LORDS AMENDMENTS. (Hansard, 6 August 1947)

§ VISCOUNT ADDISON
My Lords, these three Amendments follow on one another. Your Lordships will perhaps remember that there were five groups of Amendments wherein we differed from the other place or made Amendments to Amendments made in the other place. The first one has been accepted by them. These are disagreed to. I do not think we need argue further at great length. We have already argued on many occasions, and therefore it would not be right or seemly if I were to detain your Lordships by repeating the arguments now. I hope that your Lordships will agree at this stage that we should not insist upon the Amendments. I beg to move.

§ VISCOUNT SWINTON
My Lords, I certainly agree that we need not debate again what has been debated already for fourteen or fifteen days; but I should like to say a few words, and, like the Leader of the House, following the old precedent, deal with the whole of the Amendments together. As always, in any relation of life, differences seem to attract more attention than agreements. It is so in marriage and in other fields. But I think it is remarkable, as the noble Viscount the Leader of the House has said, that in a Bill of such enormous importance and complexity, and so controversial in character, such a vast number of Amendments have been made after full argument and debate by common agreement between us here and accepted in in another place. That fact shows the value of reasonable debate under our Parliamentary system. The Bill has been greatly amended and improved. There is scarcely a clause or a schedule-that has not been changed in some way. Our differences are now reduced to three,. and I would like to say just a word about them.
There is an old issue which we hive debated very much—namely, what is a fair test of long-distance traffic. I must say I regret that we could not hive agreed on the forty miles. The odd thing is that the real reason for the first Amendments being rejected was not any 1031 dispute that forty miles was a reasonable test, but because "they would so limit the number of undertakings acquired by the Commission as to place the Commission in a position where they could not adequately perform the duties laid upon them by the Bill." That is a very different reason from saying what is or what is not long or short distance traffic. I think it is rather unconvincing. The risk of this business is not that it will be too small but that it may easily be too big; and I am very much afraid that the real reason why this Amendment cannot be accepted is the anxiety of the Government to resist a reasonable measure of competition, even where under their own Bill they lay down that competition is to be accepted.
In the same way, when you come to the area in which the permitted operator is to be allowed to operate you cut him down within even more narrow limits than your definition of "long-distance transport" and "short-distance transport." The reason for that is alleged to be this: that it would "unduly hamper the Commission in the performance of the duties laid upon them by the Bill." Why should it "unduly hamper the Commission" if the permitted operator is to be allowed to do the forty miles, which indeed is the test—or one of the tests—when taking over? It would not unduly hamper the Commission. The Commission can have as many vehicles as they please; they can go wherever they like on long haul or short haul, and with return loads; they can do anything they please. I am very much afraid that the people who will suffer and be unduly hampered are the hauliers who are permitted to continue operating and—this I regard as a much more serious matter even than that, though that is a very grave injustice and disservice—the general public who use these services. It is because we have had the interests of the travelling public and the trading public primarily at heart that we have persisted so much in these Amendments.
In the same way, the final Amendment, upon which we shall not divide but which we did ask the other place to consider in another form, is something which greatly affects the public interest. In a sentence, it was simply this: That there should be the same law for the 1032 Commission as for the permitted undertaker. For centuries it has been an elementary principle of British justice that no undertaking and no person, whether it be a State-owned undertaking or a private undertaking, should be outside the law and above the law. Now, unhappily, for the first time and, I hope, for the last time, we allow in an Act of Parliament the principle that one of these new Government undertakings is to be outside and above the law; there is to be a different law for them, and for their competitors. In conclusion I would say that seems to me to be a strange application of the test which the Lord Chancellor very fairly asked us to apply in these matters, that we should give a fair chance to the State undertaking. If we have got to have these State undertakings, we all wish to give them a fair chance, but we do not wish to give them a position of privileged monopoly outside and above the law.

§ LORD BEVERIDGE
My Lords, This matter has been very fully discussed, and I think even the last discussion in this House showed the House the real difference between us on some of these Amendments. I hope that the House will allow me time to say why, to me, while the line taken on the first set of Amendments on Clause 39 does not seem to be good sense (and I do not think it seems good sense to most of this House), it is good sense as compared with what is proposed for Clause 52, on page 66. The line taken on Clause 39 by the Government, and by the other place, is that if they did not take over compulsorily a large number of lorries, they would not have enough lorries. That is really nonsensical, because they could afterwards always buy as many lorries as they wanted, or they could make them. That is not the permanent evil. It would still leave it open for the private enterprise man to do whatever he could. The real harm is done in respect of Clause 52; and that is quite different. That is not concerned with what lorries are taken over; that is concerned with imposing an additional restriction on the lorries which are left.
Roughly speaking, 30,000 lorries are to be taken over with those A and B licences, and very nearly four times as many, nearly 120,000 lorries, are to be left with private enterprise on the figures given by the Government themselves. The 1033 30,000 lorries are to be allowed to do anything, but the 120,000 lorries are to have additional restrictions which means that they are to be incapable of running more than 25 miles from their home. That is simply diminishing the efficiency of four-fifths of your existing fleet. That is what this proposition does; it diminishes the efficiency of four-fifths of the existing fleet. To this we are asked to assent on a day when, in an hour or two, the Government are going to put before us a Bill urging the necessity of the utmost production with the fullest use of all our resources. I venture to suggest—I do not want to use strong language—that anything other than "criminal lunacy" is not a fair account of that proposition, which is to take a whole lot of lorries which have, in fact, been doing more than 25 miles. The Government say that there is a great deal of traffic between 25 and 50 miles, and that that was their reason for not accepting the 50-mile limit. A great many lorries which were doing this are to be sterilized and made incapable of doing it. Who is to do their work? You will have to have new lorries or you will not do that work; and this at a time when productive efficiency is the thing we most need to have.
When we come to the next debate, that on the crisis, many of us will admit that the main lines of the crisis would have affected any Government. The main lines of the crisis are beyond the control of the Government. The Government, however, will not escape criticism after this if they have aggravated the crisis by sticking to a stupid line in spite of changing circumstances; just as, last February, they insisted upon their foolish line of not controlling effectively tobacco and films and other useless imports; just as, after that, although they had had warning of the crisis, they went on to the five-day week in the mines and gambled on that five-day week. Now, in this same predicament, they are sticking to a wrong line in the face of changing circumstances, being unable to adjust themselves; they are acting on this line for sterilizing four-fifths of our A and B licences.
I will say at once that I am sorry those who are responsible for the general conduct of affairs in this House should feel that we are bound in this House to accept this. So far as I am concerned, I should be perfectly willing to be the one person in the Lobby against it. My reason for 1034 not doing that is that I should be sorry because so many other people would have to go into a different Lobby. Before I sit down I want to register, in the strongest possible terms, my objection to this proposal to destroy the efficiency of a large part of our road haulage equipment at a time when every maximum efficiency is essential in the interests of the community. I am sure this country will have to retrace its step, as I think it will have to retrace other steps introduced by this Government. But I am alone. I am a new member of this house, and all I can do is to take what opportunity I can of protesting in the strongest possible terms against the particular line taken on that particular Amendment.