§ LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH had the following Notice on the Paper: To ask His Majesty's Government whether, in view of the announcement of the Minister of Transport that he has taken control of railway sleeping-berths, they can give the House an assurance that applications from members of the two Houses of Parliament will have every consideration, and whether they would not consider, in order to meet as fully as possible the requirements of all those travelling on urgent business, whether Government or private, the provision of additional third-class sleeping compartments in replacement of such first-class sleeping compartments as are still being run; and to move for Papers.
§ The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg, first of all, to draw your Lordships' attention to the fact that the Motion standing in my name to-day contains an additional part over and above that which I put on the Paper last week. The reason is that reflection over the week-end and further acquaintance with the difficulties being met with led me to the conclusion that the remedy I propose in the second half of my Motion is probably the only way in which those: difficulties can be met. We must all agree that the necessities of the coal traffic and the heavy 306 freight traffic have rightly led to the reduction of passenger trains, and in particular of the number of sleeping cars which it is possible for the railways to carry; and the first part of my question simply asks the Minister to give your Lordships an assurance that any applications for accommodation in sleeping-berths which may be put forward by members of both Houses of Parliament will receive consideration.
§ That is an assurance which I feel confident the Minister will be able to give to your Lordships, and in doing so I hope he will make clear to your Lordships that there will be no differentiation between members of your Lordships' House and of another place, in favour either of one or the other. I am not suggesting that such a state of abysmal ignorance exists either in the minds of the Minister of War Transport or of any of his officials, but in some quarters there is a disposition to suppose that only those gentlemen who write "M.P." after their names are entitled to be regarded as Members of Parliament. I repeat that I am quite sure the Minister and his officials do not suffer under that curious disability of ignorance, but I think it would be helpful if the Minister would make it perfectly clear that attending members of your Lordships' House will have the same consideration as attending members of another place.
§ I should be very sorry if this question of mine gave the impression that I want to stake out a claim for Members of Parliament ahead of all other people having important Government business. That is not my intention at all. I will remind your Lordships that this week a new system has come into operation, which has in fact given rise to this question, in that the Minister has found it necessary to take over himself the allocation of all the sleeping-berths on most of the important trains of this country. Last October considerable restriction took place, and since then there has been a good deal of difficulty in obtaining accommodation. I think it is possible that public business has suffered. I want to ask the Minister whether he is going to differentiate in any way between the different classes of people who are travelling on Government business.
§ There are, of course, numerous categories of people travelling on Government 307 business who will be entitled to consideration. There are Ministers, there are members of both Houses, there are officials of Government Departments—senior officials and junior officials. There are also business people who have important work to carry out for the Government and—last, I suppose, in war-time—there are the members of the general public, who still have urgent business on which they must travel, and on which they are entitled to travel with as much comfort as war exigencies permit. I want to ask the Minister how he is going to evaluate the different claims of all those varying classes of people travelling on Government business. How is he going to settle which is more important where the claims come into competition? How is he going to evaluate the importance of the journey of a Member of Parliament travelling perhaps to his constituency with the journey of a business man engaged on an extremely important Government contract?
§ Then I want to put to him that the present system, which only came into force yesterday, is not going to work satisfactorily because it has led to this position, that no member of the public who has not a claim to be travelling on Government business can ever be sure of getting a sleeper at all for any particular date. I venture to say that that is not a good state of affairs, because I think it will be rather destructive of public morale if members of the public are left with the impression that, however important their urgent private affairs may be—matters of life and death, matters of really urgent business—they are to be subordinated to the business of a junior official travelling on, perhaps, routine Government business. Now that is the state of affairs to-day. No member of the public can be sure of a sleeper, either first- or third-class, for any particular day because the order of the Minister is, I understand, that all sleepers are to be controlled by the Ministry of Transport, and, as early as the Minister can arrange, a certain number—whatever is left over—will be released for the railways to allocate in the ordinary way. The first point is that unless the Minister can weigh in the balance all these conflicting claims of different people travelling on Government business, it is going to resolve itself once again into 308 "First come first served," which was the old system, and I do not think that the work will necessarily be better carried out by the Ministry of Transport than by the individual railway.
§ That is the first point. But the real trouble, I think, is the point I have made, that no member of the public can rely upon getting a sleeper at all. I have been in the habit of making the journey to Scotland every week, and, as it happens, I have Government business at both ends, consequently I am one of the people who may be inconvenienced by the arrangement I am suggesting. On the particular train in which I am interested—the 10.15 p.m. to Waverley from King's Cross—there are at present two first-class sleepers with a total of twenty berths and two third-class sleepers with twenty-eight berths each, sometimes a few more. That is a total of twenty first-class and fifty-six third-class, making seventy-six in all. At present there are certainly not enough first-class berths to go round, but there would be enough third-class berths unless they were all kept at the disposal of the Government Departments. My suggestion is that the two first-class sleepers should be replaced by third-class sleepers. That would give us a total of one hundred and twelve berths instead of seventy-six, which, I believe, would meet adequately the needs of the situation.
§ Since I came into your Lordships' House to-day it has occurred to me that this change would cause inconvenience to a small number of people, but not such great inconvenience to the few as the increased convenience to the many who have to sit up in third-class carriages all night instead of getting third-class sleepers. The alternative is that the Minister ought not to put his official control on the whole of the first-class sleepers, but leave a certain number free for allocation in advance by the railway companies. The present system whereby he takes the lot and releases them if available only leads to a state of uncertainty and to the destruction of public morale. If the Minister sees fit to consider my suggestion, some of us will be inconvenienced, but the loss of efficiency in the case of people who have been accustomed to first-class sleepers, and have to travel third, will not be so great as the increase of efficiency in the case of people who had to sit up all 309 night and in future will get third-class sleepers. I have been travelling third-class for fifty years, the last few in third-class sleepers, and I do not think the hardship of having to travel in a third-class sleeper instead of a first-class sleeper is anything to grumble at in time of war. I hope the Minister will adopt one or other of the suggestions, because the present state of affairs is destructive of public morale. The idea that a Government official should have first pick irrespective of whether his business is important or not is a thing the Minister would wish to avoid. I beg to move for Papers.
§ THE MINISTER OF WAR TRANSPORT (LORD LEATHERS)My Lords, you will have already received the notice which the Leader of the House has handed out describing the arrangements for sleeping-berths for members of both Houses who have to travel overnight to or from Westminster. The Government have taken over the whole of the sleeper accommodation on certain trains on which the: demand for sleeping berths is heaviest, and noble Lords who wish to have sleepers reserved for them on those trains should notify the fact as early as possible, and in any case forty-eight hours before the time of the departure of the train. I might say that the period of forty-eight hours is specially urged so that we in the Ministry of Transport may have an opportunity of freeing, if there are then a fair number of berths yet available, some of these berths, at any rate, at that earlier time to the railway companies for issue to the travelling public. But I would say here that if at that time, forty-eight hours before train time, there is seen then to be already so many heavy bookings that we must hold even that small balance in order to ensure that those who really should, by virtue of their business, be allowed to travel, we shall have to withhold from the general public, right up to, say, four o'clock on the day of travelling, the release of these unbooked sleepers to the travelling public. On other trains the public will book in the usual way through the railway companies.
I am taking steps to see that attending members of both Houses of Parliament—in view of what Lord Balfour has said, I repeat both Houses—high Service officers, officials, and others travelling on 310 Government business shall have the first call on available accommodation. It is going to be a very difficult task to assess the priority, and I am not able to give your Lordships any definite measure of that at the moment, but I do say that most of the people travelling on business are travelling on business linked with one or other of the Government Departments. The Ministry of Transport are better able than the railway companies to check up so that it may be seen in what priority the need arises in the case of each of these people. That is why the Government have taken to themselves, on these particular trains, the control of sleeper accommodation. It is not a business I should like to take over, I can assure your Lordships. There will be a great deal of heartburning about it, and we may have to add something more in order to give the satisfaction which everyone would like; but we must go a little on the lines of trial and error, being dominated in the first place by that which we can gauge better than the railway companies—namely, the relative importance of the claims of these people for their positions in the train.
The noble Lord has recommended that third-class sleepers should be substituted for first-class sleepers. I am entirely in agreement with that suggestion. We have, in fact, made no cut at all in the number of third-class sleepers. The cut has come only on the first-class. When it is seen by experience that that which remains—as many third-class sleepers as before and a reduced number of first-class—is not enough to meet the requirements, then we shall certainly consider substituting third-class sleepers for what remains of the first-class. I have thought it wise to do this by steps. We want to cause the minimum of inconvenience to the travelling public, although we know we are already interfering very largely with them, but we do not want to do any of these things before it is seen that they must be done. In this way we may be taking what is desired in two steps, but for the moment there are just enough, with the few days' experience we have had, of first-class sleepers to meet the need, and the third-class has not always been filled. But that position will change with different times or different days of the week, and I repeat that if experience shows that we 311 ought to put in third-class sleepers for the remaining first-class, that step will be taken.
§ LORD RUSHCLIFFEMy Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, will he deal with the point raised by Lord Balfour of Burleigh—namely, that a certain number ox berths should be left unallocated so that the general public may know whether or not they are likely to get berths?
§ LORD LEATHERSThe difficulty is to know whether we should reserve any for the general public at all. if the requirements, as they are showing themselves forty-eight hours before the departure of the train, indicate that we shall not need to hold as many berths as there are in hand, we shall release a number to the railway companies at that earlier time for the general public; but if, at that time, there seem to be only very few unbooked, we shall be bound to hold on to them until four o'clock on the day of the train's departure in case urgent applications come along which have to be dealt with.
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGHMy Lords, I heard with astonishment the Minister's statement that third-class sleepers are not always full. I feel inclined to ask him to lay Papers to show the dates on which the few third-class sleepers from Waverley to King's Cross were not full, and how many on each day. I think he will have a difficulty in giving an answer which supports the statement he has made to your Lordships. Only last night I heard from a lady, the wife of a member of your Lordships' House, that she was facing cheerfully the prospect of sitting up third all night and going on duty at a canteen at one of the big railway stations next day. I must 312 submit that the Minister's statement is quite unsatisfactory. He did not deal with the point that members of the general public can have no certainty whatever of ever getting a sleeper. That means that there are not enough. If there are not enough, why not substitute the third for the first, and, without an addition to rolling stock, get 112 instead of 76? That is the point i press on the Minister. I regret to say I cannot regard his answer as satisfactory, and if he wishes to answer further to-day, I shall be pleased to hear what he has to say.
§ LORD LEATHERSMy Lords, I would like to emphasize that if it is found that the first-class sleepers are cutting out a number of people who could be accommodated for sleeping if third-class sleepers were put in, third-class cars will be substituted. Beyond that I cannot go.
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGHMy Lords, I am much obliged to the Minister for that assurance, and on that assurance I beg leave to withdraw my Motion, but I reserve the right to return to the matter at an early date if I do not find things going satisfactorily.
§ Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.