination of the social disbenefits of closure would be worth while. A convenient way of doing this, which also has the merit of involving public participation, is to test the case in the closure machinery. This is now in the process of being done, and I must emphasise should not in any way be taken as an indication that my right hon. Friend or the British Railways Board have taken up any firm position in the matter.

A preliminary notice of intention to publish a closure proposal for the service was given last July under Section 54 of the Transport Act, 1968, and the formal proposal was published last March under Section 56 of the Act. This proposal has been open to objection for the prescribed statutory period of six weeks and objections from local authorities and other representative bodies, and also from individual users of the rail service, are being considered by the Transport Users Consultative Committee for London. For this purpose, as my hon. Friend said, they are holding a public hearing today at the Merton Town Hall in Wimbledon.

The Committee is particularly concerned with any hardship or inconvenience which would be caused to the travelling public through closure of the rail passenger service—for example, in terms of increased journey times and in using alternative services. I noticed the emphasis placed by my hon. Friend on this aspect of the matter, and he has been supported by strong representations which I have received from my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East (Mr. Weatherill).

The Croydon Transport Users Association is represented at the hearing and is presenting its report to which my hon. Friend has drawn our attention tonight. I am sure the House will understand my reluctance to pass any comment on the merits of these proposals, or on suggestions which have been made for economising in the cost of maintaining the service at the present early stage of the procedures. In due course my right hon. Friend will receive the report of the Transport Users Consultative Committee following the conclusion of the public hearing. My right hon. Friend will also have advice from other interested bodies, including the local authorities in the area which the railway line serves—the Greater London Council in particular—and the views of the Economic Planning Council for the South East Region, on any longer term future which is foreseen for the line.

A further important factor in this case is the Greater London Development Plan. During the earlier stages of the inquiry into this plan there was considerable debate about the primary road system in Greater London, including the M23 motorway and the orbital ring way systems built to motorway standards. The merits of a southern orbital rail facility as an alternative to the orbital road system was also considered, and the Wimbledon—West Croydon line could form part of such an orbital railway.

These are matters which are as yet unresolved, and I can assure the House that no decision will be taken on this closure proposal without careful consideration of any relevant matters which may emerge from the inquiry into this plan. I cannot anticipate what this decision may be, so that I am not in a position to give my hon. Friend, as he will understand, any reason to hope that the success which he mentioned in the case of a previous closure proposal will be repeated on this occasion. All I can say is that, in reaching a decision, all relevant factors, including all the advice and information which have been mentioned tonight and any further matters which may be brought to my right hon. Friend's attention, will be taken into account.

I appreciate the trouble my hon. Friend has taken in raising this matter which I fully understand is of considerable importance to his constituents.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty minutes to Twelve o'clock