HC Deb 15 May 1979 vol 967 cc199-208

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Le Marchant.]

9.58 p.m.

Mr. Hal Miller (Bromsgrove and Redditch)

I should like to take the opportunity of congratulating my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment on his attainment of office, and I am happy to have the privilege to be the first to do so. I have purposely chosen a seat a little away from his back view, as the last time I was speaking at him I was throwing a few darts into those very broad shoulder blades on the subject of seat belts. I hope that we are coming to a not so controversial topic this evening, concerning the prospect for navigation this summer on the West Midlands canals. I may perchance stray into the question of the remainder of the canal system if time permits.

I wish to raise the subject on the Adjournment because of the grave interruption to navigation that has been taking place in the whole of the West Midlands system, especially in my own constituency, with the closure of two tunnels, which has effectively isolated a sizeable section of canal in which is situated a flourishing enterprise called the Alvechurch boat centre.

It being Ten o'clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Le Marchant.]

Mr. Miller

I was referring to the Alvechurch boat centre, which is a flourishing commercial concern. Navigation has been interrupted for many private enthusiasts. I think that my hon. Friend will be well aware of the extent to which the canal societies flourish. I had the pleasure today of receiving the bulletin of the Rochdale Canal Society from my newly elected hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Thompson), who I am delighted to see in the Chamber. That canal section is near to the area represented by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State, and he will be aware of the Calder navigation and perhaps the Inland Waterways Association. These are flourishing interest groups.

I am referring to what is not, unfortunately, an isolated occurrence. That which has given me such cause for concern, and why I have been trying to raise the subject for three months, is the fact that the interruptions were preceded by grave difficulties over the pay dispute, which resulted in a lowering of water levels in the canals for a considerable period. That exposed the banks to damage by vermin and by frost. Many of the brickworks on the canal installations, both those belonging to the British Waterways Board and to private organisations such as the Alvechuurch boat centre, have been severely damaged by the lowering of the water levels. Last summer there was a disastrous leak on the Alvechurch aqueduct, which stranded many boats for a considerable period.

A head of steam has been building up over some months. Naturally, the boat owners have come to question the point of paying licence fees or mooring fees for boats that are unable to proceed along any stretch of canal. They have been in touch with the British Waterways Board, as I have on their behalf, in an attempt to obtain some remission of fees. That has not proved acceptable so far. There are sizeable annual fees for ordinary boats. The fee may be £70, but it varies with length. If an owner is unable to use his boat, there is a real question whether there should not be a remission of fee. If there is no opportunity for mooring, why should a mooring fee be charged?

The head of steam has been building up and it has reached the point of explosion with the events of last summer and the closure of tunnels throughout the West Midlands canal system. It is no longer possible to carry out any of the round journeys—the Avon ring, for example, or the other rings—that made such a popular cruising feature. Apart from the dislocation suffered by the companies hiring out boats, there has been grave interruption to ordinary private owners.

The British Waterways Board tried to make some arrangements to help private owners escape from their isolated length by offering three days in March during which some sort of passage would be permitted through one of the tunnels to allow the boats to join the rest of the system. However, many private owners whose maintenance schedules had been gravely disrupted by the snow and ice of winter and by difficulties with distribution of parts, including engines and other equipment, through the winter of discontent had been unable to complete their maintenance and so were unable to take advantage of the three days during which passage was permitted.

If it were possible to find three days in March when passage could be permitted, consideration could well be given to selecting another three days in June or July during which those who had been trapped through no fault of their own could be offered some means of egress to join the rest of the boating fraternity. I should be grateful if consideration could be given to that possibility.

I wish to move from local difficulties, although they are daunting enough. The Tardebigge tunnel will not be open for at least three months. We await a contractor's report. Other tunnels are not expected to be open until next year. Other sections of the Union canal in Leicestershire and Shropshire are likely to be closed all year as well.

I now move to a general consideration of the situation of the canals. I ask my hon. Friend whether it is possible, in the early days of this Government, for him to give any indication of the way in which they view the canals, the recent White Paper and the report of the Select Committee.

The canal interests are looking for an indication that the canals are still to be regarded as an important part of our recreation and leisure interest—as well as emphasis being placed on the functions they fulfil for land drainage and water supply. The canal interests are in the process of uniting themselves. Working groups are currently meeting. There should be a final meeting next week at which a canals' alliance will emerge to unite the interest of all the various bodies using or investing in the canal system. Those interests are looking for an assurance that there will continue to be an authority to provide for navigation on the canals. What disturbed them was a suggestion in the White Paper that there should be only an advisory navigation authority, which should not have any income and which would therefore have no independence. They hoped that their proposals could be reconsidered so that the canals would not fall under the sway of the water authorities, and so that there would continue to be an independent navigation authority. The next indication they seek is that the canal system, in broad intention, should be maintained and not chopped up into various lengths. They would like to see an integral system maintained.

This brings us to the question of finance and the future of the current deficit. Any deficit on public expenditure must be carefully scrutinised. A large element of this deficit arises from fulfilling the functions under the Transport Act 1968, and especially the maintenance of road bridges, which are properly to be considered under road transport financing rather than under the canal deficit. There are similar financial obligations in respect of land drainage workers. There is a great deal of interest in how these elements are to be treated and what the future of the deficit is to be.

In this connection the canal interests would welcome some indication from my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of the view that he might take of the Fraenkel report. That brings me back to my opening remarks about closures that have been occasioned by unsafe tunnels and aqueducts and other works. I believe that the extent of the danger has been exaggerated to some degree by the operation of the health and safety at work legislation and the very cautious view, taken by its solicitors, of the Board's liabilities. My hon. Friend might wish to inquire further into that aspect.

The report set out a programme of maintenance. The last Government provided two tranches of £5 million, although the expenditure of the money was delayed by the pay dispute. It is only fair to add here that the Department was running the pay negotiations. As I understand it, the board was permitted very little say in the matter. However, the expenditure of that money towards restoring navigation was delayed. With the effects of inflation, the sums set out in the Fraenkel report, which is now four or five years old, have now doubled. So, while the Board is naturally not expecting a full commitment from my hon. Friend so early in this Parliament, it expects consideration to be given to the future maintenance programme, and that ties up with its desire to see the integrity of the canal system maintained.

The possibility of navigation on the canals has attracted a great deal of private investment, mostly in small businesses, which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is seeking to succour. One can readily see that they are chary of adding to that investment if there is uncertainty about future navigation.

This is therefore a serious matter, and I am sorry that it has been possible to raise it only in the curtailed form of an Adjournment debate. There are, however, possibilities for investment, but there are also the dangers of frustrating existing investment. Apart from these commercial considerations there is the army of enthusiasts—the canal users to whose publications I have referred. I am sorry to have landed this matter on my hon. Friend's plate. It is a difficult and tetchy problem which I have been raising in the form of parliamentary questions for some months. While I apologise to my hon. Friend for causing him inconvenience, I make no apology for having made a start on raising this most important matter.

10.14 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Marcus Fox)

I first congratulate you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, on your appointment. I sincerely hope that this will not be the last occasion on which you invite me to speak.

I invite my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove and Redditch (Mr. Miller) to come to my constituency on any occasion, not to look at the Leeds-Liverpool canal, and the five rise locks at Bingley in particular, but to advise me how he managed to increase his majority sevenfold since he left this place. I should welcome that kind of advice.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this matter. I have seen the file and the number of questions that he has asked. I am aware that it is a matter of deep concern to him, but the state of the canals is a subject which has been causing many people concern in recent years.

It may be that the West Midlands has a higher proportion of canals than any other area in the country. Therefore, any trouble is obviously exacerbated there. The problem is that throughout the summer there can be no hope that this matter will be resolved. It is no secret that, as my hon. Friend pointed out, financial restraints on the British Waterways Board have made it impossible for it to maintain the system for which it is responsible. Finance lies at the root of the problem. It is a problem with which successive Administrations have had to grapple and none has yet, I believe, found the right answer.

I hope that I shall be forgiven for mentioning history, but it is now well over 100 years since the system was first started. Indeed, some parts of the system are more than 200 years old. It is inevitable that the cost of maintaining fabric as old as that is extremely high. During this long period the canals have come to be an accepted part of the landscape in both urban and rural settings. Many of the early builders—perhaps this is a message for us—had a happy gift for designing unassuming and harmonious structures which were and are an adornment to the environment, and the canals have many friends on this account. Dare I suggest that I happen to be one of them?

The purpose for which the canals were built—that of carrying freight—has greatly altered. Quite early on in the life of the canals, with the coming of the railways, their viability came under attack. In the present century, until very recently, it has been a story of continuing decline.

The days of commercial carrying on any large scale on the narrow canals are gone. That was explicitly recognised when, in the 1968 Transport Act, the Board's waterways were divided into commercial, cruising and remainder waterways. Of the total of 2,000 miles of waterway, only 350 miles are commercial. From 1968 until 1977 the volume of traffic declined from 7.32 million tonnes to 3.97 million tonnes, although I am happy to say that the Board is able to report provisionally a significant upturn to 4.43 million tonnes for 1978.

The inevitable consequence of this decline in the system's capacity for generating revenue has been a great increase in the amount of funds to be found from elsewhere. To enable the Board to meet its statutory obligations, it now receives Exchequer grant of about £21 million a year—a not insignificant amount. A substantial proportion of this grant is directly relevant to the problems raised by my hon. Friend. It is a fact that the state of repair of the canal system has been declining over a period of years. No blame attaches to the Board for that. My hon. Friend referred to the Select Committee's report. From all the evidence that was given, I think that statement can be seen to be justified. It has simply been a question of financial resources.

Following reports from the Board's engineer, in 1974 my Department commissioned an independent survey from a firm of consulting engineers, to which my hon. Friend referred, Peter Fraenkel and Partners. That firm reported early in 1976, confirming that there was indeed a substantial backlog of maintenance work, valued at £37.6 million at March 1974 prices, and recommending a programme of work to catch up on the arrears of maintenance over a period of 15 years.

When the report was published in November 1977 an additional grant allocation to the Board of £5 million was announced for 1978–79 specifically for urgent arrears of maintenance. A few months later a similar allocation was announced for 1979–80, and the previous Administration's public expenditure White Paper made provision for an additional grant on a similar scale for the remaining years of the public expenditure run. Therefore, finance is now available to tackle the immediate problems.

However, the canals cannot be repaired overnight. There are many structures and stretches of canal in urgent need of attention, including, as my hon. Friend has said, a number of tunnels. The Board was not able to move into action as soon as the first tranche of additional grant became available because its staffing proposals associated with its proposed programme of work for 1978–79 fell foul of the then current pay policy. This caused concern amongst the Board's salaried staff, and industrial action eventually ensued. This persisted until a pay settlement was reached early in March this year. During the worst of the industrial action the Board found it necessary, as my hon. Friend has mentioned, for safety reasons to lower water levels in some sections of certain canals. In some areas this caused accelerated deterioration of structures newly exposed to the atmosphere, an effect exacerbated by the harsh weather of last winter. This factor, taken with the underlying shortfall of maintenance, has left the canals in a poor condition. However, I am glad to report that since the pay settlement the Board and its staff have got down to the job in earnest. Things returned to normal on the canals in remarkably quick time, the money allocated for the Fraenkel programme of arrears this year is already being spent, and the Beard has already been able to improve on some of its forecasts for the reopening of closed sections.

With regard to the closures in the West Midlands—this is the real purpose of the Adjournment debate—I would say that much of the work that now has to be done is work which should have been started, and in some cases completed, during the winter period, had it not been for the industrial action by the Board's staff. The exceptionally severe weather did nut help either. The closures of particular concern in my hon. Friend's constituency are the Tardebigge and Kings Norton—Wast Hill—tunnels, both on the Worcester and Birmingham canal. The Tardebigge tunnel is a rock tunnel, and because of rock movement parts of its surface need to be made safe with rock-bolting. The Kings Norton tunnel is in more serious trouble. It is a brick-lined tunnel and considerable areas of its lining have deteriorated and need replacement.

The closure of those two tunnels has isolated an eight-mile stretch of the Worcester and Birmingham canal. This obviously presented potential difficulties for people—both individuals and cruiser hire companies—with moorings in the isolated stretch in particular. The Board's policy is, however, to be as helpful as it can to people in this predicament, by making it possible for them to relocate their boats at moorings outside the isolated section. This was done, as my hon. Friend mentioned, by enabling owners to move their boats through either of the tunnels over a three-day period in March. I regret that my hon. Friend has found it necessary to criticise this. Certainly we shall look carefully at his suggestion to offer perhaps a further three days in June.

The owners were given six weeks' notice. The owners of 40 private and 70 hire craft took advantage of this opportunity. For example, my hon. Friend quoted the Alvechurch boat centre, in which I know he has expressed a particular interest. It has been resited at Earlswood. I understand that the Board has received only one complaint over these arrangements. I appreciate that owners and others with an interest in the canal cannot be entirely insulated from the adverse effects of the closures, but I am sure that the Board has done everything that it reasonably could to alleviate the position.

The latest information that we have from the Board is that work on the Tardebigge tunnel should start within the next week or so, and the tunnel should be open by the end of August. The Kings Norton tunnel will, unfortunately, have to remain closed throughout the summer but it will be available for cruising next year. Further afield, the Netherton tunnel on the Birmingham canal navigations will also have to remain closed, as will the Braunston tunnel on the Grand Union canal which, although not in the West Midlands, is of great importance for cruising in the West Midlands. The Tyrley cutting on the Shropshire Union canal will reopen in early June and the Evitts Valley embankment at Solihull on the Grand Union canal should be open in August. Legal difficulties which have been holding up work on the Coventry arm have now been overcome and this should also be open in August.

Whilst these persisting closures are more than we would like, they are in fact few and far between on the extensive network of canals in the West Midlands. An alternative way to get between two points on the system can generally be found, and I think we can say that the prospects for navigation there this summer are reasonable.

What of the future? Given the recent pay settlement and the provision of additional grant, I am satisfied that the Board is well set to make a sustained onslaught on the serious arrears of maintenance identified by Fraenkel, and the work is going ahead. It has the Government's support.

My hon. Friend was right to say that these are early days for the new Government to make a major pronouncement on these issues. I am not convinced that the proposals in the previous Government's White Paper are right. I want to take a little time to think about the options. I shall, of course, study the White Paper in detail. I shall also study the views of the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries in its fourth report of 1977–78 and its first report of 1978–79.

I shall talk to the Board, the canal users, the smaller businesses to which my hon. Friend referred, the Association of Pleasure Craft Operators and the Ship and Boat Builders National Federation. I hope that people who have constructive ideas in this area will write to me.

All I would say at this stage is that I recognise the concern, perhaps the passionate concern, that people such as my hon. Friend—a large number of people—feel about our canals and the major contribution that they make to the quality of life in this country. I recognise, too, the need to end the long period of stress and uncertainty that has bedevilled their future. I see this as by no means the least of my responsibilities within the Department.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-six minutes past Ten o'clock.