MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT. (Hansard, 15 February 1933)

HL Deb 15 February 1933 vol 86 cc703-52 703

§ LORD BUCKMASTER had given Notice that he would move to resolve, That in the opinion of this House the duties of the Ministry of Transport could be better discharged by, the Home Office and the Board of Trade, and that it is in the public interest that the said Ministry should be dissolved, and its functions distributed among other Departments. The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, the Ministry of Transport, to which my Motion relates, was born in evil days. It was one of a, number of Ministries that from time to time were planted upon an unsuspecting public. Many or some of them have now passed away, and the effect of my Motion is to ask that the Ministry of Transport should join its unlamented companions. The history of its origin is not without interest. In 1919 the Government conceived the idea of some temporary and experimental method of nationalising the whole of the means of transport. of this country. They introduced a Bill for that purpose and in order to control the inevitable resulting confusion they provided by that Bill that the Ministry of Transport should be set up. Few Bills have ever encountered more resolute opposition in this House. It was criticised by people sitting in every quarter of the House, excepting the avowed supporters of the then Government. It went to Committee and emerged a different Bill, but the Ministry of Transport survived the operations of the Committee stage and remained implanted in the measure.

§ In 1922 a Committee was set up for the purpose of determining what steps should be taken to effect an object which was on everybody's lips but appears to have been in few people's hearts, the saving of public expense. It was one of the 704 strongest Committees ever established. Lord Inchcape, Sir Eric Geddes and many others with eminent names were members of that Committee and among other things they unanimously resolved that the Ministry of Transport should be abolished. Another Committee, entirely unofficial but composed of members from both sides of the House, was recently set up in the House of Commons for the purpose once more of considering what ought to be done in the interests of national economy and, although there seems to have been sonic question about the prudence of the publication of the report, that Committee also unanimously reported that the Ministry of Transport should be abolished. This Ministry, therefore, has been under two direct sentences of death, and I ask your Lordships this afternoon to say that there is no reason whatever why execution should be any longer delayed.

§ The Ministry itself, so far as I can see from Whitaker's Almanack, has some eighty salaried officials. Its expenses in the last year that I can find were £ 333,000, a figure entered as a gross sum which was reduced by a method of accountancy known only to Government Departments, by the introduction of what are called grants-in-aid from other sources, which produced the net result of a smaller figure. £333,000, although it would appear to be small in the light of the vast national commitments that we have undertaken, is nevertheless a figure which, when we are really in search of economy, ought not to be overlooked, and I would suggest that it would have been far better for the Government to have considered the possibility of saving money from such a Ministry instead of attempting to obtain it by curtailing the salaries of Judges and the emoluments of school teachers.

§ So far as I can see there really can be no reason why this Department, which performs functions that can easily be undertaken by other Departments, as indeed was found by the Geddes Committee, should any longer continue. I do indeed realise that it may be a great convenience to a Government to have a Department like that at its disposal,for it enables them to take men of wholly blameless life, of wholly unquestioned Party fidelity, and of wholly untested worth in the administration of public affairs, and 705 give them a trial. It gives them another rung in the, great ladder of promotion, up which it is the laudable ambition of every public man to climb. I can see, therefore, and I say it quite seriously, that it might be useful to have a Department of this kind in normal times; but we do not live in normal times, and it is essential, if we are ever going to make our revenue meet our expenses, that we should avoid every unnecessary expense, however small it may appear to be; and it does not necessarily mean that the whole of your expenses and commitments are covered by the expenses of the office. I ventured to point out, when the Bill which subsequently became the Act was before the House, that there ought to be some definite limitation put on the expenses to which we were committed by this Ministry. I do not know that any such limitation ever found its way into the Act, and the expenses that we have been committed to by the operations of the Ministry are something very grave.

§ If in the result, notwithstanding that, it were found that this Ministry really performed a work of such transcending public utility that it was desirable it should be continued, even though it might, on other grounds, be thought unwise, then I can understand that people might say: Why attack this Ministry which is doing very valuable and useful work? I propose this afternoon to submit to your Lordships that this Ministry of Transport has failed in the main purposes for which it was set up. There are two ways in which that matter may be regarded. It was essential that it should bold the scales fairly as between the competition of the roads and the railways, and it was above all things essential that it should take every step possible in its power to protect the public against the increasing use of mechanical transport on the roads. In both those respects, it is my submission, it has failed.

§ Let me deal with these matters in the order I have stated. Let me first deal with the question as between the railways and the roads. When this Ministry arose there was existing and operative an Act of Parliament which has been wholly overlooked in nearly all the. discussions which have taken place between road and railway representatives. It was an Act of enormous consequences, and, I say it gladly, it was one of the very valuable 706 Acts which were passed by the Conservative Government which began its life in 1875. It provides this, and I apologise for reading what I think is probably the most uninviting literature I know— namely, the clause of an Act of' Parliament: Where by the certificate of their surveyor it appears to the authority which is liable or has undertaken to repair any highway, whether a main road or not, that, having regard to the average expense of repairing highways in the neighbourhood extraordinary expenses have been incurred by such authority in repairing such highway by reason of the damage caused by excessive weight passing along the same, or extraordinary traffic thereon; such authority may recover in a summary manner from any person by whose order such weight or traffic has been conducted the amount such expenses as may be proved to the satisfaction of the court having cognizance of the case to have been incurred by such authority by reason of the damage arising from such weight or traffic as aforesaid. That is the law to-day, and in the whole of these discussions as between the railways and the roads I have never even heard it referred to.

§ But the thing that is most important is that that liability most unquestionably lay upon all the heavier forms of motor traffic that began to use the roads. No one could for a moment suggest that that traffic was not an excessive weight and was not of extraordinary nature; and under that Act of Parliament these people, who now come and plead for what they call equality with the railways, would have been responsible for the whole of the damage. And I am by no means certain—I say this with some hesitation—that they would not also have been responsible for the damage they cause to the bridges. My complaint against the Ministry of Transport is that they have permitted the whole of that liability to be taken away from the people on whose shoulders the Act of Parliament placed it and they have compelled their competitors in business to be one of the contributories to the cost.

§ Now let me for a moment assume that we are not discussing questions as between railways and roads but as between two competitors in business. Let me ask you what you think of this: Two rival traders; one has a mortgage on his shop, the other has not. You relieve the man from his mortgage and you call on his competitor to contribute to the cost. I ask, is that just? I say that at the 707 bottom of the whole of this controversy as between the road and the rail, there is the fundamental injustice that you have relieved the heavy traffic partially at the expense. of the railways, and it no longer is under the liability which the wise legislation of 1878 thought fit to impose upon it. The Ministry of Transport have done nothing with regard to that. I have even some doubt as to whether they know about it. One thing is quite certain; it has formed no part in the discussions, and to my mind it should underlie the whole thing.

§ You then proceed, and you find that in order to maintain these roads £ 42,000,000 a year is taken out of the ratepayers' pockets. It is no use saying that the transport industry provides the cost by paying for motor taxes; the answer is that there is 42,000,000 taken out. of the ratepayers' pockets for the purpose, and towards this £42,000,000 once more the railways are called upon to contribute. I say that that is most unfair. It is not only unfair, but in my humble judgment it is most unwise. The one thing that is essential for this country is the maintenance of its railways. There is nobody who doubts it. Nobody for a moment can contemplate the condition of our life here without their continued existence to-day. And yet it has been permitted to these heavy transport vehicles to enter into a competition which I suggest is in its very essence based upon something which is unfair.

§ Whenever any question arises in this House, and it has arisen frequently, as to some method by which this traffic should he better controlled, the invariable answer is: "See what expense you are going to put upon them." Has anybody here or in the other. House ever said: "See what expense you put upon the railway company when you ask them to maintain their fences, when you ask them to maintain their level crossings, and to put up signal boxes"? Did anybody ever hear such 'a question? The only thing that was ever thought of then—and it was the only thing that should be thought of—was the public safety, and the question of expense was a thing that the industry had got to bear in order that the public safety might be secure. The condition as between the road and the rail became so acute that' after some prolonged discussion the newspapers got hold of it. Something happened that 708 called the attention of the Ministry to a condition of affairs that needed instant remedy, and what did they do? They then appointed a Conference of their own which they asked to operate at once, in order that they might be able to act quickly. That Conference, I think, was one of the most useful and the most valuable that has hitherto been set up, and it made its Report.

§ Now, the first thing that ought to have been done was that this Report should have been examined and acted upon without delay. You often hear reproaches about the delay of the law, but we are told to-day that everything is relative, and the delay of the law is like a flash of light compared with the delay of the Ministry of Transport. This Conference reported in July. All the different industries were invited to send in their criticisms. I have read, I believe, all that have been made public. I cannot think of one that could not have been prepared in a fortnight. If anyone had the material before him it should have been prepared in a couple of days; but they have gone on dribbling, dribbling, and dribbling with these criticisms, and they say they are not yet finished, and the autumn passes by, the time when they ought to have introduced their Bill in order to render their proposals effective for the coming year. And now all we know is that something may be done in the Budget; but what it is nobody can tell.

§ The Report of this Conference is one of the clearest and most condensed that I have ever read. The critics proceeded to attack the constitution of the Conference, and I see with great regret that the noble Lord, Lord Mount Temple, who himself Was once the Minister of Transport, has joined in that attack. He says, as reported in The Times to-day—and I trust he will correct me if he is misreported: .… the Ministry set up a sort of Conference on which those intimately concerned were refused representation and had rip say in its proceedings. That Committee— the Salter Committee— had presented what might technically he called a unanimous Report, but to say it was really a unanimous conclusion in those circumstances was really 'dirty work '.

§ LORD MOUNT TEMPLE
I deal with it in my speech.

§ LORD BUCKMASTER
I say that that Committee did make a unanimous 709 Report, and the charge that is made that these people were not representative is a charge which the facts will not justify. Let me tell you how they were appointed. They were appointed by a standing committee of Mechanical Transport Associations at the instance of the Government. I imagine you could not get a more representative Committee to appoint them. They were carefully and impartially selected and these people who are said not to represent anybody and to have ex-elided from representation people who were anxious to be appointed, are these: The Past President of the Commercial Motor Users' Association. Is that an unrepresentative name or an unrepresentative body? The Vice-President of the National Road Transport Employers' Federation. Is it suggested that that is a sham? The distribution manager of Messrs. J. Lyons & Co., Ltd. We know that they exist, and I should imagine that their commercial activities are as great as those of anybody.

§ LORD MOUNT TEMPLE
May I ask the learned and noble Lord one question? Is he aware that three bodies were invited by the Minister of Transport to attend a preliminary Conference— namely, the railway companies, the Joint Committee of Road Users, whom he has just mentioned, and the long-distance road hauliers, who are the most affected by the Salter Report; that the Minister only appointed from the first two bodies, and refused the road hauliers any representation at all until they asked for it? Is that fair?

§ LORD BUCKMASTER
Whether that is correct or not does not appear to affect the argument I am placing before the House. The argument I am putting before your Lordships is this, that to say that. people who are put on that Committee were not selected people, representative of the interests they were called on to represent, is a profound mistake. I am reading out, one by one, the qualifications of the people who were appointed, and I have pointed out that they were appointed by a most impartial body with the most far-reaching knowledge you could possibly get. The mere fact that somebody else was not on the Committee is due to the fact that you cannot have a committee of ungovernable size if you are to do any work. I 710 have not told your Lordships all of them yet. The last one is. the President of the Scottish Commercial Motor Users' Association. Whatever may be said about these men, whether anybody may suggest in their greater wisdom that they could have found better ones, I maintain that these men are fair representatives of the industry they were called on to represent. And about this there can be no question: the Report was unanimous; and I would be glad to know why it is that in these circumstances people who, like myself, assert that fact are to be accused of doing dirty work.
This Report, as you all know, pointed out that the road users were £2,500,000 short of their proper contribution to the expenses of the roads, even if you assume the whole of the petrol tax paid by them to be attributed to that purpose together with their licences. The Committee point out something more, which is a most astounding indictment of the Ministry of Transport. They point out that the Ministry had established an ascending scale of licences up to five tons unladen weight, and there they would let it stop, so that there was an encouragement to multiply the load on the roads to the utmost possible extent. Now, the Salter Report was brought before your Lordships' consideration by myself in a Motion I made in November last year. My Motion was in two forms: first, that it was desirable that it should be carried into effect without delay, and secondly, that there should be a better attempt to achieve security for people on the roads. In my opinon, the two things hang together, and in dealing with this I did my best to deal with the details of the Salter Report. So far as was in my power I laid every relevant fact before your Lordships.
It is hardly to be believed that when Lord Mount Temple, who appears to have some feeling on this matter, spoke, he said I had devoted nineteen-twentieths of my speech to the latter part of the Motion, and that I practically ignored the Salter Report altogether. Being mathematically minded, I have examined how I treated each branch, and I find that as nearly as possible I gave half to each part of my Motion. The last thing I desire to do is to ask your Lordships to re-read anything I have said, but if any of your 711 Lordships wish, if I may say so, to have a perfectly fair and complete exposition of the Salter Report, I would respectfully ask you, when you have leisure, to turn to what I said on the matter.
That Report, as I say, has been challenged, almost shelved, and we do not know what is going to be done with it. I must say when a Minister has set up such a Committee, composed of men of such outstanding competence, and presided over by a man whose impartiality and skill no one has ever ventured to question— when that unanimous Report has been approved by your Lordships' House it should not be shelved, but put into operation without delay. With regard, therefore, to the action of the Ministry of Transport as between rails and roads, my charge is that they have not held the scales fairly; whether owing to unfamiliarity with the facts or owing to what Lord Mount Temple suggests on the part of the Ministry, I do not know; but I do say that the facts I have stated show that the scales have not been fairly held. Now, no doubt, Lord Mount Temple thinks that the infirmity of the Ministry of Transport has something to do with it, because he said he "deeply deplored that these recommendations were, under the present hesitating and weak Minister, to be relegated to the scrap-heap." If this Ministry is governed by a hesitating and weak Minister, is it not time it should be ended? Is it right that you should have a body possessed of such great powers condemned by a person who formerly held office as being hesitating and weak. I do not like to suggest to Lord Mount Temple what might be his duty in this matter, but I suggest to him that it is a little hard to speak like that of his successor, and that it is not everyone who can bend the bow of Ulysses.
I now turn to what, to my mind, is an even more formidable charge against the Ministry of Transport. I say that from beginning to end they have done nothing to secure the safety of the people who use the roads on foot. It is perfectly true that they passed the Motor Transport Act of 1930. Now what did that do? It abolished the speed limit. Was that in the interest of the foot passenger? Can anyone point out to me from the first to the last word of that Act anything that has been inserted in its pro- 712 visions to protect the foot passenger? The only thing that can be suggested is that there has been created an offence, a charge of reckless driving. I have my doubts as to whether it was a new offence, but that is all that can be said, and it is punishable by a fine, not very large, a term of imprisonment that is not very long, and a power of suspending the licence which is only infrequently used.
Now let us just see how, in fact, it works. I took this from an evening newspaper which I saw yesterday by chance. A woman gives evidence at an inquest as to the death of her five-year-old son. I will not harrow your Lordships by describing what the paper said was the condition of the unhappy woman. She was taken in a state of collapse from the court. That one can well understand. She was walking with a child in each hand. She herself was knocked down. She put up her hands and shouted "Stop !" The account adds: "I went to pick up my baby and found my boy dead." Of course it might be an accident. But let us see what the verdict is, and see how this Transport Act helps the people. The jury said they considered the driver of the van should be censured for his negligent driving, but that he was not criminally responsible. In South Australia, as I have pointed out before, that man would have been in peril of seven years hard labour. About that there is no doubt. I doubt if there is any civilised country in the world where such a verdict as that could be returned against a man and the man be free of everything except the possible chance of a £ 5 fine or, it might be, a temporary suspension of his licence. That is merely an instance of things that happen day by day.
I saw a report that 1,255 children were killed in one year, and I see no reason to disregard it, because from figures I quoted previously, taken from The Times and the Scotsman, I found the record of slaughter was 100 per month. 1,255 children killed ! Why? Simply because there is no attempt being made to control the speed at which these people drive their cars, or the skill of the men who drive them. If you were to go down the Bayswater Road, which, as you know, affords access to the Park, you will find a policeman at one of the refuges, and his business is to help the children across the road, and he does 713 his work admirably. But does it not strike you as a terrible indictment upon the people who use the road that you must have a man paid for at the public expense to compel car drivers to do what every decent man should do without compulsion, avoid running over a child? I say without hesitation that if a person walked down the pavement and treated children on the pavement as the motor cars treat them in the road he would be lynched before he had gone a quarter of a mile. There is no care whatever unless there is the authority of the law to enforce against these people a decency of behaviour that they ought to have for themselves.
It is perfectly true that it might well be that, even driven at the pace at which these cars are driven to-day, there would be no risk if al drivers were skilled. We have in the House this afternoon the noble Earl, Lord Howe, who is one of the most skilful drivers in the kingdom, and who, I believe, rejoices in a pace which he has never yet asked me to share. But no one can say he has injured anybody, and why? Because of his skill. May not it, therefore, be desirable that there should be some training and some test before licences are handed out broadcast to anybody of sixteen enabling him to drive a lethal weapon about the road without control? "No," the Ministry of Transport says, "you must not do that." Every single proposal that has been put before the Ministry, and there have been many, by which this scandal might be lessened, has been rejected. There is the proposal made by the noble Earl, Lord Howe, as to tests for drivers, an excellent one. There is the proposal that you should reimpose some speed limit and see that it is enforced, which, I think, also is good. There is the proposal that you should strengthen the hands of the law against these people, and make them responsible for the mischief that they cause. Every single one of these proposals has been turned down by the Ministry of Transport. If they know of these things that is as much as you can say, but you do not know if they have realised the serious state of affairs that exist. They do nothing but pause and falter and hesitate to act.
We have to face this position. Are you contented to see a number of people injured and killed upon our roads year by 714 year without doing something to stop this slaughter? Are 1,255 children to be offered up year by year upon an altar erected to the God of Robots, and nobody attempt to pull it down? To my mind the apathy of people in this matter is a lamentable thing. I believe myself that public opinion is far more ready to be kindled upon this question than the Ministry of Transport believes; at least I am certain that unless something is done we shall remain under a disgrace which I think it ought to be the desire of every decent-minded man to remedy. This complaint that I make is not made only by pedestrians. I have spoken to very many people about this matter. I do not think I know a single decent man who drives a motor car who is not as profoundly ashamed of what takes place upon the road as people who do not drive motor cars at all. It is only a small fraction of these people who do these things and they are the people whom it ought to be possible to reach and to punish.
The extent of the mischief which they can do is very hard indeed to describe. I do not like mentioning personal matters, but I should like to refer to one incident which shows exactly how the law can operate to-day. I was crossing the Bayswater Road the other day. The road was quite bare on my right hand when I started, but a car came along at such a pace that it covered the whole of the vacant space before I was in the middle of the road, and drove straight at me. It passed within a few inches of me, although there was plenty of room elsewhere. As it passed the driver leaned out from his seat and said: "How do you like that?" Four inches and I must have been killed ! That is a comparatively trifling matter. The thing that is important is this: Had I been killed there was nothing under this Act that you could have done to this man of any consequence. You might have said that he was guilty of careless driving; probably that would have been the charge brought against him under this Act. And what would have been the result? I have said before, and I repeat, the offence in law under the Act is identical with his having left his certificate of insurance on his hall table. He might have been fined in the same way as lie would have been fined for leaving a piece of paper behind.
715 He might have been fined £10, if the magistrate was very angry, but he could not have had his licence endorsed under that section for the first offence. If he had not been brought up before that is all that would have been done to him, and that is all the protection that this Ministry of Transport has afforded by its Act for the people who are the lawful users of the highway, and were the users of it long before motor cars were thought of. It is impossible to say that the Ministry of Transport has done nothing, because we hear that it has, through the agency of the Home Office, caused a very careful inquiry to be made as to how these accidents happen. And that is all it has done. Really and truly if the Minister of Transport wants to know how these accidents happen let me tell him how to find out. Let him ask some of his people to walk down Bayswater, and between Lancaster Gate and Notting Hill, two or three times a day when traffic is busy, and try to cross the road. If he will do that he will find out quickly how these accidents happen. Why, the accidents happen there almost. daily. It was only a short time back that a woman was cut down standing at the refuge not far from my house. Though I did not see it I was told that it was not a pleasant sight to see that woman lying in the road with her grey hair all dabbled with blood. But although I did not see it, I can believe it, for I saw the same thing myself lower down the road not long ago when a man was killed merely because the vehicle was going along so fast that it could not be controlled.
Let them go and see for themselves and not wait for the police to make reports. How do they know that the policeman is going to he there when accidents happen? The police cannot be everywhere, and when the policeman is there there is not so much risk of accidents as when he is not there. Bat they are to try and find out and report to the Ministry of Transport, and when they have found out about it they will consider what they will do. The answer to the whole thing is clear. There was a Judge who had as much experience of County Courts, where these matters often come up, as anyone— Sir Edward Parry—and he says: 716 The main cause of these so-called accidents are selfish, reckless, incompetent drivers and the use of machines unsafe or unfit for road traffic. The true reason of the horrible results of motor accidents is the speed at which these vehicles are allowed to drive. Surely, the Minister of Transport might have asked somebody who knew, but the very Commission to which the noble Lord, Lord Mount Temple, is so fond of referring, and which he says ought to be their authority for what they do—it is hardly to be believed—never summoned one of the London Police magistrates before them before this speed limit was abolished. They never heard the practical men in London who are administering the law and who could tell them what happened. They were undoubtedly influenced—I do not say for a moment improperly influenced— by the enormous weight of the evidence brought up by these organised bodies who are in favour of motor transport. My complaint against them is that they have remained under their control.
I believe the noble Marquess, Lord Londonderry, will reply, and I want to ask him two simple questions. The first is: Does he think it just that the liability of the heavy traffic under the Statute to which I have referred should have been taken away from them at the partial cost of their competitors in business The second question I would like to ask is: Does he really think that the resources of our law and civilisation are exhausted and there is nothing that can be done to stop the slaughter on our roads? My Lords, I propose that the powers of this office should be distributed and should go in part to the Home Office and in part to the Board of Trade. It is true that I sometimes fear that the Home Office appear to be infected by the bacillus that dehumanises every Government Department, and certainly their expressions of sympathy with birds who are suffering abominable cruelty do not encourage one to believe that they are too sensitive to suffering. But none the less, the Home Office has at least a long tradition of the care of the lives and safety of the people of the country, and I believe they would respond to the appeal to which the Ministry of Transport has been deaf. The Board of Trade will know more about the railways and roads and competition between them, and 717 the value of the railways to this country, than the Ministry of Transport has apparently ever thought of learning. My charge is, that the Ministry of Transport has been tried in the balance and found wanting, and that its authority should be broken up and given over to the two offices I have named. For that purpose I beg to move.

§ Moved to resolve, That in the opinion of this House the duties of the Ministry of Transport could be better discharged by the Home Office and the Board of Trade, and that it is in the public interest that the said Ministry should be dissolved and its functions distributed among other Departments.—(Lord Buckmaster.)

§ LORD PONSONBY OF SHULBREDE
My Lords, I feel I am expressing what your Lordships all feel in thanking the noble and learned Lord for his most eloquent speech. At the same time I feel sure that we should like to congratulate him on his escape from such a, terrible accident. I have every sympathy with his feelings. On occasions of that sort one's exasperation and one's indignation know no bounds. But I would say to the noble and learned Lori very respectfully that it would be of great assistance to all the authorities concerned and to everybody who desires greater safety on the roads if on occasions of that sort he took the number of the car. If he charged the driver with dangerous driving and quoted what the driver had said to him I think that a very severe sentence would be imposed upon that man.
I was waiting throughout the noble and learned Lord's speech for his indictment of the Ministry of Transport, and I must say I heard very little about it. His quarrel seemed to be very largely with the noble Lord, Lord Mount Temple, whom we are likely to hear speak later in the debate, and his charges were also very properly made against the Government, but against the Ministry of Transport I cannot say that I heard him bring any charge whatsoever. In a very subordinate capacity I have had experience in several Government offices. For fourteen months I served in the Ministry of Transport. I must say that I found there a very high level of efficiency amongst the officials and in the senior officers I found a breadth of view, a grasp of the perplexing problems that 718 were constantly arising; and also a general enlightenment not usually associated with the expert's mind, and, I should say, unsurpassed in any other Government Department.
The trend of the argument which the noble and learned Lord brought forward was that we are confronted with very grave and serious problems with regard to traffic. The invention of the internal' combustion engine has brought problems with which we are all trying to grapple. Instead of proposing that the Ministry of Transport should be disbanded it would be better in my opinion if, on the contrary, it was very greatly strengthened. I do not think that the noble and learned Lord really has full knowledge of the scope of the duties of the Ministry of Transport. Noble Lords received at the beginning of the week a list of rules and orders to be laid on the Table of the House. Among them there are over 80 which concern the Ministry of Transport. The Ministry's duties range from the very large questions such as road and rail down to the very small but equally difficult questions such as the regulation of the traffic in Bond Street. It has to deal with road construction and the administration of the Road, Fund, it has to deal with docks and harbours, and it has to deal with electricity.
I think the noble and learned Lord did not find the correct list of salaries and officials in the Ministry of Transport because it is a very large Department. At the same time I would call attention to the cost, which can be found in the Civil Service Estimates. Taking the year 1931–2 the gross expenditure of the Department was £511,811 and there were recoveries from the Road Fund of £355,634 and from other sources of £24,100, making altogether £379,734. So that the net cost to the Exchequer of the Department is only £132,077. If, therefore, anybody is out for economy and wants to disband the Department they will produce very little result in that connection. Anything so misguided, if I inlay say so, as a suggestion to get rid of a Department that is grappling with these technical problems and is obliged to devote itself day in and day-out to constantly new aspects of the motor and road question, is absolute madness. What certainly is wanted is an expert body like the Ministry of Transport who can stand up against the extravagant 719 demands of manufacturers and dealers in motor vehicles whose bullying and arrogant tone needs somebody with real expert knowledge to counteract them. They are the enemy to-day, and unless we have a fully-manned Department to deal with these people they will get the upper hand.
I do not for a moment suggest that the noble and learned Lord has not very good ground for complaint. I think he has, but if I may respectfully say so he is throwing his stones at the wrong window; and although his Motion is for the abolition of the Ministry of Transport, I was glad that a good part of his speech was really directed against the Government. There I think he is right.

§ LORD BUCKMASTER
It was not intended to be.

§ LORD PONSONBY OF SHULBREDE
I do not see how you can isolate the head of the Department from the Government. A Minister is wanted at the Ministry of Transport with drive, initiative, power of invention and eagerness to deal with these difficult problems as they arise. It was universally admitted that the late Minister, Mr. Herbert Morrison, had those qualities and showed great eagerness in grappling with new problems, searching new fields and adopting new ideas. More than that, I say the Minister of Transport ought to be a Cabinet Minister. What happens now? The Minister realises how important and vital all these matters are. The question the noble and learned Lord has so eloquently brought before your Lordships' House before now of the terrible loss of life and the number of road accidents cannot be neglected and is as urgent as any domestic or foreign problem with which the Cabinet has to deal; yet what can the Minister do if he is not in the Cabinet? He sends in a suggestion that such and such a regulation or bit of legislation should be brought forward and the Cabinet Ministers of the big Departments, engrossed also in very important questions, are very likely to, and have before now, set aside any requests from a Minister who is not a member of the Cabinet.
I believe the very first thing to be done, so far from abolishing the Ministry of Transport, is to give it a higher status than hitherto, and to see that the 720 Minister is a Cabinet Minister in order that he can press these urgent matters before the Cabinet personally, because unless he can do that he has no chance at all. The noble and learned Lord talked about the Salter Report—that is what I mean by his having attacked the Government. Why had not something been done upon the Report? But that is not the Ministry; that is His Majesty's Government. The noble and learned Lord talked about correcting this matter of speed, which he maintains is really the origin of the greater part of the accidents. I differ from him there. I do not think the abolition of the speed limit has been primarily responsible for a great number of the accidents. He also said that it was often incompetent drivers who were responsible for accidents, and I do not believe that either. I believe incompetent drivers are very nervous and very careful. I think it is just that sort of driver who passes so closely, who likely enough knew to an inch how near he could get to the noble and learned Lord— it is that man we want to get at, and he is quite competent. That is one of the great arguments against tests for driving. But if there are to be tests, speed limit, and legislation on the Salter Report, such matters must be attended to by the Government of the day, and by the Minister of Transport being able to press the Government to adopt his proposals.
If the noble and learned Lord looked at the archives of the Ministry of Transport, I should not wonder if at this moment he found prepared scheme after scheme for tackling these difficult problems. From contact with the Department I feel that it is not the Department that is to blame, and I think that when an indictment is made against any branch of the Civil Service very great care should be taken to see that there is good ground for it. The idea of this division of duties between the Home Office and the Board of Trade is absolutely grotesque and would place an intolerable burden on the two Departments. They have not the officers competent to deal with it. It is not a matter for a subordinate minor official; it is not an affair that is to be tucked away in an out-of-the-way passage in any Government office. It is a highly important matter, as the noble and learned Lord himself admits.
721 For that reason you should not only have the present Ministry of Transport, but the present Ministry should be strengthened by making its head a Cabinet Minister and the Government should have before it far more closely and urgently than it can have at present the grave problems which must arise on this subject.

§ LORD MOUNT TEMPLE
My Lords, before I deal with the Motion perhaps I may be allowed very briefly to deal with the criticism of certain remarks of mine in a speech I made yesterday. I feel very strongly on this subject because I think in the composition of the Salter Committee—nay, I am sure—all the interests were not fairly treated. A hard-pressed Minister—hard-pressed in the Press and in Parliament—felt he had got to do something, that he had got to send out some kind of a smoke-screen to divert public attention from the non-completion of the Griffith-Boscawen Commission. He called together representatives of the railway companies, whom I may call A, representatives of the mechanical transport users, B, and the Long-distant Hauliers' Association, whom I will call C. These three organisations, A, B, and C, arrived at the Ministry for a preliminary conference. Before the end of that conference the Minister had resolved to set up a Committee of investigation and recommendation. He asked the railway companies and the mechanical road users for their nominees, but he did not ask the long-distance hauliers for any nominees. They pressed for representation and were refased it, and I put it to the House that if it is right and proper to ask the representative of an organisation to come to you for consultation—one out of three, and therefore obviously of great importance—and a Committee is set up, it is not treating that association fairly—in fact it is dirty work—to refuse them representation and to give representation to other people who have no sympathy with their association and will probably impose penal legislation upon its members. I am therefore not ashamed of having used that phrase at a public luncheon yesterday. I thought it due to the House to answer the point raised by the noble and learned Lord before dealing with the Motion before the House.
722 I will now endeavour to confine myself to the terms of the Motion, which says simply: That in the opinion of this House the duties of the Ministry of Transport could be better discharged by the Home Office and the Board of Trade, and that it is in the public interest that the said Ministry should be dissolved and its functions distribute among other Departments. Nine-tenths, or a very large proportion, of the complaints of the noble and learned Lord were made against the Ministry of Transport, but his complaints ought to be against Parliament. The Ministry of Transport does not by decree make offences and inflict punishments. All it has got to do, in a small way, is to see that legislation is carried through, that penalties are inflicted and offenders arrested, and it is not the fault of the Ministry of Transport that legislation is so defective in the opinion of the noble and learned Lord.
Let us come to the practical side of this Motion. It seems to me that the Motion can only be supported either on the ground that there would be more efficiency if the Motion be carried through, or that there would be economy in the spending of public money. Let us take efficiency first. At the present moment you have got a Department which may be good or bad but which is a separate entity, with a Minister and a Parliamentary Secretary. That is a Department which can be, and is, run as a self-contained unit, and you have two gentlemen, belonging to either House of Parliament, who can give their whole time to solving the difficult problems which come up. Under the noble and learned Lord's proposal you could not possibly have—obviously you could not have—a Minister and a Parliamentary Secretary. The Minister would naturally fade away, because the Department would be abolished. You would, I suppose, have to have a Parliamentary Secretary. He would probably be, under the proposals of the noble and learned Lord, an extra Parliamentary Secretary of the Board of Trade. Will anybody get up and say that if the present Ministry was destroyed and the greater part of its functions transferred to the Board of Trade there would be greater efficiency? It is public knowledge that the Board of Trade is already overburdened with work, that it is such a vast Department that the President cannot properly control it, 723 and that he will be able to give very little time to the urgent problems which the noble and learned Lord rightly says are of such importance. The work, therefore, would fall mainly upon some Parliamentary Secretary, who would have probably no power at all.
Look at the matter from a Departmental point of view. You have here a Departmental assembled in one building and very handy for conferences and for carrying on the work. Under the proposals of the noble and learned Lord you would have its duties divided between the Home Office and the Board of Trade. Everybody knows that if you have consultation between two Departments, as you would have to have, it always takes time. Departments love to have little differences with other Departments, and breaking the unit up would undoubtedly cause delay, and delay means inefficiency and the spending of more public money. Then look at the matter from your Lordships' own point of view. At the present moment we have a Minister and a Parliamentary Secretary. The Minister is in another place. The Parliamentary Secretary, whom we all admire for his efficiency and the way in which he presents the case for his Department, represents the Department here in this House. Under the noble and learned Lord's proposals obviously there would be no representative of the duties which compose the Ministry of Transport here. There would be no authority here to speak at all, because naturally the Secretary would be in another place and not here. Therefore, instead of having the advantage of the presence of one who knows his work, and is acquainted with the work, and is all the week in touch with the Department, we should have probably a Lordin-Waiting, doing his very best and speaking to his brief, but unable to answer questions put to him, and relying upon an official in the corner who could not impart to him in two minutes all the information which noble Lords desired. Therefore I say that the proposal of the noble and learned Lord is most retrograde and disastrous.
Then take economy. Twice while I was Minister it was my mournful duty to explore the position to see how much money would be saved if the Department were abolished. Speaking absolutely frankly I could not see that any money would 724 be saved except £2,000 a year which would be saved on the Minister's salary. You could save a great deal of money in the Ministry of Transport, and in many other Government Departments, if you were prepared to repeal existing legislation, but unless you do that you have to have all the officials, whether in the Ministry of Transport or the Board of Trade or the Home Office, to see that these Acts of Parliament are put into effect. I am perfectly convinced that if you abolished the Ministry of Transport you would not save a single penny except the salary of the Minister, because obviously you would have to have the Parliamentary Secretary of some other Department to carry on the work.
May I deal with a point so often raised—namely, that because the Ministry of Transport is one of the latest Ministries, a baby really compared with the Board of Trade and other older Ministries, it should therefore be the first to be abolished? To me it seems just the other way round. I wonder, if some of the older Ministries were called upon to justify their existence as the Minister of Transport has been called upon to justify his, how they would come out of the ordeal? I name no names. We all know the circumlocution offices, and those which could perfectly well be dispensed with. When the Ministry of Transport was born there was an urgent need for it. The fact that it is one of the youngest Ministries is a reason why it ought to be most looked after, and why it should he continued.
Finally, I am really surprised at the noble and learned Lord bringing forward this Motion. Why does he want to destroy the instrument that he would have at hand to carry through all these road measures that he is constantly bringing before your Lordships' House? Here is an instrument which would perfectly efficiently and helpfully carry through the legislation that we want passed; and now he wants to destroy the very instrument that is ready to his hand, and to distribute its functions between various other Departments. If you want some economy in Government Departments investigate the reason why it is necessary to have three Ministers each at the Admiralty and the War Office. I was Under-Secretary at the War Office for six months, and I am quite sure that 725 three Ministers are not necessary. I make that suggestion a present to my noble friend when he answers. If he wants economy let him have two Ministers at the War Office and two at the Admiralty, and let him leave the Ministry of Transport alone.

§ LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Mount Temple began his speech by saying that the present Minister of Transport had behaved very badly—I rather think he -used the phrase "dirty work"—because he had not admitted certain representatives to this Conference. I thought that the natural sequence of that would be that my noble friend would support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Buck-master.

§ LORD MOUNT TEMPLE
It does not follow because you do not approve of the Minister's action that you want to do away with the Department. You may want to change the Minister.

§ LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM
Well, what my noble friend wants to do is to get rid of the present Minister and put somebody else in his place. I hope that the Government will accept the Motion of Lord Buckmaster. By doing so they would be carrying out the intentions of the last Conservative Government, because Mr. Winston Churchill when Chancellor of the Exchequer gave an undertaking, somewhere about 1926 or 1927, that in the interests of economy he would abolish three Departments. My recollection is that those three Departments were the Ministry of Mines, the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Overseas Trade. I was very pleased to hear that, because for years I have preached economy—with very little result; practically, one might say, with no result. I think I had the powerful support of the noble and learned Marquess, Lord Reading, who, I am sorry to see, is not in hi; place at the moment and I had hoped that we at last were going to do something which would result in a reduction of expenditure and the abolition of some of the new Ministries which, in my humble opinion—and I have been forty-one years in one or other Rouse of Parliament—have done no good at all to anybody. Therefore, I hope that my noble friends below me will follow the example of Mr. Churchill, except that they w ill not merely say they 726 are going to abolish the Ministry of Transport, but will do it.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Buckmaster—I only wish I had his powers of speech—related to your Lordships how a short time ago, somewhere in the Bayswater Road, as he was crossing the road a motor car, going at a fast pace, never attempted to stop, or even to divert its course, but very nearly ran over him, and then the driver asked him how he liked it. Last winter I was crossing from the eastern side of Sloane Street at about eight o'clock in the evening, intending, with good luck, to get to the western side. I looked to the left, and I saw that at the Pont Street crossing, which was some 300 or 400 yards below me, the policeman was holding up the traffic. I looked to my right, and I saw, somewhere down by the Park end of Sloane, Street, two brilliant lights. At that moment Sloane Street was absolutely clear of traffic, arid I therefore proceeded across the road. When I had got about three-quarters of the way across I heard a horn, and I saw an enormous saloon car—I do not know whether it belonged to Lord Mount Temple or not—almost on me in the middle of the road. Not the slightest attempt to get to the near side, not the slightest attempt to diminish speed. The chauffeur as he passed me put his tongue out and said "Yah !" That confirms what the noble and learned Lord said, except that if anything had happened to him it would have been serious, whilst if anything had happened to me I do not suppose it would have very much mattered. But that shows what is going on at the present moment. For many years I used to drive with horses, and if anybody got in the way I pulled up and went slow, but nothing will induce the driver of a motor car or motor larry to diminish his speed at all. He seems to think that all he has to do is to blow his horn, and everybody else has to get out of the way.
Lord Buckmaster said something a-bout the railways. Your Lordships know that at the present moment the capital of the railways represents £1,100,000,000 sterling, and it is held by many poor people, and, of course, by some rich people. What is the cost of a motor lorry? I suppose a motor lorry at the outside does not cost more than £500 or £ 600. What is the loss to those people, who are using the roads without paying 727 for them, compared with that of the railway companies who have £1,100,000,000 invested in their undertakings, and have to provide everything on the railways and are being gradually ruined? Unless something is done first of all to prevent the roads, which were never meant to be used by cars going at the speed of an express train, being used for that purpose, the result will be an anormous loss in the capital of the country invested in railways at a time when we cannot afford such a loss. How can we guarantee loans to Austria, and other extravagances of that sort, if we are going to allow the capital invested in the country to be destroyed and in addition have something like 200,000 people injured or killed? In the interests of economy if there is not other reason I hope my noble friend below me will at least make a start. During the last year I have watched with interest to see whether or not we were going to reduce this enormous expenditure that is going on. You cannot take half a man's capital when he dies, you cannot take half his income when he is alive, and expect the country to remain prosperous. The Government have a great majority in the House of Commons. They are able to do many things. My Lords, I hope in the interests of economy and in the interests of life the Government will accept the Motion of my noble and learned friend Lord Buckmaster.

§ EARL BUXTON
My Lords, like my noble friend who has just spoken I had expected the Government to he prepared to accept this Motion. Those of the Government who are members of the Conservative Party will remember that they themselves appointed a Committee which was to enquire into all these matters—the Geddes Committee. I think my noble friend Lord Mount Temple has entirely forgotten how this position has arisen at all. After the War there was a sort of craze that if you had a separate department with expensive buildings, a Minister to represent it, a Parliamentary Secretary and a host of clerks and others, the work would be done more efficiently than it was before. That was founded on an entire fallacy. I do not believe that these separate Departments with these immense staffs do, or are likely to do, more efficient work than was done in the older Departments with much 728 smaller staffs. It leads to more minuting, more red tape, secretaries and others falling over one another; and I am quite convinced from the experience I have had in administration that it is not an economic or efficient way of doing the public work. The Ministry of Transport was one of these, like the Overseas Trade Department and the Labour section, which were taken away from the Board of Trade during or directly after the War. As regards the Labour Department I think that was a right and proper thing to do, from my experience at the Board of Trade. The Labour Department, being quite on a different basis, would have been made possibly into a separate department if there had been no war. I think I was almost the last President of the Board of Trade who had transport under his control and I would say without hesitation that the work of the Board of Trade including this Transport Department, Labour, and so on, was done in a much more efficient and economical way than it has been done by these Departments now that they have been separated from it.
As my noble friend Lord Buckmaster has said, everybody desires economy wherever it can possibly be effected, and no doubt a very large amount cannot be obtained from the transfer of the Transport Department, but at all events a certain sum will be at disposal. The Geddes Committee unanimously and most emphatically in 1922 declared that the Ministry of Transport was an excrescence which should be transferred to the Board of Trade, that the work involved there would be better done by the Board of Trade, and that certain economies would be effected. Now a word about the position as regards the cost of the Ministry as it then was and as it is now, and what the saving might be. The figures I give are taken from the official returns of the. cost of these various Departments. My noble friend Lord Buckmaster I think underestimated the cost at the present moment. When the Geddes Committee reported that the Ministry of Transport should be transferred the total expenditure was £ 280,000. I am using gross figures. It has risen to £ 470,000, an increase of nearly £ 200,000. The staff has risen from 509 persons in 1922 to 1,200 persons at the present moment, and the Geddes Com 729 mittee point out that the transport work was done by some forty-two persons under the Road Board and some thirty in the Board of Trade, a total of eighty, with a certain number of staff officers. Even if the total was taken at 200 it would be only one-fifth of the present staff which is costing this very large sum, and though I quite agree with my noble friend Lord Mount Temple, that certain additional duties have been added, it cannot be said that the duties involved in the Ministry of Transport can be five times what they were when the work was taken away from the Board of Trade.
I am quite certain from my experience that these matters could be better done by the Board of Trade, as the more responsible body, than by the Ministry of Transport. My noble friend Lord Mount Temple said that if you do that there will be no means of having the Ministry of Transport represented in this House. He has forgotten that it is not represented in this House at the present moment. My noble friend Lord Plymouth is not in any way an official representative of the Ministry. What I think Lord Buckmaster had in mind, looking back over the last year or so, is that this Department is not strong enough and apparently is not able to deal with these great questions to which he referred, especially as regards the question of danger. We have had from various representatives of the Ministry, expressions as to the terrible position existing at the present moment with regard to traffic dangers. Your Lordships will remember the appalling total of deaths and injuries which are brought about each year by our transport system. Deaths exceed 6,000 a year, eighteen a day, and the numbers are over 330 a day if you include both injuries and fatal accidents. I saw the other day that the Minister of Transport said that fatal accidents had diminished last year by 610, and he attributed that partly to the reduction in licences consequent upon the:financial position of the country. He went on to say that he had to confessthat the total injuries had increased in that year by no fewer than 25,000. It is pure luck whether you are killed or injured, and what one has to do in these matters is not to distinguish between those who are killed and those who are injured but to take the total of both, and if you do that you get an increase every 730 year, in spite of the fall in the number of licences, during the last three years.
We have had in this House, and elsewhere, from representatives of the Ministry of Transport lip-service as to what ought to be done. We hear that they realise the gravity of the question, and that they have the matter constantly in mind. What I think my noble friend objects to most is that, although the Ministry is always alive to these things, it never seems to do anything really effective to meet this appalling position. How has the Ministry of Transport translated its regrets into active work? During the last twelve months the matter has been brought up more than once in this House and elsewhere. It is one in which the pubic takes a very great interest. Have we been able to extract from the Ministry of Transport any practical action for the prevention of the terrible roll of accidents and of deaths? Noble Lords will remember that we had two Bills introduced into this House last year, one by the noble Lord, Lord Danesfort, and the other by the noble Lord, Lord Buckmaster. One was to give a greater opportunity to pedestrians to obtain compensation if they were injured. The other was to strengthen the law so that the offender would be dealt with in a much more effective way. How were those Bills met? The attitude of the Department to those Bills was certainly not of a very satisfactory kind. There was little hostility to the Bills; there was no Division upon them; but they were objected to and criticised by the Department as quite impossible to be carried out.
We were told in regard to those two Bills that the existing law was adequate. Your Lordships will remember that last June, as a sop to Cerberus, when it was shown that the justices of the peace had been too lenient in not suspending or cancelling licences, it was decided by the Ministry of Transport that they would send a circular at once to the justices of the peace concerned. That was in June. This circular, which might have taken perhaps an hour to draw up, and another hour to type, was not issued till the end of August. During that time there was an immense number of fatal accidents and injuries. It was almost criminal negligence on the part of the Department in so delaying the sending 731 of that circular if they really believed that what they were sending out would have any real influence in reducing the number of deaths and injuries. They allowed these accidents to continue during that time, and did nothing to stop them. The only other thing that they have done, so far as I can see, is this. They were going to get rid of solid tyres, which were damaging the roads so much, but it turned out that that would not be done until 1940, seven years hence. That is hardly a thing we can consider very effective. As my noble friend has pointed out, they took credit for the Salter Report. I was sorry to hear my noble friend Lord Mount Temple attack the impartiality of that Report.

§ LORD MOUNT TEMPLE
No.

§ EARL BUXTON
Well, the non-representative character of the Conference, and use strong language. The Salter Report, to which my noble friend Lord Buckmaster has referred, was intended to deal with the heavy traffic which was damaging the roads and not carrying its proper amount of taxation. It was said all that must be reconsidered, and it was so important and so urgent that the Ministry insisted on the Report being brought out as early as July. Yet since then nothing has been done, and we are now told that the question of taxation, which is the only part of the Report that is of real importance, must stand over until the Budget.

§ THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR AIR (THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY)
What does the noble Earl mean by saying nothing has been done since July?

§ EARL BUXTON
I mean that nothing effective has been done. There have been discussions. We were told they would only last a month or two, but it is now more than six months since the Report was issued and nothing effective has been done in regard to it; none of its recommendations have been carried out. We do not even know if it has been accepted by the Government. At all events the advantage to be gained from these reforms of taxation has not yet accrued, and we were informed the other day that nothing could be done until the Budget was introduced. The only other thing, as far as I remember, that has been done by the Department, was to introduce a 732 larger number of automatic controls. That, of course, is something which affects traffic and not accidents.
Another reason why I support this Motion is this. We shall have before us shortly a Bill of the utmost importance affecting the nine million inhabitants of Greater London and an area of 800 square miles. I do not feel sufficient confidence in the capacity or the position of the Ministry of Transport to think that it is entitled to be the Department to which such a Bill as that should be sent. The original Bill gave the Minister of Transport immense powers—almost the powers of an autocrat—in dealing with London passenger traffic. That has been to a certain extent modified but even now the powers of the Ministry of Transport will be enormous. It is a matter of the most vital importance to all the inhabitants of London and outer London, and in my opinion the Ministry of Transport, a small third-rate Department with its chief not even in the Cabinet, is not a suitable body or a strong enough Department to deal with such a question.
I repeat that I feel confident that the Board of Trade is perfectly capable of undertaking these additional duties. The Ministry of Transport since the Geddes Commission has no longer control of the railways, but has had added to its duties a great deal in connection with road traffic and the Electricity Commission. On the other hand, the Board of Trade since the time of the Geddes Commission has been relieved of its Labour Department, and I should say that that Department would involve more work, more anxiety and more personal responsibility for the President of the Board of Trade than anything which would be handed over from the Ministry of Transport. I believe that we should economise where we can and that we can economise in this way. Not only can we economise but we should have greater efficiency and celerity.

§ VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Mount Temple, in the very early stages of his speech said that the Ministry of Transport had appointed the Salter Commission because it desired to send out a smoke screen in order to avoid criticism of its own doings. I do not know that I should have ventured to use so violent a 733 metaphor, but my noble friend knows the work of the Department better than I do and it may be that that is a true account of what was done.

§ LORD MOUNT TEMPLE
May I interrupt my noble friend for a minute? It is not quite correct to criticise the Department for that. It is. the Minister who is responsible and not the permanent officials.

§ VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD
Of course the Minister is always responsible. We can only judge a Department by its actions. I do feel that though the language is perhaps rather violent it does embody the kind of charge that we make against the Department not only on this occasion but as regards the whole of its administration as far as it has come before this House. There does appear to be a tendency to avoid taking any effective action and to conceal the want of substance in the administrative efforts of the Department by a series of what my noble friend calls "smoke screens." That is the charge. When he and my noble friend Lord Ponsonby said that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Buck-master, had made no argument in favour of the Motion lie moved, I think they were rather unjust to my noble and learned friend. After all, what did his speech come to? It came to the charge that the Department was costly and inefficient and it was on that ground that he thought it ought to be suppressed. As I listened to his speech I thought that the whole of his argument was directed to prove either one or the other.
As to its being costly, we have had a number of figures presented to the House. Lord Buckmaster put the cost at over £300,000, Lord Ponsonby put it at £120,000, Lord Mount. Temple put it at £2,000 and Earl Buxton at 2400,000. I have heard other figures floating through the arguments of noble Lords. I am afraid I have not examined the figures closely enough to express any opinion, but I should be very much surprised to hear that an office that employed 1,000 officials would cost the country not more than £2,000 a year, especially as we have been told by Earl Buxton that the duties of its 1,000 officials were before the creation of the Ministry of Transport performed by certainly not more than 200. However, be the cost what it may 734 there is no doubt—if I may say so with the leave of Lord Mount Temple—that it costs very much more than £2,000 a year. It may cost £100,000, it may cost £200,000, it may cost £300,000, but the real question for your Lordships, it seems to me, is to decide whether that sum of money, great or small, is being expended economically and is producing really valuable results to the country. That is the whole question.
I cannot help feeling that there is a great deal of force in the noble and learned Lord, Lord Buckmaster's contention. I cannot think that the Ministry of Transport has really done anything of great advantage to the country since its creation, balancing one thing against another. The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, said that if it had any failing it was because it had not a Cabinet Minister at the head of it. I think there is some force in that, but just think what, that means. That means another increase in the Cabinet, and I thought it was really a commonplace of most observers that the Cabinet was already too huge. I do think, however, that there is some force in the proposition that all Departments ought to have a Minister to represent them in the Cabinet. I think that is true, but that does not seem to me an argument in favour of increasing the number of Departments but rather in favour of collecting them under the head of some central Department who could represent their views to the Cabinet. I think it is true that the Ministry of Transport has this to say in its defence, that sometimes when it has wanted to do things, which may have been good or may have been bad, it has not always received—I am not sure that my noble friend Lord Mount Temple would not agree with me here— sufficient consideration from the Cabinet of its suggestions. Unquestionably if its duties were handed over to such a Department as the Board of Trade that would be less likely to occur.
My other criticism of the Ministry of Transport, and the reason why if this Motion goes to a Division I shall vote for it, is that I think the conception of the Ministry of Transport was wrong. It was appointed mainly to facilitate transport. It was manned by transport experts in the first instance and that was its main conception from the outset. I do not 735 think, judging from its actions, that it has ever thought that the question of the safety of the roads should be its main preoccupation. Really it ought to be. That is far more important than any of the other things that come before the Ministry. Yet the Ministry has never really given its mind to that point. I think it is due to the fact that it was appointed for the purpose of facilitating transport that that aspect of the matter has never been considered as it ought to be considered. That is why I should very much like to see some of the Ministry's duties transferred to an office like the Home Office, because I think that the Home Office has a great tradition— which it may carry out well or badly— that one of its main duties is to see to the safety and welfare of the individual subjects of the Crown. It is for these two reasons that I think the case against the Ministry of Transport can be made out as sound.
I do not propose to go into details of its work in regard to transport.. My noble friend Earl Buxton speaks with far greater authority than I can pretend to, and he has explained to your Lordships why he thinks that the Board of Trade would better fulfil that part of the Department's duties. Nor do I propose to delay your Lordships with any attempt to epeat the powerful argument of my noble and learned friend Lord Buckmaster about safety. But I do think it is true to say that over and over again chances of doing really good work in the direction of safety have been missed by the Ministry of Transport. I think it is true to say that the imposition of a test for drivers would have been—I do not say a complete remedy for what we are suffering, but a good thing. It was opposed by the Ministry of Transport. Roughly speaking, almost every suggestion in this House for strengthening provisions for safety has been opposed by the Ministry of Transport, and when Lord Mount Temple says you ought to blame Parliament and not the Ministry of Transport he really is not right. Whether we like it or not, under our system it is the various Departments which in fact determine what legislation shall be passed. They may not be able to carry everything they want, but it is certain that nothing of importance can be carried against the will of the Department concerned.
736 I would myself like to go back a hundred years when Parliament really was able to legislate independently of Departments. When we say that legislation is inefficient or ought to be better, we are making an attack not only on Parliament, but mainly on a Ministry. I have mentioned one or two cases; let me give another. During the passage of the Road Traffic Act, I and others ventured to press upon the Minister the necessity for making it an obligation on local authorities to provide footpaths. They would not have it and it was impossible to press the matter further. They gave us a very anaemic clause in exchange which in effect said that local authorities can provide footpaths if they like, and there is now no power—I know it to my cost— by which we can compel the local authorities to provide them. During the passage of the Bill, the Ministry of Transport assured the House, though I do not say they gave a definite pledge, that it was their policy to insist upon footpaths, and they gave me to understand—I have looked since at the passage, but I cannot say that it was more than an intimation—that they would make it a condition of any scheme of road improvement and widening that footpaths should be provided. In my own district there is an instance, and I have no doubt many of my noble friends know of other instances, where that has not been done— where in a very crucial instance in which there was a very strong case for a footpath the local autlhority did not provide it. I wrote and complained. They said they could not afford it— though they were spending thousands on improvements on the roads for motorists. I wrote to the Ministry and it declined to interfere or do anything to help me.
That is the kind of thing which really is at the bottom of the indignation of many people with the Ministry of Transport. They do not seem to care, fundamentally. Individually I have no doubt they are humane men, but as an office they do not seem to care about this supreme duty of providing for the safety of the people. That is the reason why I shall support this Motion if it goes to a Division, and I hope that whatever may be the fate of the Motion some steps will be taken to improve administration in this particular matter or I am convinced 737 that sooner or later there will be a great outbreak of public indignation on the subject.

§ EARL HOWE
My Lords, I hesitate to intervene in this debate and I will not delay you for more than a few minutes. I have listened with great attention to the discussion. When the noble and learned Lord submitted his Motion, he seemed at once to seize upon the road rail controversy as an argument for necessarily doing away with the Ministry Of Transport. I cannot understand that argument. If you did away with the Ministry you would not do away with the road-rail controversy. That controversy is not peculiar to this country. The other day I was in Italy and I was surprised to find there, on high authority, that they have a road-rail controversy if anything of far more serious proportions than that in this country; the State Railways are losing millions of pounds and the end is not in sight there any more than it is here. I am not sure that it is a good thing to do away with the Ministry because you have a road-rail controversy. It may be we do not quite agree with the Minister, and I am disposed to think with Lord Mount Temple that the Road Hauliers' Association have certainly not received quite fair treatment. I think they should have been considered far more, because you will not get the real national settlement that we want unless all interests are fairly considered. To leave one out seems to me to be a fatal defect.
While you may criticise the Minister perhaps on that score I cannot see that that is necessarily a reason for doing away with the Ministry. It always seems to me that the Minister of Transport is really trying to do an almost impossible job. There are conflicting interests on all sides. There are those of road and rail, though I do not agree that the interests are nearly so conflicting as extreme partisans on both sides make out. You have the Ministry of Transport responsible for making grants to local authorities or largely controlling the grants, and at the same time trying to convince the Treasury in the matter. Yon have the local authority on the one hand trying to get money and the Treasury on the other trying to prevent expenditure. Electricity interests come in against gas, and so on and so forth. It seems to 738 me that only a Government Department specially charged with. the duty of looking after all these conflicting interests have any hope of restoring order out of chaos.
Much has been said this afternoon about accidents, but before I conic to that I would like to refer to the possible economy to be realised by doing away with the Ministry. If you could secure a real economy it seems to me that would be the best reason you could possibly advance and the only important one, but I thought that the noble Viscount, Lord Cecil, was less than fair to Lord Mount Temple when he said that he had indicated the sum of £2,000 as being the cost of the Ministry. I never understood my noble friend to say anything of the sort. I understood him to say that in his capacity of the responsible Minister he examined the possible economies and all he could see was the mere economy of his own salary. I am sure myself that the size of a Department depends very largely upon Government policy and the duties you lay upon the Department. Those duties being as they are, I think it would be very difficult indeed largely to reduce the size of the Department.
With regard to the question of accidents I have a great deal of sympathy with much that has been said by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Buckmaster, and the noble Viscount, Lord Cecil. I go back to the passing of the present Road Traffic Act through this House and I remember trying, for instance, to induce the Minister to accept tests for drivers. I pointed out that every road user who is honest knows that there are large numbers who would fail to pass any sort of test. That can be proved by personal observation or by reference to figures from other countries where you will find that at least one-third of the people fail to pass any test. I prophesied that if you did away with the speed limit without bringing in some sort of test for drivers, you would do absolutely nothing to reduce the number of casualties on the roads but possibly largely increase them unless you were lucky. We have been lucky in so far as I think the number has slightly decreased. I believe that a very large number, and a very high proportion, of the accidents on the highways are preventible accidents, and should not happen, and I do rather agree with the 739 noble Viscount, Lord Cecil of Chelwood, that there should be a more responsive attitude on the part of the Ministry of Transport to this particular question. I should like to see much further examination as to whether there are not more things we could do, such as tests for drivers and the sequestration of motor ears, and so forth, but it is always the case in these debates that the whole blame is placed upon one class of traffic. I think everyone knows that that is not justified. It is not alone the fault of motor drivers. Everyone knows who drives from one part of London to another that there are cases of appalling carelessness and negligence on the part of other classes of traffic, and notably of pedestrians.
The noble Viscount, Lord Cecil, found fault with the Ministry of Transport for not having more footpaths. I share his views in that respect, but you must remember that although you can provide footpaths you cannot compel pedestrians to walk upon them. Take Constitution Hill for a very good example. There you have one of the broadest footpaths that you can find in a Royal park. It is on one side of the road only, but you will frequently see people walking on the other side in the carriage way and dodging the traffic. Therefore I say it is not fair to put all the blame on one class of traffic; and I would like to see the Ministry of Transport trying to do more to regulate the pedestrians than it does do. In their own interests pedestrians must accept some kind of regulation. Something could be done by building more refuges, but they must he on scientific lines. Take Whitehall. There you have only a single line of refuges and what is the use of them when you have four lines of traffic. These, my Lords, are perhaps arguments of a personal character which one should address to the Minister. I do not believe that you would get economy by doing away with the Ministry. I think you would get inefficiency, and that you would fail to get co-ordination, and I have the greatest possible sympathy with what fell from Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede when he asked: Why cannot the Minister have Cabinet rank? I believe that would he of very great advantage from the point of view of the efficiency of the Ministry. I know the argument against having more 740 Cabinet Ministers, and one does not want to suggest anything to increase public expenditure, but, at the same time, I believe that it would lead to greater efficiency on the part of the Ministry. If the Motion goes to a Division, on general grounds and not because I agree with everything that the Ministry is doing I am going to vote against the Motion, because I feel that we should not gain but rather lose if we were to do away with the Ministry and split its powers.

§ LORD BAYFORD
My Lords, this is not a new question. It was one which actually received the consideration of the Government of the day a few years ago, and the Government of the day decided to abolish the Ministry of Transport. I hope that my noble friend, when he comes to reply, will, if he can, tell us on what ground that decision was arrived at, and will also tell us, what is even more important, why it was that having arrived at that decision the Government of the day very Shortly afterwards declined to act upon it. I think one result of that decision and its reversal has been that the Ministry of Transport has been filled with the idea that it must do something to justify its existence. The complaint that has been rather general in this debate has been that the Ministry of Transport does not do anything. I want to put a rather different point of view. I am looking at the question from the point of view of the county councils of the country, and the complaint that they have is not that the Ministry of Transport does not do enough but that it is too prone to interfere, and had much better leave things alone.
I want to put a case of that sort which has arisen lately within my own experience. A big road, a main road, one of the big arteries of traffic, was being improved over a great length in the West country. The contracts for improving this road were laid out, so many miles to different contractors. The Ministry insisted on saying to whom those contracts should he allotted. One contractor was applying for two different sections. The county council concerned said that it was not a good thing to have the same contractor for those two sections, because, for the main reason, they did not think be would be financially strong enough to undertake the double job. The Ministry overruled the decision of the county 741 council. The result was that this contractor failed. There was continual trouble during the time that these two jobs were going on, and then there was arbitration which cost the local county council something over £5,000. That was a case where, if the county council had been left to itself, the work would have gone perfectly smoothly and expense would have been saved.
I have consulted a gentleman who has had considerable dealing with the Ministry of Transport, on behalf of county councils, and if the House will allow me I will read a few words of what he says to me. He says: I think that the Ministry exercises much more control of detail matters titan is either necessary or economical. In the pursuit of the mastery of detail the stalls, both at headquarters and in the divisions, have grown enormously and the whole Department is now wrapped up in procedure and forms that progress in any direction is painfully slow. In general their engineering stall' has had little, if any, executive work, whereas the (sanity staffs are essentially executive in experience and friction arises from this difference. If there is a need for the Ministry of Transport, it might be very considerably cut down without causing the least injury to roads and road management. It is, hard to see any reason why the old Road Board swelled out. into the present Ministry. If there is not to be. any continuation of large road improvement schemes (as has been the case in the past few years) it would seem that a large part of the Ministry's activities has passed away. I have been speaking about the relations with the Road Committees of the county councils. I will give a further instance. They lay down pedantic rules. If a new road is to be made or an existing road improved—and, after all, it is in making new roads and improving existing roads that a large part of the executive work of the Ministry comes in—in such eases they lay down standard widths. They must be in decimals: they must, be 10 feet, 20 feet, 30 feet, or 40 feet. Very often something intermediate is much more appropriate to the district. There may be admirable reasons why, instead of having 20 or 30 feet, it is wiser to have 18 feet or 27 feet. Rut the Ministry, when it gives its grant, claims to decide a. question of that sort, which really the local people are much more capable of deciding than any office in London. They say, of course, that they pay the piper and they may claim to call the tune. Well, that is not exactly correct. The local authorities collect the 742 motor-car taxes, they pay them in to an office in London, and they are then redistributed back to the county councils. So that the Ministry is not acting as the collecting agency, it is merely acting as a conduit pipe for money that is not its own. For the reasons I have given I am inclined to support my noble friend's Motion. As to the particular Departments to which the functions should be allotted, I am not sure. I should have thought that, if they were distributed between two Departments, as he suggests, that might perhaps make things more expensive than if one Department were in sole control. But what I want to see is more local control and less interference from any Department in Whitehall.

§ THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY
My Lords, I am sure that I should be the last person to quarrel with the noble and learned Lord for having raised this debate. I think that your Lordships will agree that we have listened to some very interesting speeches, and that from the opinions that have been expressed the Ministry of Transport, of which to-day I have the honour to be the vicarious spokesman, will benefit by the advice which has been given. I am assuming, and I sincerely hope, that your Lordships will not accept the Motion, and after I have put forward the reasons why I believe the Ministry of Transport should exist I hope that your Lordships will find yourselves able to take the same point of view. I think your Lordships will agree that we have heard very few arguments as to why the Ministry of Transport should be abolished. In fact, we have heard manifold arguments which, to my mind, prove that it is necessary that the Ministry of Transport should exist.
The noble Viscount, Lord Cecil of Chelwood, spoke of the theoretical question whether transport should be concentrated in one Ministry. He did not develop that theory, and I do not feel entitled to argue that point with him. But, apart from that, I think we have heard various complaints of how the Ministry of Transport functions, and the verdict of those speakers who have voiced those complaints is that, to penalise the Minister and the Ministry of Transport, that Ministry should be abolished. I should have thought it would have been far better to take the opposite point of view and to make the Ministry more 743 efficient than it is. Your Lordships will agree with me that there is no Ministry in existence in any part of the world which cannot be made more efficient than it is at present, and I feel certain that this debate will have a very salutary effect and that a great many things have been put forward of which my hon. friend in another place will take full advantage.
The noble and learned Lord ended his speech by saying that he was asking two questions. The first question was in relation to the Act of 1878, in which, he pointed out, there was a provision which I think he suggested that the Ministry of Transport had not noticed. The noble and learned Lord—and I say it with all respect to a late Lord Chancellor—seems to have overlooked the fact that in the Road Traffic Act, 1930, the section to which he refers has been repealed by Section 54, which I will read. It is as follows: Where as respects any road it appears to the highway authority by a certificate of their surveyor that having regard to the average expense of repairing a road or other similar roads in the neighbourhood extraordinary expenses have been incurred by the authority in repairing the road by reason of the damage caused by excessive weight passing along the road, or other extraordinary traffic thereon, the highway authority may recover from any person (hereinafter referred to as the undertaker') by or in consequence of whose orders the traffic has been conducted the amount of such expenses as may he proved to the satisfaction of the court having cognisance of the facts to have been incurred by the highway authority by reason of the damage arising from the extraordinary traffic, The noble and learned Lord did not acquaint your Lordships with the fact that that subsection had been repealed.

§ LORD BUCKMASTER
But it is reenacted.

§ THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY
It is re-enacted in the Act of 1930. Well, surely that carries out the wishes of the noble and learned Lord who, I understood, was formulating indictments against the Ministry which he proposes to abolish. The noble and learned Lord went on to speak of the Geddes Committee on National Expenditure which sat in 1921 and 1922, and was presided over by Sir Eric Geddes. That Committee recommended that: The Ministry of Transport should cease as a separate Ministry and its functions should be transferred to the Board of Trade. 744 The recommendations of the Geddes Committee were very carefully and closely examined and I may, perhaps, be permitted by your Lordships to enumerate a few of the considerations which emerged: In the first place the Ministry of Transport was created to unify under one responsible control the various powers and duties connected with transport which were scattered amongst various Government Departments, in order to secure consistent administration and development. Thus the powers of regulation and the duty of reporting on legislation and making Provisional Orders in connection with railways, light railways, harbours, docks, piers, canals, tramways and road transport were vested in one Minister. The most important powers came from the Board of Trade, the Ministry of Health, and the Scottish Office.
In the second place the proposal to vest the powers originally so transferred to the Ministry of Transport in the Board of Trade would involve not merely the restoration to that Ministry of powers previously exercised by it, but the addition to it of new powers and duties which would not naturally have been entrusted to that Department. In particular it would appear to be inappropriate to transform the Board of Trade into a grant-distributing authority making grants to highway authorities for road purposes, since the Board of Trade has no direct contact whatsoever with local authorities.
The noble Earl, Lord Buxton, spoke of the Board of Trade when he was President of it some time ago. I am sure a great many of us would like to return to what some people call the good old days when Budgets were considerably smaller than they are now, but I am afraid the noble Earl must recognise that we have gone unfortunately very far beyond that stage, that the activities of the Government are far more onerous and wider in extent than when the country had the valuable benefit of the noble Earl's services; and it is by reason of this fact that these Ministries have been called into existence. We call it a Ministry, but if you put it under another Ministry you would have exactly the same organisation. The organisation would add another burden to the shoulders of the Minister, but that 745 organisation would exist. There would be a Secretary or an Under-Secretary, and I think it is wrong to suppose that by abolishing the Ministry of Transport you would in any sense bring about further economy than is exercised at present.
In the third place, presuming the Alternative were adopted of transferring the Roads Department to the Ministry of Health while other transport duties—are passed to the Board of Trade, there is the difficulty that the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Health is limited to local authorities in England and Wales, the Scottish authorities being responsible to Scottish Departments. This would be a retrograde step and a departure from the policy of unification of transport duties which initiated what we think is a considerable reform, when the Ministry of Transport was established. My Lords, as an example of the difficulties which would have been created and the objections which existed to the course proposed, I may mention that it is clear that the administration of powers relating to tramways should remain with the same authority as administers the railways, since the tramways are inspected for purposes of safety by the railway inspectors, and many are in law light railways and constructed under Light Railway Orders. But under the new system there would have been a separation between the regulation of tramways and of other vehicles which operate on highways.
In the fourth place, if the transfer were made to the Board of Trade of departmental work in connection with transport it would involve a considerable volume of very important and specialised work for the Minister and the higher staff, work quite different in nature from the normal activities of the Board of Trade. Finally, any economies in expenditure which could be secured would be quite negligible, being estimated by the Geddes Committee at not more than £ 2,500 perannum.
But the Geddes Committee reported in 1922, and I submit that the position has considerably altered since that date, and even since 1927 when the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed the abolition of the Ministry as a measure of economy. In the first place many additional and important duties have been placed upon the Ministry by recent legislation. I may 746 mention the Electricity (Supply) Act, 1926, and, in particular, the Road Traffic Act, 1930, and I might almost say a hundred and one other duties. The wide range of the functions under the latter Act will be apparent, involving the regulation of motor vehicles, their use on highways, inquiries into accidents and the regulation of public service vehicles, etc.
Secondly, the fact that increasing attention is being devoted to questions of coordination of the various kinds of transport, and in particular to the coordination of road and rail transport, indicates the importance of maintaining the principle of the unification of powers and duties connected with transport on which the formation of the Ministry was based. Thirdly, the duty of making grants to local authorities for road purposes would not be appropriate to the Board of Trade or the Home Office. The present combination under one Department of the duties relating to the regulation of all forms of transport enables, in my judgment, such work to. be economically controlled. Finally, there would be little or no economy in public expenditure in. the change.
Now I come to the Salter Report about which my noble friend Lord Buckmaster told us nothing had been done. I am surprised that the noble and learned Lord should charge the Ministry and the Government with delay in dealing with the Salter Report, and I can only conclude that he has made this accusation under a complete misapprehension as to the facts of the situation. The Salter Conference signed their Report on the last day of July. It was, of course, necessary to print the Report and to send it to the large number of trading and motoring organisations whom the Government was pledged to consult. The. Report raised numerous matter's of vital concern to them, and, though the Minister of Transport asked them to submit their observations not later than the 30th September, many of them found themselves forced to ask for an extension of time, which had very reluctantly to be conceded. Some of the most important organisations did not in fact send in their observations until November, and the mass of detailed comments naturally required careful consideration and examination before the Government was in a position to formulate its own proposals.
747 Immediately Parliament met on the 7th February the Ministry of Transport announced that legislation would be introduced to deal with the licensing and better regulation of goods transport by road, and he stated at the same time that it was intended to bring in a Bill before Easter. I submit that when all the facts I have ventured to enumerate are taken into consideration, there has been no loss of time of which any reasonable complaint can be made. As regards recommendations for increase of taxation of goods vehicles, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has stated, in accordance with the invariable custom, that he cannot anticipate any proposals which are proper for inclusion in the Budget statement. Upon this aspect of the matter the Minister has long been in consultation with the Treasury.
One further indictment which has been brought is that the Ministry of Transport has neglected the railway interests. On the general charge that the Ministry has allowed the welfare of the railways to be overlooked, I would point out to your Lordships that the position of the railway companies has not in fact been neglected by successive Ministers of Transport. The railways were assisted by the last Conservative Administration to obtain powers to run services by road and by air. Under the Local Government Act of 1929 the railway companies were included in the scheme of derating for industry and agriclture upon condition that equivalent reductions were made in the freight charges on important traffics, and the operation of the scheme was specially anticipated by a vote of Parliament. While the companies are certainly entitled to point out that the whole of the relief has had to be passed on to the traders, and that many of the traffics are not competitive, yet it must be allowed that the reduction in freights should have assisted to stimulate their traffic.
Again, as from the 1st April, 1929, railway passenger duty was repealed. More recently, by the Road Traffic Act, 1930, a comprehensive scheme of regulation of public passenger vehicles was introduced, and some protection given to the railway companies against unreasonable and wasteful competition. For the first time the railway companies have been in a position to argue before the Traffic Com- 748 missioners the case for a reduction or elimination of unreasonable services by road. A scheme of pooling receipts between the proposed London Passenger Transport Board and the main lines has been provided for in the London Passenger Transport Bill at their very urgent request. The present Minister approved last year a most extensive scheme of pooling receipts between the London Midland and Scottish, and the London and North Eastern Railway Companies, and has further applications for a pool with the Great Western Railway Company under consideration. While I record these facts I am not to be taken for a moment as suggesting that the railway companies are not fully entitled to press for early action on the part of the Government, and the Government fully recognises the urgency of their position, as is sufficiently shown by the Minister's recent promise of further legislation. I think, therefore, that the charge that the Minister of Transport has neglected the railways has, if I may say so, to a very large extent fallen to the ground.
The noble and learned Lord who introduced this Motion has spoken to us of public safety. I am one of those who never quarrel with him, however often he brings that forward, because we all sympathise with the theme which he puts before your Lordships, but I would venture to say that the 1930 Act, in its first Part, contains regulations for public safety. I hardly think the noble and learned Lord could have meant what he said when he stated that public safety was entirely neglected in that Act.

§ LORD BUCKMASTER
Will the noble Marquess tell me what is the provision in that Act which does anything to protect the public?

§ THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY
I have a list which shows what has been done under the provisions in Part I of that Act, such as, the physical fitness of drivers, penalties for careless and dangerous driving, disqualification of drivers, requirements as to attendants, limitation of hours of driving, all detailed regulations based on public safety, the Highway Code, and other provisions. All these regulations were framed with a view to public safety, and I hardly think that the noble and learned Lord, even 749 with the licence which we naturally accord to his eloquence, can make the sweeping assertion that nothing has been done by the Act which has come into force.

§ LORD BUCKMASTER
I think the whole of those things are utterly worthless.

§ THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY
The noble and learned Lord is entitled to his opinion, as we all are in this House, and I am sorry that he should think those regulations are utterly worthless. I now turn to what I feel, and what I believe your Lordships feel, is the most serious part of the noble and learned Lord's indictment this afternoon. I know that no one in your Lordships' House can have listened to the noble Lord's impassioned speeches time after time on the subject of road accidents without being deeply moved and impressed. The noble Lord has, I believe, done a public service in repeatedly raising this subject. in your Lordships' House, and I have no doubt that my right honourable friend the Minister of Transport is grateful to him in spite of the fact that he has used the truly appalling figures of the traffic casualties to base his attack upon the administration of the Ministry of Transport. The Minister recognises that ore of the most. potent influences towards remedying the deplorable state of affairs which undoubtedly exists is the mobilisation of a healthy public opinion under which all users of the road, motorists, cyclists and pedestrians alike, will exercise their rights with due caution and regard for others, and all who are entrusted with the enforcement of the law will be conscious of the support of the public in the exercise of their important functions.
The number of fatalities on the road has, in fact, beer: decreasing in recent years, but I can assure the noble and learned Lord that I am not ma-king a special point of that to-day. In fact, like him, I shall not be satisfied until these numbers are very largely reduced, I wish we could say entirely eliminated; but I do feel that we can say that the figures for 1932 are now lower than for 1929, though there are more vehicles on the road. That does mean that we are moving, slightly, I admit, towards the position which we want to see, which is a substantial reduction of accidents on the 750 road. The noble and learned Lord gave us a graphic description of how he very nearly lost his life, and my noble friend Lord Banbury, who sits behind me, gave us a like. experience. I may say that exactly the same thing happened to me this morning, with this difference that the driver of the motor car did not attach enough importance to me to make any remark. The reason that I stepped off the refuge was that I was meditating what I was going to say to your Lordships this afternoon. If I had been run over it would have been entirely my fault. I think that is the reason for a great many of the accidents which occur, but when I say that I am not trying to exonerate those drivers, of whom far too many exist, who have no consideration whatever for the public.
No one pretends, and least of all the Minister of Transport himself, that the position is satisfactory, or that there should be the slightest relaxation in the efforts to reduce the casualty lists. There is no evidence that the abolition of the speed limit for light cars in the Act of 1930 has -had the effect of increasing the number of accidents, and there is no reason to suppose that the reimposition of a speed limit on these vehicles would be any more effective in this direction than it was before the Act of 1930 was passed. Under the direction of the Minister of Transport the Ministry have co-operated with the National Safety First Association in a special investigation into fatal road accidents carried out by the Association in the latter part of 1932. This was preliminary to the special official investigation which is being carried out during the current year by the Minister of Transport through the police.
I do not know, my Lords, that I need say anything more to you on the question which the noble and learned Lord has raised. As I have said, I for one am always glad when he raises this question for the reason that it mobilises public opinion on this very important matter. The point to which the noble and learned Lord addressed himself and the subject on which he hinged his speech was the abolition of the Ministry of Transport. I hope I have been able to persuade your Lordships that the Ministry of Transport is not only discharging its duties capably and well, but that if we did decide to do 751 away with the Ministry of Transport we should find that all those duties which are now exercised by that Ministry would have to be allocated to other Departments, that the co-ordination which we have been fortunate enough to achieve at the present moment would be entirely lost, and that the public service, instead of gaining by the elimination of the Ministry, would be most decidedly the loser.

§ LORD BUCKMASTER
My Lords, I promise that I will not keep you more than a few minutes. Let me say to begin with that the argument that the Ministry of Transport should be abolished on the ground of economy has been established. As I pointed out before, its abolition had been promised in the interests of economy by no less a person than Mr. Winston Churchill as a representative member of the Government. Is it suggested that he did not know what he was talking about when he said that in the interests of economy it should be abolished? I do not say any more about that because there is no time, but I would like to say two things about the two questions that I put to the noble Marquess, neither of which has been answered by him. My first question was whether it was not the, case that the liability thrown upon the user of heavy traffic upon the road by the Act of 1878 had been allowed entirely to slip at the expense of the railways, not wholly but

CONTENTS.
Marlborough, D.	Esher, V.	Danesfort, L.
	FitzAlan of Derwent, V.	de Clifford, L.
Exeter, M.	Mersey, V.	Dynevor, L.
Salisbury, M.	Ullswater, V.	Gainford, L.
		Heneage, L.
Grey, E.	Auckland, L.	Kilmaine, L.
Midleton, E.	Balfour of Burleigh, L.	Leigh, L
Scarbrough, E.	Banbury of Southam, L.	Mendip, L. (V. Clifden.)
	Bavford, L.	Monson, L.
Cecil of Chelwood, V. [Teller.]	Biddulph, L.	Ormonde, L. (M. Ormonde.)
	Buckmaster, L. [Teller.]	Rankeillour, L.
Churchill, V.	Clwyd, L.	Rhayader, L.

752

§ in part, and that that had been done because the Minister of Transport had not taken care to impose upon the heavy traffic those rates that would have compensated for the roads they destroyed. That was the first question, and to that there has been no reply.

§ As regards the second question I wars amazed when the noble Marquess read out the protection which the Act of 1930 provided for the foot passenger. The only explanation I can think of was that it had been provided for him by somebody from the Ministry. It is ridiculous to suggest that these regulations afford the faintest protection, as I have said over and over again. The section that provides that a man may run over and leave his victim to die upon the road and be responsible for nothing further than £20—that is a section which the noble Marquess says is one of the protections that the careful and far-seeing Ministry of Transport has provided for the protection of the wayfarer. The only thing I shall take from this debate with pleasure—except, I hope, success in the Division—is the recollection that what I said about the Minister of Transport has earned me his gratitude. His gratitude is easily earned.

§ On Question, Whether the Motion shall be agreed to?

§ Their Lordships divided:—Contents, 31; Not-Contents, 26.