§ EARL MANVERS had given Notice that he would call attention to hardship arising from shortage of petrol for civilians 1041 in country districts; ask if without detriment to the public interest control could now be somewhat relaxed; and move for Papers. The noble Earl said: My Lords, I need not detain the House very long over this small matter, the more so as many of your Lordships will already have heard a good deal about it from lady members of your Lordships' families. This is a grievance which hardly touches town dwellers who foam the majority of the population: in a town there are so many alternative means of transport that the use of motor fuel in private cars is perhaps needless; but in country districts the matter is far different. I ask your Lordships to consider the hard lot of a person of advanced years who is expected either to stay at home or to go to cross roads, perhaps a mile or two miles from his house and there on a rainy day await an omnibus which, when it comes, may or may not be full up, and which in any case seldom runs straight to its destination but zigzags about among neighbouring villages, wasting a great deal of time.
§ I hear on all sides of difficulties in household shopping, I hear of inability to visit sick people in hospital, not to speak of the impossibility of attending such small social gatherings as may take place in war-time. I seem to recollect having read earlier on that a junior member of the Government said it was not desired to turn totL1 war into total misery, but the shortage of petrol largely having that effect at the present time in country districts. A certain amount of hiring is still allowed. It is difficult to see what economy of petrol is thus effected, as a hired car has to make the journey from its garage and back in addition to serving the hirer. The Petrol Controller carries out his very difficult duties with tact and courtesy. I have visited the office of one of his representatives and have seen the enormous number of applications he gets as well as the difficulty he and his devoted staff have in dealing with the jealousies and repercussions due to granting one request and refusing another. I cannot help thinking that the return to country dwellers of the basic ration would overcome any mistaken idea that one person was being favoured at the expense of another.
§ The second point I want to raise is the question of the loss of licence duties due 1042 to the forced taking off the road of all private cars. I have particulars of a certain county where the annual licence revenue amounted to £378,406 before the basic ration was taken off on the 1st July, 1942. In the following year, 1943, the licence duties had fallen to £275,071. There was a loss of over £100,000 in this one county. The taking off of the basic ration may have been fully justified in 1942 by the then success of the U-boat campaign. Now, owing to our Navy's gallant exertions, one seldom hears of U-boats, and one may be justified in thinking that petrol is easier to come by than it was at that time. I should like to urge upon His Majesty's Government that some sense of proportion should be observed in this matter. If it is the case that a naval motor boat uses 16 gallons of petrol a day, if it is the case that an Army tank runs only three-quarters of a mile to the gallon, if it is the case that a single-engine aeroplane uses 40 gallons of petrol an hour, a two-engine aeroplane 80 gallons an hour and a four-engine aeroplane 160 gallons an hour, then surely the 10 gallons a month, which would be quite enough to satisfy the ordinary country dweller, must be a mere drop in the ocean. It may be said that multitude is a many-headed monster, but I hope that the Government will not take that view. I hope that they will not strain at a gnat whilst swallowing a camel. I beg to move.
§ THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY OF THE ADMIRALTY (LORD BRUNTISFIELD)My Lords, in this age when we have become accustomed to fast and easy methods of transport nobody would attempt to deny that the restrictions now imposed upon the supply of petrol cause the public much inconvenience and even in some cases hardship. Equally nobody would claim that these inconveniences should be removed at the expense of the war effort. The needs of our Fighting Services, so long as the war continues, must remain the foremost and indeed the paramount consideration in this matter. Virtually every engine of war, at sea, on land and in the air, depends upon oil in some form or other for its motive power and it must be clear, even to those who live in remote country districts, that as we deploy our strength against the enemy so do we draw more and more upon our supplies and stocks of oil.
1043 Accordingly, the amount of petrol at present made available for civilian purposes represents the difference between the total amount of petrol which, having regard to shipping and other considerations, it is found practicable to import from abroad and the requirements of the Services for war purposes. So long as the scale of the operations in which we are engaged remains as vast as it is to-day, it must, and I am sure it will, be generally understood that the requirements of the Services must continue upon an enormously high level. But, despite these almost self-evident considerations, there appears in some quarters to exist a growing feeling, due in part to optimism about the progress of the war, that the time has come for some relaxation in the Government's policy of restricting supplies of petrol, and also a feeling that such relaxation is being delayed through a reluctance on the part of the Government to abandon what is sometimes called war-time austerity. To those who think in this fashion I can only say this—that the Government will, of course, consider relaxing the existing petrol restrictions when circumstances permit, but at the present time operational requirements absolutely preclude any relaxation whatever.
Nevertheless, within the limits imposed by operational requirements it is the Government's policy to secure the greatest practicable economy in the use of petrol by civilians consistent with the avoidance of undue hardship in particular cases. The noble Earl in his speech gave one or two examples of where the denial of petrol causes great inconvenience and hardship to country people. He instanced the question of shopping. That is one of the purposes for which petrol can be obtained. If you can show that you have to go more than a mile to do your shopping and you have a car, that is a ground for applying—and applying with success—to the local Petroleum Officer for a supply of petrol. The noble Earl then mentioned the question of visiting the sick. That is another ground on which application can be made to the authorities for petrol. I did not think he was on quite such good ground when he mentioned local social events. Attendance at village fêtes cannot, at this stage of the war, really be regarded as an essential part of one's duty.
1044 Then he pleaded that, even if the basic petrol ration could not be restored in full, at least the country dwellers, as he called them, should be allowed to have it back. I am not a lawyer, but I should have serious difficulties in deciding to-day who is and who is not a country dweller. How you could possibly deny petrol to somebody who lives on the outskirts of a town and allow it to someone who lives in a rural district, I fail completely to understand. Nor did his point about the loss of revenue appeal to me very strongly. He did not suggest, and I certainly cannot believe, that there are many owners of motor cars who to-day would wish to see them licensed and be given petrol supplies solely for the pleasure of adding to the national revenue. Any loss of revenue that is occasioned by the petrol restrictions is more than amply made up by the ingenious methods to which the Chancellor of the Exchequer resorts in other directions. Finally, his attempt to show how little petrol would be needed to help the country dwellers out as compared with the amount of petrol consumed by the Fighting Services really seemed to me only to strengthen the argument that this is not the moment at which to relax these restrictions. The more petrol our tanks consume per mile, the more our M.T.Bs. consume per mile and the more our aircraft consume per mile seems to me a very good reason for adhering strictly to the denial of petrol to civilians, except in cases where it is absolutely essential for their domestic or business purposes.
In point of fact, the Regional Petroleum Officers are given a wide measure of discretion in dealing with applications from civilians in country districts and appropriate quantities of petrol are permitted for domestic, business and professional purposes. These Petroleum Officers have been specially instructed to exercise their discretion in a sympathetic fashion in all hard cases and to make prompt and sympathetic examination of all appeals from persons whose applications have been rejected or who consider the allowances granted to them are insufficient for their essential purposes. I am assured that any complaint made to the Petroleum Department is always the subject of inquiry. In conclusion, I feel bound to tell your Lordships that it is the Government's view that now more than ever the nation's energies should be concentrated on winning the war, and that this is not the moment 1045 to dissipate those energies in any attempt to remove what is, after all, but one of many irksome restrictions upon our liberties and freedom of movement.
LORD STRABOLGIMy Lords, I was called out of the House when the noble Earl, Lord Manvers, opened this debate but I have listened to the reasonable reply of the noble Lord, Lord Bruntisfield, and I rise to make a suggestion more on behalf of the town dwellers. The only criticism I would make of the reply is that it rather smacked of bureaucracy. Whoever drew it up for the noble Lord did not appreciate that things have changed in the last five or six weeks in Southern England. The public are subject to strains and stresses from which they had been immune for some time, and anything that can make their lot lighter is deserving of the Government's attention as part of the war effort. After all, this is the home front, and the civilian effort is of tremendous importance in the war. The suggestion I wish to make is this. I quite see the objection to restoring the basic ration. That might be open to abuse, and there is a strong case to be made against it. But a compromise might be arrived at by allowing a greater quota of petrol to taxi-drivers in towns and also to those who hire and drive hackney carriages in and around the towns and country districts. In many cases of which I know their allowance is very short indeed, and they cannot carry out their quite necessary tasks and commissions for the public.
With regard to the taxi-drivers, with great diffidence I would draw the attention of the noble Lord to the need, in some way, of limiting the use of taxi-cabs for what I call non-essential purposes. I cannot help referring, for example, to the immense amount of petrol used in carrying people to dog-racing tracks. I am told that on certain nights of the week in London it is almost impossible to get a taxi-cab because they are all taken up and booked in advance to certain greyhound tracks. I admit that this is a difficult question. If you give a quota of petrol to a taxi-driver, he naturally wishes to use it to his best advantage financially, and no doubt he gets high fees for this sort of thing. It should not be beyond the powers of the police and the other authorities to put some limit on what really cannot be described as usefully-used spirit, I make that suggestion as a 1046 kind of compromise—to increase the quota to hackney carriage owners who ply for hire in the country and semi-rural areas and to consider increasing the quota for taxi-cabs in the big cities.
§ EARL MANVERSMy Lords, I thank the noble Lord very much for his courteous reply and Lord Strabolgi for such measure of support as he has been able to give me. In the circumstances I do not think it is possible to press my request at the present moment. I would only express the hope that my remarks may perhaps germinate in the mind of the Petroleum Department and bear fruit in due course. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
§ Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.