Lords Sitting of 16 February 1927

Preamble
The House met at a quarter before four of the clock, The EARL OF DONOUGHMORE on the Woolsack.
LORD HAYTER.
Sir George Hayter Chubb, Bart., having been created Baron Hayter of Chislehurst in the County of Kent—Was (in the usual manner) introduced.

DISEASES OF ANIMALS BILL. [H.L.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY OF THE MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (LORD BLEDISLOE): My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to amend the Diseases of Animals Acts, 1894 to 1925, and to move that it be read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.—(Lord Bledisloe.)
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

MESSAGE FROM THE KING.
His Majesty's Answer to the Address of yesterday reported by the Earl of CROMER as follows:—
"I thank you for your loyal and dutiful Address. I join most sincerely in your expression of deep regret at the melancholy tidings of the death of My illustrious friend His Majesty the Emperor of Japan, and I shall without fail communicate to His Majesty the present Emperor your message of profound sympathy with the Imperial Family and the Government and people of Japan in the loss which they have sustained."

RAILWAY ADMINISTRATION.
LORD MONKSWELLhad given Notice to ask His Majesty's Government whether they are yet able to form any conclusion as to the result of the amalgamation of the various railway companies in this country; whether the expectations of economy have been realised; and what steps the Ministry of Transport has taken

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to urge the railway companies to introduce improvements tending to a better and safer service; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, it is now more than five years since the Railways Act was passed into law. After the War the financial position of the railways was serious and economies were urgent, and the Ministry of Transport, under Sir Eric Geddes, was commissioned to deal with the situation. The exact reasons that led the Government to pass the Railways Act were no doubt complicated, but it was freely stated on their behalf that large economies were to be anticipated as a result of the Act passing. That certain economies were possible and that they have in fact been achieved I do not doubt. There was a certain amount of overlapping to be got rid of and something was to be gained by improved routing of the trains and by a few other obvious measures, all of them useful enough so far as they went but utterly incapable of producing any large result.
The source whence large economies were to be expected was stated to be the elimination of competition. That a man like Sir Eric Geddes, whose whole railway career was passed in stifling competition and who must have known perfectly well that no real competition in facilities has ever been allowed to exist on British railways, should put forward a plea of this kind is one more instance of the contempt for the intelligence of the public which characterises the railway hierarchy. In very early days there was, no doubt, keen competition for the country which each railway was to be allowed to serve, but since then so well have railway officials in quest of a quiet life contrived to arrange matters with one another to eschew competition that, except as a bogey to be produced for imposing upon the credulity of the public when necessary, such odds and ends of competition as survived at the time of the passing of the Railways Act were utterly insignificant. In these circumstances it is in no way surprising that the large economies promised should have failed to materialise.
But the position is much worse than that. While amalgamation has not, perhaps, had any serious effects upon the Great Western group, which was little affected, nor on the Southern group,
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which was the smallest of all the groups, the situation on the London & North Eastern group and the London, Midland & Scottish group is, so far as I can make out, thoroughly bad. As regards the London & North Eastern, the Chairman of that group has lately issued his apologia and foreshadowed vaguely some improvement. He says that they are not allowing themselves to be hurried and are taking plenty of time. So I should imagine, to judge from the results so far achieved. The principal trouble appears to be on the old Great Eastern line. I hear the most deplorable tales of unpunctuality and indifference, which seem to have spread over the whole district. The Great Eastern was never a very fast or a very comfortable line, but at one time the punctuality of its trains was above the average and the working was quite smart. Now all this has changed; there is a feeling that those in authority take no interest in the line and hopelessness broods over every department. As regards the London, Midland & Scottish group, enough of its troubles have become public property to make it certain that it is at the present time passing through a very serious crisis.
When an enormous amalgamation of this kind takes place it is obviously of the greatest importance to get to work without delay to introduce and perfect the new organisation; and one of the essential conditions is that the men who are to carry out the work should be installed at once and given a firm tenure of office. In these circumstances it is rather odd that the noble Lord, the first Chairman of the group, held office for not more than two years. But this is nothing in comparison with what followed. The first General Manager also was got rid of within two years, receiving, I imagine, heavy compensation for the premature termination of his contract. I should particularly like to know what the facts were and whether, in the event of expense being incurred in this and similar ways, it is regarded by the Government as giving the railways power under the Act to raise their charges against the public.
The General Manager who succeeded, obviously as a provisional measure, was a gentleman who, I believe, was actually on the retired list, and while this Manager was temporarily carrying on a completely

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new scheme of control was evolved, different from anything that had ever been heard of before in this country, in every way untried and experimental. The whole railway was put under the control of Sir Josiah Stamp, who was, I believe, originally a clerk in the Civil Service and afterwards went into the City, but who, so far as I know, had no previous experience of railways. Meanwhile it is not surprising to learn that the officials are not pulling very well together. One particularly unfortunate incident has lately occurred. At long last the London, Midland and Scottish group appointed a locomotive engineer who has grasped the obvious fact that locomotives of the latest Continental pattern are much superior to anything that we have in this country. He produced designs for new locomotives embodying the latest Continental ideas. But all to no purpose. As soon as preparations were being made to build to the new designs someone interposed his veto, and the proposal so far as I know, has now been crushed.
The fundamental trouble that now oppresses the railways of this country is that they are paying for their past misdeeds. When they sprang into being a hundred years ago they found themselves in possession of a machine so immensely superior to anything else at that time in existence that for a long period to come they were assured of handsome profits without the least trouble to themselves. They had any amount of time and any amount of money, which they might have used for the purpose of continuously improving their plant and equipment and so indefinitely retaining the lead that they held. Had they had any foresight they would have welcomed every improvement tending to a faster, more economical and more comfortable service. There is no question but that if this had been done Glasgow would at the present moment be within three hours of London and the immensely profitable long-distance traffic many times as great as it is. And so on in other directions. More and more perfect machinery might have given more efficient and more economical service and largely have replaced the great army of men whose relatively inefficient work and relatively, though by no means absolutely, excessive pay threaten the railways with disaster.
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It is useless to shut one's eyes to the fact that the root of the present trouble is that at the present time the railway companies are forced to pay their men wages higher than the value of the men's work calculated on any reasonable scale. The railway companies have been made engines for extracting from the public a huge subsidy for their men. In the past the railways found themselves in a position to secure all the cheap labour they wanted and they went blindly on, assuming that a full supply of cheap labour would continue to be available indefinitely. They had every opportunity of expanding and increasing the efficiency of their business in such a way that the value of the work of each of their men might have been raised and there would have been no economic objection to raising the wages of each in proportion; but instead of doing everything they could to increase the efficiency of their property they became so lethargic that great pressure had to be put upon them to introduce even the most obvious measures of safety.
The absurd motto of the London & North Western Railway, "Forty miles per hour is the pace for a gentleman" and the equally ridiculous phrase, attributed to the Chairman of Beyer, Peacock & Co., "Anything will do for a locomotive," not inaccurately indicate the prevalent spirit. Unfortunately, with the passing of railway prosperity that spirit has not passed, but is still with us in all its old ineptitude. Only a few months ago the Chief General Manager of the London & North Eastern Railway is reported to have said:—
"Railways have the advantage of speed and need not exercise themselves to enhance-this advantage."
They still adhere doggedly to the policy which has brought them to distress. Amid the blackness of the storm may still be descried the figure of the railway official nailing his lunatic flag to the mast of his sinking ship.
Passing on now to the question of increased safety and improved services, I must first of all ask permission to say a few words as to how I approach these matters. I have all my life been much interested in railways, and thus have been led to study them deeply. The result of these studies, as I have already remarked, is that I have acquired a

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settled conviction that all is not as it should be with the railways, and that they have in the past been in a high degree remiss in introducing developments calculated to benefit the public and shareholders. Although some of these defects have now been remedied, usually in the teeth of the most strenuous passive resistance on the part of the railways, there are a large number of further improvements that should at once be taken in hand.
May I say that I hold these views as the result of most careful study, continuously pursued for thirty years? They partake in no way of the nature of ill-digested enthusiasms. What I have said or written about railways has, so far as possible, been based upon facts known to myself from personal observation. Information received from other people has been checked and verified by me in every possible way, and estimates and suggestions which I have put forward are invariably based upon knowledge acquired in these ways. As an example of my methods I may say that for the last thirty years I have followed the running of most of the fastest trains, in which I have travelled often upon the footplate of the engine, with a stopwatch fitted with a split-second hand, which has enabled me to take a continuous record of the speed from one end of the run to the other, and I have checked the accuracy of the stop-watch with another watch. So I have behind me a considerable volume of knowledge acquired in these ways, and in every other branch of railway work on which I venture to speak I have done my best to take my stand upon knowledge not less carefully acquired.
There is about railways nothing to prevent any person of average intelligence from acquiring comprehensive knowledge. It is a simple question of taking enough trouble about it; but that is an absolutely essential condition. There are about railways so many different things to learn, and so many of these things are not in accordance with the first superficial impression, that it is not surprising to find that among the public there reigns profound ignorance on the whole subject, and such impression as the public acquires is in many cases very wide of the truth. A favourite line of criticism is to point out the obvious fact that
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British railways on the whole are superior to foreign railways. My contentions have nothing to do with foreign railways, except to use them to illustrate certain points in my argument. I cannot see what the defects or otherwise of foreign railways have to do with the matter. I am endeavouring to point out certain serious defects in British railways, and to suggest means of putting them right, without regard to what foreign railways do or fail to do. To try to excuse the shortcomings of British railways, which, taken as a whole, area for area, enjoy by far the richest traffic in the world, by comparing them with less well-placed foreign railways, is a futile proceeding. I am aware that as regards the matter of advocating fresh developments the number of people in this country who have had the time and inclination to study railways from a detached point of view is insignificant, and that we have to fight against all the difficulties with which pioneers throughout recorded history have had to contend.
I should say that at the present time ninety-five per cent. of everything that is written about the railways comes directly or indirectly from the railways themselves and so the opportunity which the public enjoy of forming an independent judgment is slight and the difficulty of impressing them on the subject of deficiencies in the services of our railways is very great. Considering the extent of the evils under which the public are now groaning it would be useless to expect it to be otherwise, but when we come to the attitude of the railway managements themselves towards suggested improvements and reforms the matter is very different. Railways have been permitted to come into existence to serve the public, and the public has a right to expect a high degree of diligence on the part of the railways. Clearly it is the business of the men who manage the railways to study their work closely and to be able to give clear and convincing reasons for what they do and what they leave undone. This is precisely what railway officials do not and will not do.
I speak from personal experience again and again repeated. I have frequently put before railway officers precise proposals for improvements, showing exactly how I considered that these proposals would benefit the public, and exactly what

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they seemed likely to cost. It is only on the rarest occasions that I have received any answer at all, and I have never once received any answer which could not easily be shown to be fallacious. I have reason to suppose that the experience of other people is similar to my own. The railway companies simply take the line that the conduct of the railways of this country is no business of the public, or any member of it, that nothing shall ever induce them to consider any proposal for -any substantial reform reaching them from an outside source, and that the public, to serve whom railways have been allowed to come into existence, and who provide the whole of the revenues of the railways, are consistently to be treated with contempt. I need hardly say that I do not suggest that proposals for reform should be accepted without the closest scrutiny. I welcome discussion, the more of it the better, but for the invariable practice of the railways contemptuously to "turn down" every suggestion, without any attempt to give reasons for so doing, there is no excuse.
As an example of this practice may describe one of the most recent occasions when it happened to myself? I am sorry to talk so much about myself, but things that have happened to oneself are so much more convincing than hearsay. A short time ago Sir Ralph Wedgwood, Chief General Manager of the London & North-Eastern Railway, stated publicly in the course of a lecture which he was delivering that he disagreed with my views as to the desirability of accelerating express trains, and that he considered that no acceleration was required by the public, nor likely to be economical. I need not say that he gave no reasons for the views which he held. I immediately took up the challenge, and wrote several letters to the newspapers, and, so as to give Sir Ralph no excuse for saying that I was not definite and precise, I put to him this case.
If the dining car trains between King's Cross and Edinburgh and Edinburgh and King's Cross were accelerated to perform the journey in six and a half hours, instead of the present eight and a quarter hours, the extra expense over and above that incurred at the present time would certainly not be more than £10 per train. The fares for an average train-load of passengers amount to £750. Every passenger by these trains would economise
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one hour and three-quarters. In the extremely improbable event, of the number of passengers showing no increase due to the acceleration, the railway company would still be sacrificing not more than one seventy-fifth part of its receipts. I also went into the technical questions involved in such an acceleration, and gave detailed reasons why no difficulties were to be anticipated on the technical side. I may here remark that if the London & North-Eastern Railway ran between London and Edinburgh at only the same speed as that at which the Great Western, with smaller engines, trains not less heavy, and quite as difficult a road, ham been running between London and Exeter any time these last twenty years, except for an interval during the War, the time occupied on the journey would be reduced approximately by one and a half hours—and the best Great Western trains could easily be run much faster than they are run.
My suggestions to Sir Ralph Wedgwood were in every way definite and precise, exact reasons being given for everything, and full figures. It was just the sort of statement that could be examined in every detail and, if inaccurate, shown to be inaccurate. The editor of one of the newspapers to which I wrote told me that with my letter he hoped to publish the comments of the railway company upon it, and I have no doubt that the comments of the railway company were invited, but, no comments were forthcoming. Sir Ralph Wedgwood, far from attempting to justify himself in a controversy which he had himself started, took refuge in precipitate flight. He refused to say a word, and evidently issued orders to him subordinates that their lips wore also to be sealed. Being obviously aware that he had no case, he endeavoured to hush the matter up by instituting the most rigid boycott. Further comment is, I think, needless. And this is the sort of thing that happens every time more or less. To say that there is no desire on the part of the railways to consider proposed improvements on their merits is a gross under-statement: there is the most determined resolve to boycott every one.
Another point which is obvious to anyone who has considerable experience on the subject of railway deficiencies is the extreme difficulty of getting any of the

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more important daily newspapers to allow anything about them to be published. I am not, of course, speaking of well-worn subjects like the discomforts of the Channel crossing, or the unpunctuality and over-crowding of trains from Potter's Bar, which the railways appear to welcome as giving the public an opportunity of blowing off steam and distracting their attention from more fundamental matters. But it is most remarkable how, on the very rare occasions when a newspaper permits criticisms which are unpleasing to the railway officers to be published, some mysterious influence invariably intervenes and cuts short discussion before it has had time to focus public attention. This is in the most glaring contrast with the avidity with which newspapers publish items of news issued to them by the publicity departments of the railways.
Before the Ministry of Transport was set up such control as the Government exercised over the railways was exercised through the Board of Trade. The Board of Trade was never a very active or efficient upholder of the rights of the public, and its powers were limited. Still, it did force upon the railways some of the most obvious and necessary reforms, such as the adoption of block signals and continuous brakes. With the advent of the Ministry of Transport the position is really alarming. The speech delivered during the debate in November, 1925, by the noble Viscount who represents the Ministry of Transport in this House can mean nothing except the complete capitulation of the Ministry to the views of the railway officials. I have commented upon the unwillingness of railway officials to deal with facts and figures. In this respect the Ministry of Transport has fairly out-Heroded Herod. Faced with a number of proposals, supported by exact facts and figures, the noble Viscount who represents the Ministry did not attempt to examine one of them; he contented himself with a flat refusal to do anything, a refusal obviously dictated by the officials of the Ministry.
It is the professional staff of the Ministry that is responsible for the indifference shown by the Government to railway reform, and this is in no way remarkable when it is remembered that these gentlemen are merely an outpost
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of the official railway hierarchy. The Ministry of Transport was created for Sir Eric Geddes, who was first and foremost a railway official, and he very carefully packed the Ministry with other railway officials exactly like himself. Some of these gentlemen have, I believe, been changed, but the tradition remains unaltered. The official railway hierarchy, who are the people responsible for the defects in the railways, are also the people who dictate the Ministry's replies to criticism. They are judges in their own cause, and so it is a foregone conclusion that the answers they return will not be sympathetic. Like their colleagues upon the railways, a quiet life for officialdom is their first care, and the public interest comes a very bad second.
I have called unfavourable attention to the habit of the railway officials and of their allies in the Ministry of Transport of either ignoring criticism altogether or else of returning vague and unsatisfactory replies. So as not to lay myself open to the same charge, I must ask your Lordships to bear with me while I carry a stage further a rather close examination of some of the reforms which I have advocated in your Lordships' House and elsewhere. I will begin with the subject of the making up of lost time. The position is that British engine drivers, unlike their Continental colleagues, are entirely without any clear and definite instructions on the subject and by far the worst accident that has ever taken place in this country was demonstrably due to failure to make up lost time. Even in view of the community of interest existing between the officials who control the railways and those who control the Ministry of Transport it is astonishing that the latter should have committed themselves to the extraordinary proposition that the making up of lost time is a matter best left to the drivers and that they are unwilling to urge the issue of any instructions. The ghastly danger of this state of things is what must principally strike the general public.
But there is another side to the question which, if not so urgent, is of far wider import. If there is one particular principle which is absolutely essential for the successful conduct of the railways that principle is the attainment of the utmost possible measure of punctuality.

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Unpunctuality, besides being dangerous, is extremely wasteful. In a complicated organization like a great railway not only the movement of every train but the work of every railway servant also has to be planned in advance. If a tram is late it not only delays other trains and they in turn yet others and so on, but the work of every man, every horse and every lorry detailed to carry out work in connection with those trains must be done at a time different to that foreseen. The inevitable result of this is that the railway company has to pay for a great deal of time during which the men are doing nothing, and then for a great deal of overtime when they are doing work which ought long ago to have been completed. To all this loss of time must be added the dislocation of the arrangements of the passengers, with the final result that unpunctuality may easily bring about a volume of waste so great as seriously to affect the finances of the railway and even of the country.
In those circumstances the making up of lost time, far from being a matter that can safely be left to the drivers, is the sheet anchor of successful management and the most vital responsibility of the General Manager and the board. I do not, of course, suggest that the man on the spot should not be given a certain discretion with regard to the carrying out of his instructions, but the point is that he has no instructions at all, no general principle is laid down for his guidance. What actually happens at the present time is that at least four drivers out of five, being left without clear instructions, never attempt to make up lost time at all, whereas it is of the first importance, alike from the point of view of safety and from that of economy, that every possible minute should be regained. It is difficult to find words to stigmatise severely enough the lack of moral courage that impels the high officials to attempt to shift on to the shoulders of subordinate railway servants like engine drivers a cardinal responsibility of this kind that clearly belongs to themselves. It is as if the War Office left to the discretion of private soldiers whether they should fight or run away.
When the railways complain of hard times they need expect little sympathy so long as they neglect so obvious and
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so far-reaching an economy as the making up of lost time. In this connection it must be pointed out that there is a very clear divergence between the interests of the railway shareholders and the interests of the officials who manage the railways. The latter are quite properly discouraged from becoming shareholders so as to avoid any question of improper dealings on the Stock Exchange. Therefore they have absolutely no direct interests in the finances of the railways and they make a quiet life for themselves with the minimum of change and development their first interest, whereas the first interests of the shareholders are efficiency and economy, which are not usually achieved by officials in quest of a quiet life, averse from change and unwilling to accept responsibility.
Passing now to other matters, such as the improved rail joints, we are told this is a thing that is constantly being considered. The process of considering it has now gone on for eighty years and the prospect of anything being done is as remote as ever. With regard to third-class sleeping carriages, it would be indecent to expect the railway companies to abandon their first line of defence, so we are duly informed that they do not consider there is any demand for sleeping bunks of a simple type. After that we are told that third-class sleeping carriages would add too much to the weight of the trains and would be too expensive. My suggestion is that third-class sleeping carriages with three tiers of bunks of a simple construction exactly like those used in the ambulance trains during the War, should be introduced. The expense of building and maintaining carriages of this kind cannot differ appreciably from the expense of building and maintaining ordinary third-class carriages. They could be made to accommodate about three-quarters of the numbers of passengers which a third-class carriage of the same dimensions will accommodate and as the bunks would have to be reserved beforehand they could be better filled. There is no real difficulty in introducing them, and as for the absence of demand I do not believe a word of it.
Coming now to the subject of acceleration, there is a whole string of objections that are raised from time to time, but there is little or no substance in any of them. It is sometimes said that the

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number of junctions which exist in this country are obstacles to high speed. The answer, of course, is that there are different kinds of junctions and that while at a few of them a sharp curve or an extremely large number of awkwardly arranged crossings may make a reduction of speed desirable or necessary, main lines pass through the vast majority of junctions on the straight and so long as the line is clear no reduction of speed is necessary. The places where speed must be reduced are well known and on main lines are not numerous. I have already pointed out that a careful computation of the time lost on account of special speed restrictions at danger points by a train travelling from Euston to Carlisle at an average running speed as high as 75 miles an hour works out at not more than ten minutes. Sometimes we hear that high speed is a terrific and intolerable strain upon the drivers. I have myself travelled upon the footplates of engines working the fastest trains in the world and I have never seen a sign of strain. To a man of good nerve, in good health, who knows every yard of the line he travels over, I believe that locomotive driving involves no particular strain even at the highest speed; in fact, I should think high speed driving on a main line is for a man of that type much easier than the irritating and exacting work of shunting in a goods yard. It must be remembered that a driver has nothing to do with guiding the train. The tremendous strain of guiding a high speed motor car or an aeroplane is entirely absent in the case of driving a locomotive on a line.
Then there is the question of loading gauge and the permissible weight per axle for the engine. The weight per axle is the same on most British railways as on the Chemin de Fer du Nord, the finest performances of whose locomotives I urge British railways to emulate. The British loading gauge, it is true, is smaller than in most other countries, but it is nevertheless big enough to take engines with loading boilers and cylinders of the same diameter as those of the French engines. The chimneys and steam domes would have to be a few inches lower and the side footplates not so wide, but these changes would not perceptibly affect the efficiency of the engine. It is sometimes urged that the best work of existing steam locomotives is in the
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nature of a special effort and that it is unreasonable to expect such efforts to be made on ordinary occasions. No doubt as things are they are special efforts and are not often made, but there is no earthly reason why this should be so. An engine that can make one of these special efforts on one day can do the same, within a very little, on as many other days as necessary, and as many other engines as necessary of the same design can do the same as often as is necessary. It is merely a matter of providing sufficient power.
The whole of modern civilisation rests upon an abundant supply of cheap power. This can be provided on a railway just as it can be provided elsewhere. If a train is too heavy for an engine to work it at the required speed there are two courses open—to employ mere engines or to employ more powerful engines. It is ridiculous that a great and beneficial reform should be held up on the plea of insufficient power being available. The engines required on any given day to work the best expresses all over the country could hardly reach a total of 150 on an average throughout the year, and, as there can hardly be less than 15,000 engines in steam on any given day, the whole matter affects only 1 per cent. of the engines in use.
It is sometimes asserted that the difficulty of keeping the line clear is an obstacle to high speed. So long as trains do not all travel at the same speed arrangements have always to be made for faster trains to pass slower ones and it is not appreciably more difficult to fit in trains running at 70 miles an hour with trains running at 20 miles an hour than it is to fit in present-day expresses travelling at 50 or 55 miles an hour with the 20-mile-an-hour trains. The timetable would have to be re-cast—that, is all. People do not seem to realise that a line of railway is either "blocked," in which case the train must stop, or it is "clear," in which case the train can go ahead at full speed. Except on special occasions, like foggy weather, or at special places, where speed restrictions exist for all trains, there is no intermediate condition of the line where the train may go on, but only at a moderated speed.
Sometimes it is said that higher speed would entail enormous expense in

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strengthening bridges. Well, it is true that a really large increase in the maximum speed, say, to 120 miles an hour, would make it necessary to strengthen many bridges, but there is a vast amount of acceleration to be done which does not involve any strengthening at all. Existing main line bridges are obviously strong enough for maximum speeds of 80 to 85 miles an hour because in many places, where gradients and curves are favourable, such speeds are often attained at the present time. Any gain in time that can be secured by increasing down-hill speeds to more than 85 miles an hour is utterly insignificant in amount in comparison with the gain that could be secured by raising speeds uphill and on the level to a point more nearly approximating to 85 miles an hour than is now done. It is up-hill and on the level that the best work of British locomotives compares so unfavourably with the best work of French locomotives.
There is no finality where speed is concerned. It is impossible to say that speed shall be raised to a certain point and no more. In the great majority of cases the journey is a means to an end and not an end in itself. It is only a small proportion of journeys that are an end in themselves. Holiday travellers passing through beautiful scenery may wish to go slowly. Travellers by night do not wish to leave later than midnight or to reach their destinations at an abnormally early hour in the morning. But after allowance has been made for these and a few other similar cases, the total of such journeys amounts to a very small proportion of the journeys of the public. In all the other cases the less time spent in travelling the better. In these circumstances the only restrictions to speed that are in the public interest desirable are financial and physical limitations. Acceleration is not worth while only when it involves too much expense and when it involves danger or discomfort. Except for these considerations there is absolutely no limit to the speed which is desirable.
To take the question of expense first, I have already pointed out that practically all the expense involved by speeds as high as 70 miles an hour has already been incurred and that existing rolling stock, signals and brakes are adequate to the purpose. Practically all the
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new expenditure that would be called for would be in connection with the supply of the greater power required. I estimated at 3d. a mile the expense of raising the speed of a train, weighing 300 tons behind the tender, from 55 to 70 miles an hour, and of that sum 1½d. per mile is for coal and 1½d. for the increased maintenance cost of the boiler. As these figures have not so far been challenged they are presumably not far wrong. I may add that I have been officially informed that the whole amount of fuel consumed per mile by the large new engines of the Chemin, de Fer du Nord, working trains weighing 500 tons behind the tender between Paris and Calais at speeds in the neighbourhood of 60 miles an hour, is 54 lbs. which with coal at £1 a ton would be 6d. a mile.
With regard to the danger, the only danger that a large acceleration might render slightly more probable is that the drivers might be tempted not to reduce speed near sharp curves and other danger points. This happens occasionally as things are and several exceedingly bad accidents have been due to it. The number of these danger points is, on most main lines, very small and well proved mechanical devices already exist for automatically bringing to a standstill any train approaching a sharp curve at a speed higher than that authorised. There is absolutely nothing to prevent these appliances from being utilised except the reluctance of railway managements to give themselves the trouble of using the facilities which the onward march of invention puts at their disposal. If apparatus of this kind had been in use at Salisbury in 1906 the South Western Railway would probably have saved enough in avoiding the lamentable accident which then took place to pay for the equipment with these appliances of every danger point on its own line.
A great deal of misapprehension prevails on the discomfort that high speed is supposed to involve. During the debate on railway administration which took place in 1925 one noble Lord after another got up and said he did not desire high speed because of the discomfort of it. The assumption that high speed involves discomfort is a very natural one but it is utterly fallacious. I do not suppose any noble Lord who spoke to

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that effect had ever done any train timing or had any more than the vaguest idea of the speeds at which the various expresses on which he had travelled had run on the different stages of their journeys. For the last thirty years, as I have explained, I have followed with a stop-watch marking fifths of a second the running of the fastest trains in which I have travelled and have also collected from other observers as much information on the subject as I could. I have no hestitation in saying that there is no necessary connection whatever between high speed and discomfort. The two causes that may make a railway vehicle run roughly are some defect in the road and some defect in the vehicle itself. A weak, badly kept road with loose rail joints and badly packed sleepers is quite unsuited for any but the lowest speeds. As an example of the effect upon the motion of a vehicle which such a road exerts I may mention a journey I once had from Edinburgh to St. Pancras. The vehicle in which I was travelling rocked and swayed and bumped in a most distressing manner so long as it was upon the North British Railway, but from Carlisle over the Midland Railway it travelled perfectly smoothly though the speed was higher than it had been over the North British Railway.
Most of the main lines in this country are laid with a heavy type of permanent way, properly packed in stone ballast and adequately maintained, and are quite suitable for speeds much higher than are now run. They are not, of course, perfect, rail joints being susceptible of great improvements, but this particular trouble is certainly less noticeable at high than at low speeds, apparently because at high speeds the wheels have a tendency to fly the joints. On first-class lines such as these rough and unsteady running is practically always due to some small defect in the running gear of the vehicle. On a journey between Salisbury and Exeter on the South Western Railway the dining car was so unsteady at speeds between 70 and 75 miles per hour that I had difficulty in conveying food to my mouth. After finishing my meal I left the dining car and occupied a seat in another vehicle the motion of which, at speeds between 75 and 80 miles an hour, was perfectly smooth.
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Some of the most jerky and unpleasant motion I have ever experienced in a railway train occurred not long ago in one of the boat trains from Dover to London. Some minor defect in the running gear of the vehicle in which I was travelling produced, at speeds as low as 35 miles an hour, a succession of short, sharp jerks which made the journey one of the roughest and most irritating I ever made. In the same way the worst bumping I have ever received on an engine took place at a speed of about 35 miles an hour. It seemed to have something to do with the synchronisation of the periods of oscillation of the engine springs with the periods of passing over each rail joint. On the other hand, there is a mass of evidence that at really high speeds the travelling is exceptionally smooth. I will not trouble your Lordships with more than a few lines from the issue of the Great Western Magazine of last November regarding a run which took place in the course of last autumn, but there is plenty more evidence available. The extract is as follows:—
"At a point near Haddenham a speed of 92 miles per hour was attained. To the traveller it was curious to note that the greater the speed of the train the less indication was there of abnormal pace. Without the speedometer fixed in the coach it would have been difficult to realise what was happening."
That is what the Great Western people themselves say.
The general position with regard to acceleration is surely this: the saving of time is in itself a good thing and the more time that can be saved the better. From the earliest times one of the surest marks of civilisation was the construction of improved means of communication. The great nations were usually the nations who paid most attention to communication by sea and land. One hundred years ago the invention of railways opened a new chapter in land transport. They at once at least doubled the speed of land transport, and owing to a continuous stream of technical improvements and new inventions have been continuously in a position to supply more and more rapid communication. But at each stage vested interests, official obscurantism and mental inertia have endeavoured to hold up the progress which first the invention of railways and subsequently the technical improvements that followed rendered possible. In

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early years so frantically did vested interests fight against the very introduction of railways that I believe survey parties had sometimes to carry arms to protect themselves from physical violence and at every subsequent stage railway officialdom, disliking the trouble of making any change, has usually interposed an almost insurmountable barrier of passive resistance not only to acceleration but to all sorts of other developments as well.
By slow stages and handicapped by the unreasonable reluctance of the railway managements to do anything, the speed of express trains has gradually risen to an average of about 55 miles an hour from start to stop with a maximum of 62 miles an hour. Though technical progress has been much slower than it should have been, on account of the absolute indifference of the managements to inventions of persons outside the railway service and the extremely lukewarm encouragement given to those of persons within the fold, it has at the present time reached a point where it is quite easy to add ten miles an hour to both these figures. But there is now the same old dull refusal on the part of the management to recognise facts and consider the interests of the public as there has been at every previous stage. There is nothing more remarkable in raising speed from 60 miles to 70 miles an hour than there was in raising it from 40 miles to 50 miles or 50 miles to 60 miles, or than there will be in future, of raising it from 70 to 80 miles or from 80 miles to 90 miles.
It is all simply a question of what facilities exist at any given period. That reasonable facilities for raising speed exist now is absolutely clear because all that I propose should at once be done has actually been done thousands of times in different parts of the world. What, with very slight exceptions, has actually happened during the whole time that different railways serving the same places have existed in this country, is that the speed of trains serving these places hag been carefully regulated by agreement between the railways owning the different routes. The comparative facilities for speed enjoyed by different routes have been carefully measured and a minimum time allotted to each in accordance with the results of the measurements. The railways, far from believing that the public cares little about speed, are so absolutely
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convinced that speed is what the public values far above everything else that they always hold one another in the most rigid manner to the letter of these agreements and the history of railway speeds in this country has been the history of a long series of agreements between different railways covering in the minutest detail practically every route in the country where competition is possible.
If these agreements aimed at giving the public speeds reasonably near the maxima which could be achieved at any given period there would not be so much to be said against them. Actually they are used as a dodge for resisting as far as possible all acceleration and so saving the managements the trouble of thinking. An extract from a speech delivered to a general meeting of shareholders on February 15, 1901, by the Chairman of the London & North Western Railway Company will remove all doubt as to what I have just said. It is ancient history no doubt, but things are precisely the same now as they were a quarter of a century ago. It will be seen that the London & North Western Railway Company was so angry at being obliged to adopt a paltry acceleration that the Chairman so far forgot himself as to blurt out the truth in public.
This is the extract of what the Chairman is reported to have said—
"The acceleration of the down and up Scotch expresses was forced upon the Company last December at a time of the year of all others when it was absolutely unnecessary to accelerate their passenger trains in any way. The North Eastern Company, however, had an idea that the speed of trains in this country was less than that in other countries, and therefore, for the futile honour of increasing our own speed without coining up to the speed in other countries, they forced upon the North Western an acceleration of a quarter of an hour between London and Edinburgh and Glasgow. When the North Eastern Company gave them notice that this was going to be done, there were three courses open to them: to do nothing and remain as they were; to accelerate to exactly the same extent as the North Eastern did; or—which they were perfectly able to do—to make a far advanced acceleration and quicken their trains a good deal more than was proposed. After full consideration, however, they thought that the middle course was the best and, looking at the fact that the times of departure and arrival of these trains were the most convenient to passengers, he trusted that the North Eastern Company would not force upon them another serious competition in speed which could only be a detriment to all the railways concerned."

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From this it appears that the whole matter is a question of negotiation and agreement.
When a railway proposes to accelerate its services it first of all gives notice to its rival, which then proceeds to accelerate to precisely the same extent. But on this occasion, instead of keeping quiet about it, as is the wiser course for people who have much to conceal, the London & North Western Railway all in one breath bitterly complained that it was unnecessary to do anything at all, pointed out that its own trains could quite easily be accelerated much more still, and begged the aggressor not to force it to fight. As the only reason that it could have for fighting was the fear of losing traffic, the pretence that there is no demand for high speed on the part of the public immediately falls to the ground; further we have the explicit admission that a large acceleration was possible, and finally not one single word as to any desire to do as the public wished and economise time. It was, indeed, stated that the times of arrival and departure were the most convenient to passengers, but no attempt was made to demonstrate in what way the passenger gained by starting at 10 a.m., which was the departure time of these trains, instead of, say, at 11 a.m., the time of arrival remaining unaltered.
I may remark that all this fuss was about an acceleration of 15 minutes between London and Edinburgh, which was offset by a reduction of 15 minutes in the time spent on the two routes at Preston and York, where, owing to the introduction of dining cars, it had become no longer necessary to give passengers time for luncheon. I will not trouble your Lordships with further details, but in the same way as the relative speed of trains on the East and West Coast routes was regulated, so has the relative speed of trains on all other competitive routes in this country always been regulated. If this is not a conspiracy to defeat the interests of the public, I do not know what is. In comclusion, let me say that I hope that we shall not hear that the long standing and deep-seated defects to which I have drawn attention are due to the purely temporary phenomenon of the coal strike, and that the Government spokesman will give us exact facts and figures and will
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not, as on a previous occasion, merely state that the Government is perfectly satisfied with things as they are without making the least attempt to give the reasons on which this view is based. I beg to move.
THE FIRST COMMISSIONER OF WORKS (VISCOUNT PEEL): My Lords, the noble Lord has given us the benefit, as he has told us, of something like thirty years' experience of the railways, and I think that we must congratulate him that he was able to condense so long an experience into the comparatively small period of an hour. I must condole, I think, with the noble Lord on the fact that many of the suggestions that he has made to the railways have not been accepted. That is a very unfortunate experience and I do not wonder—I should feel the same myself—that it has lowered his opinion of the intelligence and ability with which the railways in this country are conducted. I am bound to say that it must be a matter of profound regret to the railway directors and others connected with the railways in this country that after thirty years' experience he could come to such a melancholy conclusion about the ability and intelligence of all the persons who are engaged in the work of the railways as engineers and conductors.
The noble Lord seemed to think that there was a sort of quadruple conspiracy against any sort of reform on the railways. He first of all attacked the Press. I saw my noble friend Viscount Burnham here a moment ago, and I hoped that he would defend himself against the charge of suppressing letters, information and articles which were sent to him and to other papers pointing out the defects of our railways. I had some hope that the noble Lord might have a good word to say for the Ministry of Transport, but that hope was dashed to the ground altogether, because I found from his remarks that not only was the Ministry of Transport a most incapable body—it is a very great misfortune that I have to represent in this House so incapable a Department—but that from its foundation by Sir Eric Geddes it had been packed with railway officials and that there was a sort of conspiracy between the Ministry of Transport and the railway companies to suppress any kind of improvement on the railways. After all, if the guardians of the public are as

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bad as he says they are it is very difficult to see what prospect there can be of any improvement.
Then, when we dismiss the newspapers, the Managers of the railways and the Ministry of Transport, we come to the public. Unfortunately we find that the public is also to blame, because, according to the noble Lord, the public is so grossly ignorant on all these subjects, so indifferent to safety and comfort on the railways and so lacking in the intelligence necessary to discern the defects of the railways. I confess that I felt that the noble Lord was really engaged in a most tremendous task in fighting the quadruple ranks of this phalanx, comprising the Ministry of Transport, the railways, the Press and the public. I found that the noble Lord seemed to be the only individual who was engaged in this struggle, and I confess that I hoped that he would recruit some members of your Lordships' House to support him in this Herculean effort to improve the railways.
There was one point on which I do not think that the noble Lord dwelt at very great length. He discussed speed, acceleration and other matters of that kind, concerning some of which, if he will allow me to remind him, I did give answers—no doubt he will consider them very obscurantist and ignorant, answers—three months ago when we were discussing the same subject, but I think he passed over rather lightly the Question that he has put down as the most important—I mean economy. Perhaps this was because he does not think that there have been any economies. At the beginning of his Question he asks the Government—
"whether they are able yet to form any conclusion as to the result of the amalgamation of the various railway companies in this country; whether the expectations of economy have been realised …"
To that point I think the noble Lord addressed rather a small portion of his interesting observations to your Lordships. It is really a very interesting Question, and one in which I know that many noble Lords in this House are very interested.
What has been the effect of the policy adopted five years ago of telescoping 120 different railway companies into four? I have heard, even in this House, some scepticism on the part of noble Lords not otherwise given to doubt as to the
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improvements that may have taken place and the economies that may have been effected by the amalgamation of the railways. I should like to quote on this point—I hope the evidence will not be considered in any way tainted—the words of a General Manager, Sir Felix Pole, because he says—I am paraphrasing his statement to some extent—that by condensing 120 companies into four, the strong companies have been enabled to assist those whose resources were poor. Therefore, when you are considering what economics may or may not have been realised by the combining of all these companies into four, you have also to consider the other side of the picture. What would have happened if there had not been this amalgamation, and how would these 120 companies have faced the difficult industrial conditions of the last five years? If I may again quote Sir Felix Pole's evidence, he says the real test is what would have been the additional cost of working 120 lines as separate undertakings, with respect to present-day burdens, and he puts the extra cost in rough figures at about £10,000,000. Therefore I think that in considering economics you must give great weight to that point, as to what would have happened to the unamalgamated railway companies during the great stress of the last five years.
We have, of course, to treat as a fair discount to be made from any idea of what might have been the economies realised during the last five years, that there has been, as everybody knows, a great increase of working costs during those years. There has also been the prolonged trade depression of 1922 and 1923, and all the disturbed industrial conditions. I think I may say that, without doubt, if there had not been this amalgamation of the railways the railway services would have been in a far more unfortunate condition, and a far worse condition, than they are in to-day. I am told that it is a very difficult thing to put into exact figures the definite economies that may have been effected, but I must allude to the figure which I gave when discussing the matter in November of last year, when the noble Lord raised this question—namely, that the Railway Rates Tribunal itself, in dealing with the question of standard revenue and allowance for economies in expenses, definitely stated that economies

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amounting to £1,200,000 had already been effected, and that other economies, according to their view, would be effected in due course. There is no doubt that the Railway Rates Tribunal would be on the safe side, and if they committed themselves to that figure of £1,200,000, the probabilities are that the economise have been far more considerable.
I need not remind your Lordships, with your great experience of affairs and business, of two propositions which are really almost platitudes. They are that large changes in great undertakings of this kind must require some time to effect, and that economies in the earlier years when the changes are made are, as a rule, set off by considerable necessary expenditure. There can be no doubt, I think, that economies have been effected in several broad directions—in overhead charges, in co-ordination with other services, in the use of alternative routes, in the centralisation of control and management, in the amalgamation of repair and renewal workshops, and in the standardisation of rolling stock, plant and equipment. Another reason why it is difficult to estimate economies in figures is that it is extremely difficult for the most competent person to say whether many of these results are due to amalgamation or to other causes which might have obtained without amalgamation. The problem, I am told, is very difficult indeed. Of course, if the years after amalgamation had been more normal than they have been, if we can use the word "normal" nowadays at all, it might have been possible to quicken the realisation of economies, but however favourable the circumstances it would have been difficult in four or five years to realise the benefits of economies in such vast undertakings.
The noble Lord raised certain specific points. Of two or three of them he was good enough to give me notice, and the others may be said to come under what steps the Ministry of Transport have taken to urge the railway companies to make improvements tending to better and safer services. A good many of the points raised by the noble Lord are points for which it cannot be said that the Ministry of Transport is responsible. Many of them are addressed to railway directors, managers and locomotive
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engineers, who, no doubt, will benefit by the experience of the noble Lord and the suggestions which he has made, although I am bound to say that I think they would be more ready to accept those suggestions with open arms, if the noble Lord did not preface them with a general attack upon their intelligence and ability. As regards providing a better and safer service, it really is not the Ministry's duty to urge railway companies constantly in this direction, as the railways are presumably under competent control, but if any defects are brought to the notice of the Ministry inquiries are made and representations, if necessary, made to the railway companies.
The Ministry, of course, are constantly watching the question of safety on the railways, and in this connection, although I do not want to make those comparisons to which the noble Lord so much objects, I must point out that British railways are the safest in the world. The noble Lord raised two or three points with reference to changes in the London, Midland and Scottish Railway management. With reference to the change of General Manager, I think that all I can say about that is that it is a matter for the railway company. The Ministry have not officially any information on the subject, and the question of the expenditure properly to be charged or paid out of rates is a question not so much for the Ministry of Transport as for the Railway Rates Tribunal.
The noble Lord made a general charge against railway Managers. He described them, I think, as incompetent and also as evasive. I do not say the suggestion is one of dishonesty, but still it is of a method of evasion and procrastination. I may say on behalf of the Ministry that that is not their experience. They have found that any serious criticism or practical suggestion is given careful and full consideration in responsible quarters. I need not remind your Lordships that many of the suggestions that are made cannot be carried out without very serious practical difficulties, which are very likely unknown to the public, and very often unknown also to the gentlemen who suggest these improvements. I am afraid that I must give the same answer to the noble Lord as regards

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the new locomotives on the London, Midland, and Scottish Railway. That, again, is the private concern of the railway company itself, and it is a matter on which the Ministry have not got, and cannot give, any official information.
I hope your Lordships will forgive me if I reply rather shortly to the point raised about the acceleration of express trains. I think I went into this matter at some length in November, and I really have not anything very new to say on the subject. The noble Lord, I think, laid great, stress upon it, and also on the great anxiety of the public to travel at considerably increased speeds. I dare say he is a better judge of what the public want than myself, but I can only say that his suggestion that you ought to be able to travel from here to Glasgow, about 430 miles, in three hours was a suggestion which filled me with dismay. Let me give one instance of what would happen. I understand that to keep up an average speed of 60 miles an hour you have at certain parts of the line to travel at a much accelerated speed—up to 80, 85 or possibly 90 miles an hour. If your Lordships were whisked from here to Glasgow at an average rate of 130 miles an hour you might find yourselves obliged to travel over parts of the road at 150 or 160 miles an hour. I do not know whether any of you contemplate such a prospect with any very great pleasure. I need hardly say that all these changes of speed have great resultant effects on tunnels and so on, which are very serious for the railways in these days when it is difficult for the railways to make both ends meet.
The noble Lord dwelt at some length on the question of giving instructions to railway drivers to make up time. That question also I went into rather fully three months ago, and I pointed out what the view of the Ministry was—namely, that considering the condition of the track, the alignment, the density of the traffic, and so on, it would be very imprudent to try to tie up the drivers with strict orders as to what they were to do in the matter of catching up time. I think the noble Lord referred to the Quintinshill collision, near Gretna, in 1915, and suggested that that was due to lack of good time-keeping on the part of the drivers. I am advised that it. Was
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owing to a mistake due to two signalmen, and that it was a mistake of a kind that would now be guarded against by appropriate apparatus. Then there is the question of improvement of rail joints, which is continually being examined by the responsible engineers. Those were some of the points with which the noble Lord dealt in his varied and interesting address. I have spoken on the question of economy. I have shown that many of the points he raised are points for which I, speaking for the Ministry of Transport, cannot be responsible, and that a good many other of his points ought really to be addressed to railway Managers and others, and that the Ministry of Transport are always ready when any of these complaints are made, or defects are pointed out, to do what they can to press their advice upon the railways.
The last point, I wish to mention is this, and I think this is a matter that weighs very heavily indeed with the public. The noble Lord lamented the blindness and indifference of the public to railway improvements, but I do not think the public are really quite so simple or so foolish as the noble Lord thinks. I am inclined to think they are more interested in safety than in extreme speed, and if the figures are looked into it will be found that Great Britain has secured a degree of safety which is unequalled in the world, having regard to the general density of the traffic. The number of passengers killed in train accidents is very small, and the average tendency is steadily lower. For the years 1905–19 the yearly average was 33·5; the yearly average during the past seven years, up to and including 1926, has been 8·5. Considering the enormous mileage run by trains in this country, that cannot be considered as anything but a small figure.
The noble Lord moved for Papers but I am not really aware of any Papers that I could lay on the Table. It is possible that the noble Lord, following the usual course, made that Motion to give him the right of reply, and therefore perhaps he will excuse me if I do not lay any Papers on the Table. He has not referred to any, and I do not think there are any that I could lay.
LORD PARMOOR: My Lords, I think we ought all to be very much obliged to

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the noble Lord, Lord Monkswell, for the extremely able and carefully prepared argument which he has addressed to your Lordships. I quite understand that the noble Viscount could not go into any matters of detail. There are one or two questions rather of principle on which I should like to ask whether he could afford the House a little further information. The noble Lord, Lord Monkswell, indicted the railway Managers and railway managements of this country in very strong terms, and he used an expression of which perhaps he hardly realised the strength—namely, that the managements of railways constituted a conspiracy against the public interest.
LORD MONKSWELL: I said that one definite thing that they did amounted to a conspiracy.
LORD PARMOOR: I am much obliged for the correction, but even to say that one definite thing amounted to a conspiracy is a very strong statement. Many of us sympathise with the general purport of the noble Lord's speech, which was that there are many matters affecting our railways in which we should like to see alteration and improvement. I agree with the noble Lord that what we are interested in now is not so much the extension of railways as the Managers and managements. I should like to suggest that when you come to that state in the life of railway enterprise, and public interest is involved in good Managers and good management, the best way is to get those Managers appointed by the State, and to bring the management under State control. I do not want to go into the case of other countries. I dare say I have travelled over as many lines as a good many members of your Lordships' House and in Switzerland and Ceylon and other countries that I have been to I have never found that there was any want of good management or of regard for the public interest where you had the Manager appointed from the public point of view instead of by a particular body of railway directors.
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM: What about Australia?
LORD PARMOOR: The noble Lord is very much more cognisant of railway matters than I am and perhaps he will tell us something about Australia. I am
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only concerned with places that I know. It would appear to me, when it is a matter of getting the right Managers appointed to railway companies, that the principle should be that they should be appointed in the public interest. It is the public which should have a voice in their appointment and the public ought also to have a voice in the methods of management of the railways.
There are two other points that I want to say a word about. I think it is quite true, as the noble Viscount said, that the amalgamations have led to economics. I do not for a moment deal with the extent of those economies. If they had not led to economies there would have been a great failure in the amalgamation principle. I wish to say a word about the Railway Rates Tribunal, which I regard as a weak Tribunal from the public point of view. I wish it had not been constituted and that the work had been left to the old Railway Commission over which a Judge presided. Before the Railway Rates Tribunal it is not the object of the railway companies to show the possible extent of economics because the question before that Tribunal is a different one. What the railway companies desire from that Tribunal is the largest possible power of charging that the Tribunal will allow. The railways could not attain that result by showing a maximum of economy, but rather by showing that on the balance between economies and expenses amalgamation, so far as the financial position of railway companies was concerned, had not been of very great benefit. That, I think, is the moral of the cases which have been heard so far by the Rates Tribunal. Perhaps it is prejudice on my part in favour of the old Tribunal that I prefer it to the present Rates Tribunal. At any rate my view is that it is a very great mistake not to have maintained the powers of the much stronger old Tribunal instead of allowing these questions to go, as they now do, for decision to a specially constituted Tribunal.
I think the difficulties that have arisen in regard to certain matters to which the noble Lord referred have come largely from the Railways Act of 1921. I say that for this reason. That Act was passed to cover a very wide field of railways, and until that Act had been passed no railway companies in this country could amalgamate

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without a special Act of Parliament. In other words it was held that they could not delegate their Parliamentary powers to any other body. Whenever a special Amalgamation Act came before a Committee of your Lordships' House or of the House of Commons the one consideration was this—how far can we ask for a further safeguard of the public interests in return for the advantage of the amalgamation that we are going to permit? On every occasion there was a most careful inquiry in order to guard against the amalgamation being detrimental to the public interest and to see that special provisions were inserted in the Act in order that the public interests might be safeguarded. All that was pushed on one side in this big Amalgamation Act of 1921. Many of the matters to which the noble Lord, Lord Monkswell, referred are just those matters which would have been considered by what I regard as the most competent body for dealing with matters of this kind.
A Committee of your Lordships' House would see that the advantages of amalgamation, which undoubtedly are great, should, so far as the public interests are concerned, be accompanied by proper safeguards and proper provisions. Such a thing is not to the disadvantage of the railways, but on the contrary an advantage to them, because these safeguards and provisions in the interests of the public induce the maximum of traffic. On the other hand, if without an inquiry of the kind which used to take place you have one large amalgamation scheme embracing 120 railway companies brought into four groups, you do not get the advantages of amalgamation really considered with a view to seeing that the railway companies do, in fact, introduce economical management in certain directions, nor have you any provision for seeing that public interest and public requirements are not unduly sacrificed.
Let me give one illustration of what happened under the old law. One of the most prominent complaints brought against the railway companies was that they did not, give sufficient public facilities. So far as I know the protection of the public in that respect, given by the old way of dealing with amalgamation, is gone. The Rates Tribunal has superseded the Railway Commission. I may be wrong, but I do not think that the Rates Tribunal has a, power of the kind
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to which I have been referring. I may point out to the noble Viscount that it was not the Board of Trade which saw that proper facilities were given, but it was the Railway Commission, before whom numerous cases were brought, which saw that proper provisions in the public interest were made. The era of competition has no doubt to a great extent gone, but the potential competition in the ante-1921 days was a very great thing in the public interest. For instance, would the Severn Tunnel ever have been constructed but for the potential competition of new railways started to connect South Wales with London? Going further back, I will take the case of the Hull and Barnsley Railway. That was a line promoted against what was thought to be a monopoly of the North Eastern Railway. What was the result? The result was not only an improved service to Hull, but that some millions of pounds in the aggregate were spent upon Hull docks so that you got the competition of the new docks as well as the new line with the old dock and the old North Eastern line, which was an enormous advantage in the public interest and to such a place as Hull.
We still undoubtedly want greater public facilities. Take the case of railway sidings for coal purposes. I do not want to go into this matter, but it is a railway facility. The railways are bound to provide sufficient facilities for dealing with and removing coal traffic. I do not say it was an easy matter to deal with, and it has become more difficult since you got these large amalgamated bodies. These are matters which have great weight particularly with noble Lords opposite. The noble Viscount knows that what is called personal effort based on competition has died out. You cannot use such a phrase about individual effort when you are referring to the management of these four great railway groups. Competition has gone, and while allowing that to go there has been left no proper provision in the public interests in other directions in which I think it was well known protection was required. I do not intend to say any more. It would be utterly impossible for an individual, however skilled, to go into the analysis of the noble Lord, but, I have always felt that—whether it was Sir Eric Geddes or anybody else does not matter—there was no proper protection whatever of the public

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interest in the Act of 1921. It was because the competition was destroyed without the public interest being safeguarded that these difficulties, which do occur at the present time, are emphasised.
EARL BEAUCHAMP: My Lords, it is fifteen months since we had an opportunity of discussing this subject and we owe a real debt of gratitude to the noble Lord who initiated the discussion. I hope that this debate will become an annual event and that we shall discuss in general terms the condition of the railways. I am sorry I do not think that we have had that satisfaction with regard to economy which I had certainly looked for on this occasion. The noble Viscount, who spoke from the Government Benches, told us indeed that he understood that the railways might have cost a great deal more and that we ought to be thankful they have managed to economise to the extent of about some £2,000,000. I cannot help thinking that a defence of that kind is just the defence which His Majesty's Government will put up when we discuss the general question of economy in this House, as I hope we shall have an opportunity of doing before Easter. I shall look forward to seeing if he then tries to persuade your Lordships' House that, although they might have spent a great deal more, they have been economical since they have spent only a little more while talking so much about economy.
The strike of last year would have been an opportunity of doing a great deal more in the way of amalgamation than has taken place. As an exmple, I take the fact that there are repair works at Crewe under the old London & North Western Railway and at Derby under the old Midland system. Both remain in existence. I should have thought that a great deal of economy could have been effected by combining the two into one. Again, an application was made by the railway companies asking if they might raise their rates by 10 per cent. on certain classes of goods. So far from that being an economy, it will be an additional burden on the community. Certainly the results we have seen from the working of the railways during the past year are very disappointing and show the urgent need that there is for economy.
The noble Viscount spoke to-day for the Ministry of Transport. I confess I
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look upon the Ministry of Transport as one of those Departments with which we might very well dispense altogether. Not indeed that I would dispense with your Lordships' House from listening to the noble Viscount providing information and gaiety, but he might then speak on behalf of a Department of the Board of Trade rather than on behalf of an independent Ministry. I doubt very much whether since its institution the Ministry of Transport has really justified its existence and the money spent upon it.
On the last occasion I remember I ventured to put before your Lordships, as everybody in this House might well do, examples of improvements that might very well be effected in the railway system of this country. I shall not traverse the same ground again, but I shall confine myself to two general remarks. In the first place, now that New Street in Birmingham is altogether under the one system of the London, Midland and Scottish, instead of being under two companies, a great deal more might be done to assist travellers who go through the junction. At the present moment Birmingham, as a railway junction, is an obstacle to travelling instead of an assistance. The other matter I wish to comment upon is the great difficulty there is in getting to the Eastern Counties from the Midlands. Any of your Lordships who have had occasion to travel between those two districts must have realised that the Eastern Counties are very isolated from the rest of the country and that it is simpler in most cases to go up to London and to come back again than to take the cross-country journey. Something ought to be done to make Birmingham more easily accessible to Norwich and Norwich more easily accessible to Birmingham. I join with the criticism of the noble Lord on the Cross Benches as to the adverse effect of fog upon our railway services. The example of the last few days only lays emphasis on the advantage and benefit that we might derive from having a Channel Tunnel. I cannot understand why we should call ourselves a civilised country in these days and not have a Channel Tunnel when we see the Channel services suspended as they have been during the past few days.
We naturally congratulate ourselves upon the fact, which nobody would deny or wish to deny, that the safety of passengers

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sengers in England is more marked as compared with the safety of passengers in other countries. That does not seem to me to exclude the possibility of far greater speed. I join issue with those who say that speed is not popular in this country; I believe speed is popular. The more time we can save the greater advantage it would be—certainly to the business people of this country. I am not frightened at travelling at 150 miles an hour. I look upon that as an ideal, not immediately attainable but certainly possible. I took an extreme figure of 150 miles an hour, but something faster than is done at present by the expresses is certainly possible. As has been pointed out, if the expresses to Scotland travelled at the same rate as the Great Western trains to Exeter they would save an hour over that journey. I believe that would be an example to everybody.
I must confess to having listened with peculiar interest to the speech just delivered. The noble Lord, having spent a lifetime in propagating the ideals of individualism, joined a Labour Government some time ago, and is now making a temporary effort in the direction of nationalisation. Perhaps the noble Lord would tell us if he will initiate a discussion on the nationalisation of railways. We would be glad to hear what he had to say about it and also what the noble and learned Viscount next to him would have to say about it.
LORD PARMOOR: I do not like the word nationalisation, but I think the management should be in the public interest.
EARL BEAUCHAMP: That is very interesting though wholly disorderly. I hope he will give us an opportunity of examining his opinions on a later occasion. We would be glad to hear whether other members of that Bench agree with him in wishing for public management or nationalisation. I will ask him then to tell us whether they are in favour of compensation or confiscation and what is the attitude of their Party.
LORD PARMOOR: This is a personal matter. Such matters are always troublesome and I do not therefore indulge in them. If the noble Earl had gone for one moment into the views expressed, he would have realised that compensation was the central item.
EARL BEAUCHAMP: I listened to him, but we did not hear one word about it on this occasion.
VISCOUNT HALDANE: It was assumed throughout.
EARL BEAUCHAMP: There are large sections of the Party to which the noble Lords belong who are not always so keenly in favour of compensation as they are themselves. I hope we will have a separate discussion on this subject on another occasion when it will be more adequately dealt with than it has been this afternoon. Meanwhile, I repeat that I regret that we were unable to hear from His Majesty's Government that there has not been more economy in this direction, and I do hope that when on a subsequent, occasion this subject is brought up before your Lordships' House we shall be able to have a more satisfactory reply from His Majesty's Government.
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM: My Lords, the noble Earl who has just sat down has taken the opportunity on this question regarding speed on the railways and economic administration to administer a rebuke to my noble friend upon the question of Government economy and upon the question of whether or not certain Ministries ought not to be abolished. I am afraid that I rather agree with the noble Earl on those particular points. I have always been an advocate of economy and I think there are too many Ministries. But I do not quite see what that has got to do with the Question before your Lordships' House. The noble Earl seems to be very annoyed that railway companies have put up their rates by some small percentage. People forget that they gave reduced their rates since the amalgamation by a very large amount, and that in their desire to serve the public they reduced rates more than they should have done and have now had to increase them, but only by a very small amount.
The noble Lord, Lord Parmoor, raised two questions, as I understood him. He first of all thought that railway Managers should be appointed by an office. I presume by that he means by a Government Department. Then he went on to deal with the question of the amalgamation a few years ago. I presume that if the Department the noble Earl wants to abolish,

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the Ministry of Transport, were in existence, the noble Lord, Lord Parmoor, would like that Department to appoint the General Managers of the various railways. To whom would those General Managers be responsible? To the directors or to my noble friend Viscount Peel? The directors, I suppose, would go out. There could be no advantage in having directors who had no control whatever over the Managers. The Managers, therefore, would be appointed and controlled by a Government Department.
The noble Lord then, apparently in order to justify that argument, cited the case of Switzerland, which is a very small country, where he says that State management has been successful. Let me point out to him what happened in France. There are in France two sorts of railways—some of them run by the State and some of them, like the Chemin de Fer du Nord, by a private company. Let me ask on which of them are the greatest number of accidents and the largest number of lives lost? The answer, undoubtedly, is on the State railways. That is a fact which does not admit of any argument. Then let him think of Australia. It is a well known fact that the Australian Government made such a horrible hash of their railway management that they had to have someone sent out to put them straight. Yet the noble Lord, in order to improve what, after all, has been admitted by everybody as one of the best systems of the world, suggests the appointment of General Managers by some Government Department. I agree with the noble Earl that the fewer Departments and the fewer Government officials we have the better and therefore I could not support that suggestion for a moment. Nor do I think it would be likely that the railways of England managed by officials appointed by a Government Department would be successful.
The noble Lord must remember that at the time the amalgamation took place a member of His Majesty's present Government made a statement—I forget where—that the railways were going to be nationalised. The noble Lord does not like that, but he would like to have the effect of it. However, that gentleman made that statement and the result was that the public, all the people who use the railways, were so upset that the
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statement had to be explained away, and what happened was the amalgamation. The noble Lord does not like the amalgamation of 1922. Neither do I. But where was the noble Lord in 1922? I never remember him opposing it. I opposed it. I was the only one, I believe, or nearly the only one, who opposed it tooth and nail from beginning to end. But I got no support. I was Athanasius contra mundum, as the noble Viscount, Lord Haldane, said when I was speaking here sometime ago. I have not forgotten it. It turned out that I beat the noble Viscount on that particular occasion. I was alone in opposing amalgamation. Why did not the noble Lord then come forward and use his great influence to stop the amalgamation which he has now condemned? It is easy to be wise after the event, but now it is done we have to put up with it, and I do not think that you can say, in view of the very difficult times through which the railways have been passing, that they have not done their duty and done their work extremely well.
EARL RUSSELL: My Lords, I do not propose to deal with the observations of St. Athanasius. I do not think I have any particular comment to make on them. We do not grudge the noble Earl who sits above the gangway the gibe he is so fond of making at this Bench or the scolding he often gives us. It often seems to me that if anybody speaking from this Bench has the audacity to say anything which is fairly reasonable Earl Beauchamp feels a particular horror and feels bound to chide us. On these occasions there seems to fall upon him the mantle of the Duke of Northumberland and he finds it a shirt of Nessus. I hope he will leave us to explain our policy in our own way when we are dealing with it.
I listened, as I think all your Lordships did, with great interest to the speech of the noble Lord upon the Cross Benches—the lecture I might almost call it—and I am bound to say that to a large extent my sympathies were with him. He reminded me when he spoke, and I think not unjustly, of the forces arrayed against him, of the conflict of David and Goliath. David was not without plenty of pebbles in his pouch and was not without plenty of power in his sling, but apparently he was very much embarrassed by the nebulous

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character of Goliath's head and was not certain where the pebble would strike. I think the noble Lord was right when he said that the influence of the railway companies and of those who manage the railway companies as against the interests of the public is, and has been, much too large. There was a time—I do not know whether it still is so—when their influence was certainly very great in the louse of Commons and I think they were fairly well represented in this House.
It is perfectly true that it is difficult to get the Press—although the noble Viscount, Lord Burnham, is not here I am sure he would not disagree with me—to take a strong line against very large advertisers or to encourage agitations against the commodities which they advertise. It has been suggested that the public has no grievance because it does not voice it and does not come forward. The fact is that the public which uses the railways and which travels on the railways is a very silent public, a very amorphous public, without anybody to speak for it and with no particular place in which its complaints can be brought to a focus. No one can pretend that the railways of this country are what they ought to be. I am sure the noble Lord opposite does not say that.
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM: I do not admit that there is very much wrong with them.
EARL RUSSELL: I agree to this extent, that I do not quite share what was apparently the view of Lord Monks-well, that we should be ashamed of English railways. I am not ashamed of them, but I think they might be very much better. I am sure your Lordships who have travelled by them, and particularly on short distance trains, will sympathise with the public who feel that they are not particularly well treated, that fares are very high, that arrangements are often very inconvenient to the public, and that we do not get the service that we ought to expect from so large an institution. At this late hour I do not wish to go into any details, but, since other railways have been mentioned, may I just touch upon the Southern Railway? Those who have anything to do with the Southern Railway have a sort of feeling that when those three companies were
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amalgamated all the worst vices of the worst of the three, the South Eastern and Chatham, passed on to those other railways, and that the London and South Western, which up to that time had been moderately good, took upon itself the complexion of the worst of the trio. Their trains are not always unpunctual, but they are very, very slow, and I think the noble Viscount himself probably knows that fact quite well. Probably we should hear more of this if most of your Lordships and those of the public who would otherwise travel first class did not in these days avoid the railways altogether for any reasonably short journey because the other mode of travel, the motor car, is so much more convenient and often much more expeditious.
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM: And much more dangerous.
EARL RUSSELL: I am not sure whether the noble Lord is right about that. I have travelled something like two hundred thousand miles by motor car and have not yet suffered a scratch; and I do not think I have travelled so far by railway. There is an old story that your Lordships may remember of the late Lord Middleton, who was speaking of the then notorious unpunctuality of the London and South Western Railway. In the days before the present and more convenient mode of locomotion was available he had been speaking at a small village in Surrey and had said that he need not hurry to catch his train because the trains were always not less than seven minutes late. When he got to the station he found that on that particular evening the stationmaster had managed to get the train off to time. It was the last train, and the result was that he was unable to get home. You cannot count on a train being late, as the noble Lord pointed out. You have to be at the station at the time when the train is supposed to start, you have to lose that time at that end and all the people and all the activities that depend upon the arrival of that train are held up because the train is late.
There is another point about the Southern Railway. It has been mentioned frequently in the Press. I refer to their accommodation for foreign services. I do not know what the facts are

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now, but I think I am right in saying that before the War on boat trains and foreign railway tickets the Southern Railway charged the maximum first-class fare of threepence a mile, which was unknown in any other part of the country. I am not sure that they do not still charge whatever corresponds to that fare now—4½d. a mile, or something of that sort. At any rate it is certain that on the one or two trains that they run that exceed 30 or 35 miles an hour they charge an enormous fare. Their attitude has not been misrepresented by the noble Lord on the Cross Benches, and it is the attitude of all the railway companies. It is the attitude that what they are doing is all right, that they need not really consider the public because nothing will ever be done to them in Parliament, that they will always get their Bills passed and their powers granted and will always be able to charge these prices and that consequently they need not improve.
The time has now come when the railway companies will have to fight for their existence. They are being threatened both in passenger traffic and in goods traffic, and unless they do adopt modern methods it is very doubtful whether they will survive as an efficient system. I should be prepared to say that this would be a loss to the country and a misfortune. Whether it is true that the directors are really opposed to change in itself, whether they have really persuaded themselves that nothing more can be done or what may be the reason, I do not know, but the facts, I think, are not very different from those stated by the noble Lord. I do not know whether your Lordships recollect or ever heard another railway story told many years ago, a story regarding the Great Western Railway on an occasion when they were discussing at a board meeting the opening of a new station at Ealing, the Great Western having been from its inception a gentleman's line which ran long distance trains which first-class accommodation and did not in those days take very much account of other passengers. The story is that after a heated discussion the board decided by a majority to open a new station at Ealing; whereupon one of the old directors said: "Very well, gentlemen, have it your own way, but you will flood the line with traffic.' That, I think, is not an altogether unfair
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representation of what is still the attitude of the railway companies. They seem to have to some extent the minds of Tariff Reformers—that is to say, they have the idea that that which hurts the passenger must benefit the railway. They do not realise that it is desirable that both parties to a bargain should be satisfied and happy.
The only other thing that I desire to say before I sit down concerns what was, I think, the real gist of the speech of the noble and learned Lord behind me. I do not want to repeat it, though I thoroughly agree with it. His point was that, in granting these advantages to private monopolies such as the railway companies by amalgamation and so on, the Party opposite were apt very often to lose sight of the public interest. That is a proposition with which I should hope that the noble Earl above the gangway would agree. I think it is so in this case, and I think it has happened and is happening in the case of electricity. I think that the public interest might have had a great deal more done for it than was done when the railway companies were granted this amalgamation, and I am afraid that, in spite of the excellent representation that it has in this House in the person of the noble Viscount opposite, I have not that complete confidence in the Ministry of Transport that I confess that I should like to have.
LORD MONKSWELL: My Lords, such very small scratches have been inflicted upon the statements that I ventured to make by the noble Viscount who represents the Ministry of Transport that there is really hardly anything for me to say. Those of your Lordships who have spoken have dealt with most of these tiny scratches, and I think the only point worth commenting upon concerns the Gretna accident. The noble Viscount said that the Gretna accident was due to a mistake of the signalman. It was due to a mistake of the signalman in the first instance, but the overriding, predisposing cause was the fact that two trains coming from Euston failed to make up the time that they had lost before they reached Carlisle, with the result that a slow train which was timed to start after them actually started in front of them. It had to be shunted on to another line, a manœuvre which would not have been attempted at all if it had

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started in its proper place. Actually the predisposing cause of the Gretna accident was undoubtedly the fact that the trains failed to make up time. That is really all that have to say. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

CONSOLIDATION BILLS.
LORD MUIR MACKENZIE: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing on the Paper in my name. I think it is unnecessary to make any speech on the subject of this Motion. I have the authority of the Lord Chancellor, whose absence we so much regret, for saying that he would have moved the Motion himself, the object being to carry out the completion of the consideration of the Poor Law Bill, a Consolidation Bill of which the Committee that was appointed last Session had got through about one half when Parliament was prorogued.
Moved, That a Committee of six Lords be appointed to join with a Committee of the House of Commons as a Joint Committee to consider all Consolidation Bills in the present Session; that the Lords following be named of the Committee—

E. Lucan,

L. Monkswell,

L. Gorell,

L. Muir Mackenzie,

L. Askwith,

L. Warrington of Clyffe;

that such Committee have power to agree with the Committee of the House of Commons in the appointment of a Chairman.—(Lord Muir Mackenzie.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Ordered, that a Message be sent to the Commons to acquaint them therewith, and to request them to appoint six members of that House to be joined with the said Committee.
House adourned at ten minutes past six o'clock.