HL Deb 16 December 1947 vol 153 cc294-315

5.28 p.m.

Earl HOWE

rose to draw the attention of His Majesty's Government to the reduction of expenditure on road maintenance and the vital necessity of adequate upkeep in view of the increase in commercial traffic and the extreme difficulty in obtaining spare parts; and to move for Papers.

The noble Earl said: My Lords, this Motion was put down originally about the beginning of this month, but it was withdrawn because of the congested state of the Order Paper. I could not indeed tell when I put it down that the Order Paper was going to be quite so congested as in fact it has been. The Motion concerns the new Government White Paper on capital investment and is concentrated on just one small item in that Paper which will be found on page 20, paragraph 68, where it is indicated that the Government have decided to cut down the labour force employed on the roads—that is on road maintenance—by 20,000 men. It is also indicated in preceding paragraphs of that Paper that the Government have decided for the time being to postpone the proposals for new road works so far as they are concerned; and I should like to say that I am in entire agreement with that course, as I am sure we all are. At the same time I think one must remember that the fact that we are going to postpone so much in the way of new road works will in the end mean probably a greater number of people, perhaps thousands of people, losing their lives, and thousands more being injured on the roads of the country. If anybody thinks that that is a wild assertion, let him read the reports of the Alness Committee or the Interim and Final Reports of the Committee on Road Safety which have been published.

At the same time, the view I take, which I am quite sure is the view taken by everybody, is that road and rail are simply the arteries of this country, and upon road and rail we depend absolutely for our daily lives. There is not a single pound, not a single ton, of any commodity that we can think of that does not have to be moved along either road or rail at some time in the course of its existence. I think we can fairly say that the roads of the country, in common with the railways, are a capital asset. My point of view is that you cannot gamble with a capital asset and you should not take any action which is likely to compromise the value of that asset in years to come. If I can show that there is a danger of either of those things, I think that I shall have done what I set out to do.

This Motion has not been put down in any spirit of Party controversy; I should like to make that perfectly clear. I would like to be able to support every item in the Government White Paper, entitled Capital Investment in 1948. This Motion has been put down simply and solely because of the very grave anxiety which I and many other people feel having regard to views which have been expressed by those who are far more competent to judge than I am. I shall be able to tell the House what those views are. These are the facts with regard to the labour force employed on road maintenance. Before the war there were 110,000 employed on the roads. The number employed to-day is 92,000. The Government propose a reduction of 20,000 men on that figure, leaving us with 72,000. All this is at a time when, as we all know, the railways are overburdened as perhaps they have never been before, and when quite clearly they are showing signs of strain in many directions. Repairs to trucks and repairs to locomotives and rolling stock generally provide examples. Of course, we see to-day something which I do not think I can ever remember seeing before—volunteers being called for in order to assist the railway staff to keep the rolling stock moving over week-ends. The railways, we must not forget, have to compete with nationalization next year. I do not know whether the Government know (I do not know) whether that is likely to produce a complicating circumstance for them or not. I do not suppose that the change-over from the old system to the new system of nationalization will make it any the easier for railways to cope with their tasks at the present time.

As we all know, the roads are suffering from arrears of maintenance which have arisen mostly out of the war. This produces a most serious problem. Not only that, but at the present time there are proposals to divert some of the mineral traffic from the railways to the roads. I believe I am right in saying that arrangements have already been made to transfer the movement of 25,000 tons of coal from the railways to the roads in the North Country, due to difficulties on the railways. That will show how pressing this problem is. On May 6, 1946, the Minister of Transport announced Government policy. He announced a ten years' programme. He said that the first stage would cover the next two years; the second stage would cover years three to five; and the third stage would cover years six to ten. He also said: In the first stage, attention must be given to the overtaking of the large arrears of road maintenance accumulated during the war, and to the repair of the serious damage sustained in certain areas from tank training and similar military activities.

I think that everybody accepted that statement of Government policy as being a reasonable and a far-sighted one, because it laid down a programme for the future on which everybody could count.

The Minister reinforced this decision and recapitulated it in a speech that he made at a luncheon given by the British Road Federation which took place to celebrate the opening of a road exhibition in London. In the course of that speech, he made this remark: In this matter of road construction it is easy to be a penny wise and pound foolish. We have had examples of this in the past.

A little later on he said: We do not intend to repeat the mistakes of the past.

I do not think the Government ever do. The road authorities then thought that they knew where they were. Then, of course, we came to the winter of 1946-47. We had a period When no road repairs were possible, no road work was possible at all, and, consequent upon last winter, we had colossal damage clone to the roads through snow, frost, the subsequent thaw and then flooding. All that, of course, has enormously increased the difficulty of the problem that we are up against.

On April 30 of this year, I raised the question in your Lordships' House of the reduction of capital expenditure on the roads. The noble Lord, Lord Inman, who then replied for the Ministry of Transport, said that many county councils have been informed, after examination of their maintenance estimates for classified roads in the current financial year, that grants will not be available towards the full amount …

The Government at that time had not given the answer which they did give in Parliament upon this particular subject. The noble Lord, Lord Inman, also went on to tell us that: It has not yet been possible to form an estimate of the cost of the abnormal damage to the reads from frost and floods. The preparation of such an estimate is in hand.

But he could not say when it would be produced. In other words, the Government had made up their mind to reduce the amount of maintenance on roads before they really knew what the damage to the roads was actually going to be as a result of the winter.

Then, on May 5, the Government, in answer to a question in another place, produced a table showing the amount of reduction of grants in the case of Class I, Class II and Class III roads. The counties which have suffered most by the Government's decision in that respect are Lincolnshire, Northumberland, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Warwickshire, Staffordshire, Shropshire and Herefordshire, and some of the southern counties. I should like to emphasize that those particular counties which I have mentioned are, of course, the industrial areas of the North and of the Midlands, and the roads of those areas are presumably roads which are extremely important in connexion with the industrial life of that part of the country and, in turn, with the export drive. Then we come to the Class III roads, and no doubt every member of your Lordships' House knows perfectly well that the Class III roads are the ones predominantly engaged in agriculture. The counties most hit there are Northumberland, Yorkshire, Cheshire, Cumberland, Lancashire, Westmorland, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Staffordshire, Shropshire and Herefordshire, and some of the southern counties like Kent, and also Flint, Merioneth; and Montgomery in Wales. It does seem to me that at a time when you are going to step up agricultural production as never before, it is an extraordinary thing that you should reduce; the grant to the agricultural roads. I should like to ask His Majesty's Government whether these reductions have proceeded according to any particular plan having relation to the situation of the country as a whole. If they have, it is not apparent.

On top of all that came the issue of this White Paper entitled Capital Investment, proposing a 22 per cent. reduction of the labour force employed on the roads. In relation to all the teeming millions of this country 20,000 men may sound a very small matter, but those men, by reason of the work which they do, are really key men, and if you take them away you are going to run an utterly unjustifiable risk. This is what the White Paper says about it: At present the local authorities have about 90,000 men engaged on road works, of whom some 51,000 are employed by the county councils—mainly on rural roads. In view of the need for additional labour for agriculture, rural housing and other essential work, the Government has decided … to reduce them.

With regard to the additional labour for agriculture and rural housing, if county councils have to discharge men when they are more than short-handed, as they are now, they are obviously not going to start by discharging very young men, their most useful and active men. They will obviously discharge the older men who, in many cases, would be eligible for pension and would be likely to go for a pension and take it rather than at their time of life to break new ground and go into agriculture. As for rural housing, how can a road worker be the right sort of fellow to go into rural housing? Or does it mean that the Government want to get him out of the way so that they can "pinch" his house? I do not know, but it does sound to me a most extraordinary proposition. I understand that there is already unemployment in the building trade and, if that is so, how can you possibly contemplate putting road men on work in connexion with rural housing? Taking this question of the maintenance of Our roads and of reducing the road force by 20,000 men, supposing the Government had put forward a proposal to reduce the men employed on the maintenance of the permanent way on the railways by 20,000; surely that would have struck everybody as being a most ill-advised and dangerous decision. Yet both rail and road are absolutely vital to the well-being of the country.

Returning to this subject of the older men, I would remind your Lordships that on November 6 last the National Farmers' Union and other agricultural bodies had a conference with the Ministry of Labour representative, and this is what they said. The National Farmers' Union made it plain to the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Labour that they required able-bodied men and, therefore, if the housing authorities were thinking of releasing the worst of their employees, these would hardly be suitable for entering the agricultural industry. It seems to me to be obvious that if you are going to reduce the labour force on the roads you cannot expect them to go into agriculture and you cannot expect them to go into rural housing. Then what other essential purposes can they possibly perform?

The Minister of Transport was questioned in another place on November 18, and the Parliamentary Secretary to that Ministry, in reply, stated: My right honourable friend is aware that the decision to reduce the number of men employed on road maintenance has caused concern, but the reduction is an essential part of the temporary postponement of schemes of capital investment. A close watch will be kept on road conditions.

That answer says that a close watch is to be kept on road conditions. Was a close watch kept on the Cavendish Bridge on road A6 on the borders of Leicestershire, at a place called Shardlow? Because that bridge collapsed due to lack of maintenance of the piers of the bridge. That is the sort of thing that is going to happen if you reduce the maintenance staff on the highway. You will not get your bridges properly inspected, and you will not get your roads properly attended to. It does seem to me that this reduction is a most dangerous experiment.

This is another quotation which I am afraid I must give. The Minister said in reply to a question in another place: The reduction of 20,000 men will be from the highway authorities' own employees, but I am not in a position to say how this will affect individual authorities.

I thought this Government of all Governments proceeded on a plan, but I cannot see that there has been any plan in this at all. It seems that the Government are, to put it mildly, taking a wild gamble with a capital asset and risking the possible collapse of the whole of the road system of the country. And they are doing this at a time when you have got the road transport drive on, when you are doing everything you can to step up the production of food and the movement of coal, when the railways are overstrained, and when tyres are short and there are no new vehicles available. I should like to ask His Majesty's Government whether they have considered what they are going to do if a number of lorries or vehicles used on the road break down and require increased repairs, and that sort of thing, owing to the state of the highway. How is that going to affect the cost of transport as a whole? It is bound to increase the cost of transport.

Again, take the question of man-power. If lorries, heavy vehicles, and the like, start breaking down more than they have done in the past, it will mean that more men will have to be employed in repairing them, otherwise there will be an incredible delay, in which case transport will gradually slow down and stop. Have they considered the question of tyres? After all, we import tyres. We must import tyres because we cannot grow rubber and that sort of thing here. You have got to import your tyres from abroad, and it is quite certain that if the roads seriously deteriorate you will have to import more tyres.

Then take the question of Class III roads. Have the Government really considered the question of the Class III roads? You are trying to mechanize agriculture. To-day most of the agricultural roads are of water-bound macadam. Have the Government really considered what the effect will be on roads of this class if they are not well kept up? As a matter of fact, the maintenance of Class III roads has gone down very seriously indeed, and their foundations are not at all what they were. At the same time these roads are being used by heavy lorries, in connexion with agriculture, to an extent which has never before been known, for efforts are being made to organize agriculture to the highest pitch of efficiency in every possible way. Have the Government considered the fact that the county authorities are already down to about 50 per cent. of their pre-war road personnel? Further reduction of that personnel will not be a mere reduction of 22½ per cent.; on the pre-war figures it will be a reduction of about 70 per cent.

I have indicated some of the difficulties, and now I wish to ask your Lordships to bear with me while I quote to you a few statements made by road authorities, highway surveyors and the like in various parts of the country. I have pages and pages of such statements here. I would like to read just a few of them, so that you will be able to appreciate what the problem really is. Here is one quotation: I speak for my own authority only when I say that rising wages and prices have themselves reduced the amount of money available for road repairs since the war, and it has only been by the exercise of the utmost economy that it has been possible to make any inroads on the arrears of essential maintenance brought about by the war, and to reduce the staff employed at this juncture would be little short of disastrous.

A second statement says:— The number of openings made in the highways by the utility services, gas, water and electricity, is considerably higher than before the war, and is absorbing an undue proportion of the present limited labour force, and the reinstatement of each one of: hese openings is a matter of public safety. This increased activity on the part of these services is no doubt due to their attempt to make good the neglect of the war years and must be carried out.

In a third statement we find this: The effect of the 1946-1947 cuts works out briefly as follows:— Trunk Roads—a reduction of 60 per tent. to 70 per cent. on surfacing work. Class I Roads—elimination of surfacing work. Class II Roads—elimination of all surfacing work and some tar spraying. Class III Roads—elimination of all surfacing work and probably all tar spraying work. If you do not tar spray the roads water is bound to penetrate into them. Obviously, a road which is not so treated will cease to be waterproof, and is likely to deteriorate in an appalling way. I have masses of other statements which I could give you. They express the opinions held by county authorities and road authorities all over the country. They are all in the same strain, and they all indicate that the greatest possible anxiety is felt. Moreover, they all reflect the feeling that a very grave mistake has been made. I share the views expressed, as must anyone who has read them. I wish to know what the Government have in mind. Supposing we have another winter like the last one, what will the Government do with regard to the roads of the country? It will not be fewer men who will be needed for this task but more. And when men are wanted for other work, why seek to take key men like those employed on the roads?

Look at our Civil Service to-day. It comprises more people than the whole of the Fighting Services combined. About one-tenth of the whole adult male population of the country is to be found in the Civil Service. Surely, if cuts are to be made, there should be an effort to see if some of them cannot be in the Civil Service. We are running an appalling risk with this proposal in regard to the roads. I hope the Government will think again. Was it not Napoleon who said, speaking of the Directory which preceded him: "This Government foresaw nothing, and only discovered difficulties when they were brought to a standstill by them." Do not let us have it said that this Government are conducting our national affairs at such a time as the present with anything like that lack of foresight. I hope most earnestly that this Government will give further consideration to a decision which I look upon as being both dangerous and recklessly extravagant. I beg to move for Papers.

5.55 p.m.

LORD SANDHURST

My Lords, in rising to support the Motion of my noble friend Earl Howe, I would make it clear that I follow his line absolutely in not speaking of the cuts in major improvements and on new roads. It is clear that those have to be made. I do not know whether something went wrong with my education; I think it must have done. But here we are reading about cuts in road maintenance in a document headed Capital Investment. How can maintenance be what is commonly known as a "capital investment?" Surely road maintenance is most essential to the present preservation of our capital investments; and maintaining roads is a very different thing from making a capital investment. What we have to do is to preserve an investment which I believe has been estimated to run into something like £2,000,000,000. That is now in danger. We are risking a great deal of that £2,000,000,000 by allowing the roads to go literally to pot—because it will be to potholes that they will go first; afterwards it will be something worse.

No one in his senses, I hope, would for a moment suggest economizing in the maintenance of the permanent way of a railway. But here the Government are suggesting economizing in the permanent way of our road traffic, which is an equally vital service. Bad maintenance of the roads would be just as dangerous as bad maintenance of the railways, unfortunately, has already been proved. We have seen the effect of bad maintenance in an increase in railway accidents within the last two years. Bad maintenance on the roads can be even more serious than that. As the noble Lord, Lord Walkden, knows well, on the railways we have more or less the same drivers on the same routes all the time. It is an easy matter, when a strange driver is put on a route, to warn him of a bad section. Every driver is, in fact, notified when there is a dangerous section of road over which he has to take his train. But that cannot be done in the case of road drivers. A lorry may he going from Glasgow to South Wales, but the people who send that lorry cannot possibly know of every dangerous stretch of road. It may well he that the driver will find himself quite unexpectedly on a dangerous section, and an accident may occur before he has fully appreciated the approach of danger.

LORD WALKDEN

The noble Lord has mentioned my name. I would suggest that in a case such as that to which he has just referred—that of a strange driver on a strange road—the driver ought to be doubly careful.

LORD SANDHURST

He may be doubly careful, and yet remain unaware of the existence of the danger. That is my point. Another factor which, I think, needs to be taken into consideration, is the accident ratio between road and rail. If your Lordships look at the record of the last five years for which figures are available, 1939-1944, you will see that on the railways only 142 people were killed, whilst on the roads no fewer than 45,000 people lost their lives. Can we afford to allow the roads to become more dangerous than they are at the present time? I beg the Government to take serious account of this. There is one class of road-user in particular for which the roads will be very much more dangerous, and it is a class which, owing to the abolition of the basic petrol ration, has suddenly been enormously increased. That class is the cyclist.

The country roads to-day—the Class II and the Class III roads as I believe they are now known—are getting into an extremely dangerous condition, as my noble friend has already said. They are getting heavy potholes at the side. During bad weather cyclists do not want to ride through the water and the potholes, and they suddenly swerve out without giving any warning to the lorry or car travelling behind them. Already this year I have seen three or four cases of the nearest thing to an accident that I want to see, simply through cyclists doing that. We shall find more of that. These country roads are being what I believe is known as "spewed out." They never had much foundation, and owing to the weight of the traffic on them such foundation as there is is being pushed outside; and the tops of the roads are going down to where the foundations ought to be. If road maintenance is now allowed to lapse, the cost of restoring those roads later will be out of all proportion to the monetary saving, and lives will be lost in the meantime.

Finally, may I quote from Paragraph 72 of the White Paper which refers to Government buildings and the Office of Works staff? It says: The largest claim on the Ministry of Works' own labour force is for maintenance of Government property, which is kept to the essential minimum. It is proposed to reduce the Government labour force by 1,000 out of 18,000, a fraction over 5 per cent. The Ministry of Works, themselves are proposing to reduce the number for the maintenance of Government buildings which have been maintained, so far as the essentials were concerned, all the time. Even to suggest that the roads have had the essential minimum of attention in the last eight years is a ghastly over-statement. To reduce the attention they are now having is a still more ghastly mistake. To my mind, it will be a tragic error which will cost this country millions of pounds and I do not care to say how many lives.

6.4 p.m.

LORD TEYNHAM

My Lords, I should like to add my support to this Motion which has been moved by the noble Earl, Lord Howe. In doing so, I should like to emphasize that we on this side of the House, fully support His Majesty's Government in their efforts to reduce capital expenditure; but, none the less, it is of some importance that we should distinguish between capital expenditure and maintenance. New road construction, bridges, tunnels and other capital expenditure must, of course, wait for better times, but I suggest that maintenance of roads should be in a different category and should receive the fullest possible consideration. It is possible to over-do this consideration with unnecessary expenditure, and some of your Lordships who sit on county councils are perhaps aware of the appointment recently, at a salary of £900 a year, of a Ministry of Transport official to supervise the artistic settings and planting of trees alongside our trunk roads. Yet in the past all this work was efficiently carried out by the Roads Beautifying Association, with a Government grant of only £200 per annum. Surely this sort of expenditure could be omitted during these difficult days.

The recent White Paper, Capital Investment in 1948, clearly sets out the proposed reduction in capital investment for the coming year, but surely the maintenance and upkeep of our roads should not be included in this Paper—for several reasons. In the first place, as was mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Howe, the preservation of life is of the utmost importance; and if our roads are allowed to get into a bad state of repair the safety margin will be greatly diminished and undoubtedly the percentage of road accidents will increase.

Many of your Lordships will be aware that at the present time there is a link between the live-day week, the delay in the turn-round of railway wagons and the increased amount of goods that the reads may be called upon to carry. Not only is there a wagon shortage, but there is a marked delay in wagon discharge, aggravated by the operation of the five-day week. I do not propose to enter into a discussion as to the merits or otherwise of the five-day week, but I would suggest that the question is relevant when it is considered against the background of transport in general and the difficulties which the railways are having at the present time, which may lead to increased use of road haulage. The railway companies are endeavouring to do now in five days what they used to do in six or seven days. I understand that in the Birmingham area alone over 1,000 firms are operating on a five-day week. The staffs, therefore, are not available on Saturdays for receiving and despatching goods, and hundreds of railway wagons are thereby held up. This shortage of wagons has not come upon us suddenly or unexpectedly, and I suggest that if steps had been taken in time this shortage could have been foreseen and avoided.

It may well be asked: What has this to do with road maintenance? It means, of course, that owing to the shortage of railway wagons more goods have to be diverted to the roads, and therefore it is all the more essential that the roads should be kept in good condition. I would like to give your Lordships a few figures about this wagon shortage. In 1939 the number of railway wagons under repair or out of action was, roughly, 39,000; in 1944, it was nearly 89,000; in 1945, 124,000; and in the month of November the figures had risen to approximately 200,000. This is a startling figure, and it is doubtful if deliveries of coal can be maintained throughout the winter without using the more costly method of road transport. In fact I believe it is expected that over 2,000,000 tons of deep-mined coal are to be moved by road during the next six months. There is little doubt that the roads will have to bear a much heavier traffic, and therefore they will require very much more attention than they are receiving now. During last winter, I believe, over 500,000 tons of open-cast coal were moved by road. As your Lordships are aware, the development of this open-cast coal began only in the year 1942. The roads in the vicinity of these operations were certainly not constructed for such heavy work and they wil require a great deal of maintenance.

Again, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, and also by the noble Earl, Lord Howe, if agriculture is to function at its maximum efficiency good roads are essential. In recent years there has been a great increase in mechanization of farms and this is bound to cause heavier loading on the roads. Many main roads have had very little maintenance in over eight years and to-day they are worn out and on their last legs. I would suggest that the decision of His Majesty's Government to attempt to divert some 20,000 men from the roads to other work, which will lower the already low standard of road maintenance, is not only unwise but a short-sighted policy, especially during our export drive and the necessity at all costs of avoiding a bottleneck in transport. We fully realize the importance of employing as many able bodied men as possible in agriculture and other vitally important industries, but many of those who work on the roads are past middle age and are unlikely to be of much service 'in other work. I would suggest that local authorities might be asked to weed out their younger men, so far as possible, but that they should not be asked to reduce their road maintenance staff to a pre-determined figure which may be below the minimum considered necessary by them to keep the highways in a proper state of repair. Even the Romans, during their periods of inflation and their Empire difficulties, kept our roads in good order, and I urge His Majesty's Government to reconsider their decision and not to deplete the labour force on the roads to a pre-determined figure which is bound to have a disastrous effect on the road transport of the country and retard our recovery.

6.12 p.m.

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR BURMA (THE EARL OF LISTOWEL)

My Lords, I am extremely grateful, and I am sure my gratitude is shared by the noble Lords on these Benches, to the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and to the other noble Lords who have spoken, for having made possible a full discussion of a subject of considerable public importance. I am also grateful to them for accepting the lead given by Lord Howe when he said he did not intend himself to approach this problem in a Party spirit. I think everyone will agree that the maintenance of our system of road communications is far too serious a responsibility to be regarded as a Party question. I can assure the noble Lords who have spoken that I will ask my right honourable friend the Minister of Transport to consider most carefully what they have said and, in particular, the references they have made to the opinions of outside bodies well qualified to express opinions about the roads. I am quite certain that the Minister will benefit from the study of the views which they have expressed in such moderate terms, backed by so much experience of the problems of road users and highway authorities.

I fully appreciate the genuine alarm which some noble Lords who have spoken have expressed about the future of the roads, and more particularly about the effect of a low standard of road maintenance on road safety and the efficiency of transport. I hope that in the course of what I have to say I may be able to reassure them that the risk we are taking is not so serious as they may believe. If I fail to do so—I hope I shall not, but I may—time alone can show whether the Government's view or the view of the noble Lords is more closely in accord with the facts of the situation. I would reply to two points raised by the noble Earl, Lord Howe, before dealing with the broader issues. I am glad to be able to tell him that the ten-year road programme announced in May, 1946, has not been abandoned. It has only been postponed, like much other constructive work that has had to be put aside temporarily until we can use our resources for purposes of that kind. The noble Earl referred to the frost and flood damage done in the latter part of last winter. I understand that funds were made available to repair this damage.

I am sure that we all share the noble Earl's regret, and the regret expressed by all his supporters, that without having succeeded in making good the war-time arrears of road maintenance, we now find ourselves obliged to envisage the lowering of the present admittedly unsatisfactory standard instead of being able to look forward, as everyone had hoped, to raising the standard steadily and progressively to the pre-war level. This is part of the price we shall have to pay in order to fill the gap in our balance of overseas payments and to avert conditions that would otherwise lead to a more serious economic crisis than anything we have hitherto experienced. I think noble Lords appreciated the force of this general argument, although they may not have agreed about its specific application.

The noble Earl will have seen that in the White Paper on Capital Investment we point out that it has been necessary to reduce our adverse trade balance, at a moment when the American and Canadian Loans are becoming rapidly exhausted, by making a substantial reduction in capital investment at home. The object of this reduction is to release as much as possible of the man-power and materials now being used or about to be used for capital projects, for use in the industries serving the export drive, or for dollar-saving production at home. In view of the vital need to re-equip and modernize our basic industries—which everyone will admit—there are limits to the reductions which we can safely make in the investment programme for productive capital works. Although substantial cuts are to be made in many different types of capital investment, and all but the most essential and urgent projects have been postponed, these cuts alone will not be enough to balance our trade.

We cannot cut down capital investment in the plant and machines which basic industry requires to the point of risking serious damage to our prospect of economic recovery. Therefore, having come to the limit of our reduction in capital investment, some reduction has to be made on maintenance expenditure; and that, of course, is where noble Lords complain we are cutting too deeply. I am sure that your Lordships will have appreciated that we are making the largest cut in our programme for the roads in the construction of new roads—that is to say, in the capital investment on the improvement of the road system. And we have made it quite clear it will be possible to start or to complete only those road projects which are directly related to the most urgent of our immediate needs. Road schemes that make direct and substantial contributions to exports, or to the saving of imports, will continue to go forward; and we cannot postpone such projects as are needed for the maintenance of our essential communications. It is hoped to carry out a number of small schemes which will bring a big return in terms of road safety, and roads essential to give access to new buildings must also be kept in hand.

Let me give one or two specific cases, some of them not mentioned in the White Paper. For example, of the major schemes of road improvement in hand or in contemplation it is hoped to proceed with the diversion at Nevill's Cross in Durham, the I.C.I. diversion at Teeside and the cyclist and pedestrian tunnels for the new crossing of the Tyne at Jarrow. But such large-scale schemes as the new Severn Bridge, the Lower Thames tunnel between Dartford and Purfleet, the main traffic tunnel at Jarrow, the Great West Road extension, the Ashford By-Pass and many other schemes of the same kind, will have to be postponed until better times. But in spite of these drastic cuts in new road schemes—your Lordships will agree that they are drastic, but they are as far as we can go—we shall be obliged to make a considerable reduction in road maintenance. We realize the force of the arguments against doing this and I think they have been set out with considerable power by the noble Lords who have spoken. In our view, however, these arguments are outweighed by the more general economic considerations with which our economic recovery as a nation is bound up.

The state of the roads is comparatively good in this country—I am sure any noble Lord who has been abroad since the war will freely admit this—as compared with those of most other countries, and even during the war, when expenditure on road maintenance was substantially reduced, the reduction fell most heavily on new construction and improvements. Maintenance expenditure during the war hardly fell below 70 per cent. of the level it had reached in 1939. Moreover, most of the abnormal wear and tear caused by heavy war-time traffic has now been made good. Since the war the volume of road maintenance has been considerably increased, and money has been made available this year for the repair of damage caused by frost and floods last winter. It cannot be denied—and we should be the last to deny it—that the crust of some roads is wearing thin, but a close watch will be kept on the condition of such roads, and where roads that carry traffic essential to industry or agriculture show excessive wear, repairs will be carried out before deterioration has gone too far. Such repairs will not be affected by this reduction of expenditure on road maintenance.

The damage done to production by arrears to road maintenance is sometimes over-estimated. During periods when it has been necessary to reduce maintenance work, special care has been taken by the highway authorities to see that the roads were patched up to prevent cumulative and progressive deterioration, which, of course, in the long run would have resulted in breaking up the fabric and foundations of the roads. So long as this policy is followed, we believe that road maintenance can be reduced for a time without any adverse effect on production, and without increasing very considerably the eventual cost of raising the level of maintenance. It is not possible now to assess exactly what the minimum expenditure will be that such a policy will require, but we shall do our best to ensure that road maintenance nowhere runs down to the point where progressive deterioration begins.

I think it is clear from what I have said that if road maintenance were not allowed to slide for a time, far more harmful reductions would have to be made in other kinds of expenditure, involving labour and materials that might be diverted to increasing exports or saving imports. Moreover, reductions in road maintenance do not entail the danger to the public which might easily arise from curtailment of other maintenance work. For example, if railway maintenance were allowed to run down, there would be immediate danger to life and to vital communications. This reduction in road maintenance will release some valuable materials. It is intended also to make available about 20,000 road men for other work. It should be remembered that of some 90,000 of the men employed by highway authorities on road maintenance, about 51,000 are employed by county councils in rural areas. Many of these men have had agricultural experience and, therefore, will know quite a lot about the land, and they should be in a position to make a useful contribution to food production by taking up work on farms, or by work on rural housing. It will be possible for many of them to take up occupations of this kind without moving to other districts or leaving their homes.

We freely admit that it is not going to be possible to maintain all roads, by any means, in their present state of repair. It is true, as the noble Earl, Lord Howe, pointed out, that wear and tear on vehicles using these roads will be harder. But the effect on transport will not be so serious as might at first sight appear. It should not be forgotten that buses and lorries in service in this country are similar in type to those exported for use on far worse roads abroad, where they are acknowledged to give good service and to have excellent lasting qualities. Again, the deterioration in the condition of the roads will not be nearly so damaging to vehicles, or so productive of a demand for spare parts, as the increasing age of the vehicles themselves, which have still to be retained in service on account of the difficulty of replacing them by new ones. The supply of spare parts is a very real problem, particularly for older vehicles and types which have now gone out of production. The Ministries of Transport and Supply are aware of this difficulty and are doing their best to meet it.

The success of the new proposals for road maintenance on a reduced scale will depend on the willing co-operation of the highway authorities. We are aiming at a total saving in maintenance expenditure of a little more than £10,000,000 per annum. This will be a valuable contribution towards the £180,000,000 per annum by which the whole investment programme, capital and maintenance, is to be reduced. With the friendly co-operation of the highway authorities in a task which may be unpalatable to them, but which is undoubtedly one of the utmost public importance, I have no reason to believe that cither the roads or the traffic which uses them will suffer grievous harm in the interim period during which we are obliged to make this essential saving; and I am certain that, if they see this particular problem in a true perspective, and relate it to our economic difficulties as a whole, they will be just as anxious as anyone else to help us over this difficult period until better times enable us to spend more on our roads.

6.28 p.m.

EARL HOWE

My Lords, I can only thank the noble Earl very much for the carefully prepared speech which he has just delivered, a speech which I cannot help thinking must have been prepared long before he heard the arguments which were put forward by other noble Lords who have spoken on this Motion. The noble Earl did mention one or two points about which I should like to ask him questions. As to the frost damage, it is not so much a question of money as of the labour force. The roads have never had a chance to recover during the war, and they got caught last winter. Now it is not a question of money but of the reduction in the labour force. If you reduce the labour force from its present ultra low level, there is not a hope of getting the roads back into anything like proper condition; in fact, the deterioration is going to increase. I should like to ask the noble Earl whether the road authorities were consulted before it was decided to reduce the labour force by 20,000 men.

THE EARL OF LISTOWEL

I am speaking on behalf of my right honourable friend, the Minister of Transport. Clearly, without reference to the Department, I cannot give a specific reply to a question put to me on the spur of the moment. I will gladly refer it back to the Minister.

EARL HOWE

I am grateful to the noble Earl for the assurance which he has given, because it really is an important point. The noble Earl said that the roads of this country were good as compared with foreign roads. During the last two years, I happen to have motored over practically the whole of Western Europe, except Germany, right down to Italy, and I am afraid I cannot altogether agree with the view which he expressed as a generalization. Some roads over here are better than the roads over there, and some roads over there are better than those over here. It depends upon which country you go to. I cannot altogether agree with the noble Earl on that point. The noble Earl in his reply seemed to decry all the arguments which have been put forward. It seemed to me that his speech was prepared before he had heard those arguments. I hope, from the point of view of seeing what is best to be done at a very difficult time, that the Minister will examine some of the points which have been brought forward.

The noble Earl could not have made the speech he has just made if he had been able to read through the report which I have in my hand. I shall not be able to read the whole of it—I only wish I could—but if I did I am sure that all noble Lords would realize how desperately serious the problem really is in certain areas, and particularly in the industrial areas of the North. That is where the bulk of the trouble will come first.

THE EARL OF LISTOWEL

I can assure the noble Earl that I have read the resolution of the British Road Federation, if that is the document to which he refers. I have not read the whole of the statements accompanying it, I admit, because I received the report only this morning, but I have read the parts which were intended to back up the case.

EARL HOWE

If the noble Earl would like to have it I will hand it to him.

THE EARL OF LISTOWEL

I have it here.

EARL HOWE

Having regard to what has been said, I cannot of course press the matter any further. But I can assure the noble Earl that we on this side of the House will watch how things go on—not with the idea of causing any obstruction or difficulty, but with great anxiety, because we feel that a mistake has been made. I lope the Minister will not close his eyes to possibilities, and that if it is found that what we have said is likely to come to pass, and that we are likely to have a collapse of the highway systems, he will take prompt and urgent action in the matter. Close watching is not enough. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.