HL Deb 03 December 1953 vol 184 cc973-1003

5.42 p.m.

LORD TEYNHAM rose to ask Her Majesty's Government when they intended to implement the recommendations contained in the Report of the Working Party on Car Parking in the Inner Area of London, 1953; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I am sure most of your Lordships will agree that, since the end of the war, there has been a growing concern, year by year, at the increasing traffic congestion in the streets of London, especially within the inner area. I suggest that the rate of increase is likely to be much faster in the next few months, with the advent of cheaper new cars and the fall in values in the second-hand market in ears. We may well find that traffic in London will be completely paralysed in the not very distant future unless drastic action is taken by Her Majesty's Government. All the information, data and costs are available and, as your Lordships know, provided by successive Committees. Yet no active measures are being taken to stem the appalling congestion which is creeping relentlessly on us in the streets of London.

Your Lordships may recall that in March, 1950, a special sub-committee of the London and Home Counties Advisory Committee was set up to investigate this very pressing matter, and with special reference to car parking. This Committee made some fifty-six recommendations, of which nineteen referred to the improvement of parking conditions. In view of the great importance of the car parking recommendations, yet another committee was set up under that new-fangled name of "Working Party," a name which I have never been quite able to understand but which I am sure is very useful. It is the report of this Working Party, published earlier this year, to which my Motion refers to-day. I think its outstanding feature is that it shows that some 16,000 vehicles are parked for long periods on the streets, and the owners have been forced to do this as accommodation off the highway, in garages and bombed-site parks, is insufficient by approximately 12,000 vehicle spaces; and, of course, as the buildings start to go up the bombed-site parks are becoming fewer and fewer. It is no use saying that the car owner ought not to park on the highway. We must accept the fact that the motor vehicle is part of our twentieth century existence and civilisation, and provide for it accordingly. Otherwise, parking on the highway will continue, and not only continue but grow.

Now, how did the Working Party propose to alleviate the situation? They clearly stated that their proposed parking plan consisted of three interdependent elements. I propose to read them to your Lordships:

  1. "(a) construction of garages below and above ground;
  2. (b) introduction of parking meters; and
  3. (c) a new balanced system of waiting regulations";
and I would particularly stress the words "balanced system." It was emphasised by this committee that the plan was essentially a comprehensive one, and that it would be fundamentally unsound to attempt to adopt any one of these recommendations on its own. Notwithstanding this very clear recommendation, the Metropolitan Police have recently introduced further parking restrictions in a large number of streets in inner London, and in some cases this is causing complete chaos. I think it is because the restrictions do not appear to be applied in accordance with any well-conceived plan. The inescapable fact remains that parking accommodation off the highway is hopelessly inadequate. These new restrictions do not solve the, problem of finding additional parking accommodation, but merely add to the number of vehicles which have nowhere to park.

These additional parking restrictions are also having a serious effect in another direction, and I would draw your Lordships' attention to the Annual Report of the London and Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee of this year. Paragraph 17, page 5, reads: We have now virtually come to an end of these restrictions which can be introduced with advantage. We would indeed go farther and say that a number of restrictions which we have in the past advised and which have in effect been put into force are so irritating and onerous that the police find difficulty in enforcing them without diverting an undue amount of available manpower and the efforts they make to do so tend to undermine that sensible and proper relation which has grown up between the police and road users generally. We deplore this. I suggest that those are very strong words. This warning was issued prior to the recent additional parking restrictions instituted by the Metropolitan Police, and I suggest that in many cases they are harassing the motorist unduly and should not have been imposed until the car parking plan had been dealt with as a whole, as recommended by the report of the Working Party. The Metropolitan Police have recently taken action to eliminate central parking in a number of streets, such as the Haymarket and Lower Regent Street, but, on the other hand, no action has yet been taken to relieve the situation by permitting unilateral waiting in some streets which are at present totally restricted, such as Albemarle Street and Dover Street.

As your Lordships may know, I am closely connected with one of the motoring organisations, and we have considerable experience of the difficulties of parking and so on. We understand the difficulties of the police. I suggest that the real fault lies in having no unifying car parking authority; that is where the trouble is. The Working Party report suggests the setting up of a parking advisory panel to assist the Minister of Transport. I think this would be a step in the right direction, but I doubt whether it goes far enough. I should like to ask the noble Earl who is to reply on behalf of Her Majesty's Government whether such a parking advisory panel has yet been set up. At the present time, there seems to be no co-ordination, and some half-a-dozen or more authorities have all a finger in the pie. The Metropolitan Police do their best to try to please them all, sometimes with disastrous results. Many instances can be given to show that no properly thought out plan prevails. In Savile Row, for instance, parking is being allowed on both sides of the street—a street where there is no room for two-way traffic—while in other streets in the same locality, which are one-way routes, parking is either prohibited altogether or unilateral parking is allowed.

I do not want to embark on a debate on the police force, but in passing I should like to point out that the prevention and detection of crime undoubtedly suffers owing to far too many police being engaged on traffic duties. I should like to see set up a special traffic corps whose sole duties would be the control of traffic. It would not operate separately from the police force of the country but each force should have a subsidiary traffic corps, in the same way that each force has a C.I.D. I suggest it would not be difficult to get recruits for the traffic corps, as it is at the present time for the police, because the standard of physique, health, and so on, would not need to be so stringent, and training would relate only to traffic duties. I hope that Her Majesty's Government will give their serious attention to this suggestion.

I should like now to deal for a few minutes with the construction of garages below and above ground which has been proposed in the Working Party's report. A good deal of nonsense has been talked about the fabulous cost of building these underground garages and car parks, and also about the destruction of amenities. I think the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, will develop the point about amenities a little later on. Those of your Lordships who have studied the report will have found that it suggests that in the first place four underground garages should be built. These four garages, at 1951 prices, would cost approximately £1½ million; but undoubtedly the cost to the Ministry of Transport could be reduced by a contribution from Civil Defence funds, because, of course, these underground garages would be extremely useful in war time. The report goes on to say, that against the cost of providing these garages could be set the rental to be obtained from letting them to operators and the revenue from the proposed parking meters, which together would provide for only a very slight annual loss—in fact, the annual estimate in the report is something in the nature of about £15,000. I suggest that mechanical car parking has not received the atten- tion it deserves in the report. With the newer methods now available I would ask Her Majesty's Government to look into this question of mechanical car-parking again, and perhaps a little more closely, because with these methods far more cars can be parked in a particular space, and that is going to reduce overhead charges.

My Lords, what are we really waiting for? Surely it cannot be finance, when the figure is only something like £15,000, or perhaps a little more than that at to-day's prices. Cannot the Minister of Transport press forward discussions with the local authorities concerned, on the basis that the small deficit I have mentioned should be divided equally between the Minister of Transport and the local authority in whose area the garage is placed? We must get something done to relieve the appalling and growing congestion in the streets, by applying the three main elements recommended in the report, which I hope are accepted by Her Majesty's Government. Time waits for no man, and it certainly will not wait for some miracle to turn up to relieve the parking difficulties in the inner area of London, which may well get completely out of hand unless something is commenced fairly quickly.

Underground garages cannot, of course, be built in a short time. But the plans are now in existence, and a start could be made very quickly. I do not know, but it may be that one of the obstacles in the way of providing off-street car parks is an administrative one, because I believe that Government grants made to local authorities for highway maintenance and development cannot be used for the provision of car parks. Surely this is a point that can be easily overcome. I suggest that the Government's contribution for underground and above-ground car parks might well come from the proposed Road Loan which I ventured to suggest to your Lordships some time ago, because with the small finance involved it would make little difference to the funds provided for the Road Loan. I hope that Her Majesty's Government are giving serious consideration to a long-term loan for roads which can well be tied up with the provision of underground car parks. A really effective combination of road improvements and parking in the London area would go a long way to smooth out the difficulties. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

5.55 p.m.

LORD SILKIN

My Lords, the House is under a deep debt of gratitude to the noble Lord for having once more introduced this subject to the House, and for the admirable way in which he has covered the ground in so short a speech. He has left me little to say, and I do not propose to take up too long in saying it. But first of all I should like to draw the attention of the House to the terms of the Motion itself. I wonder whether the noble Lord is speaking prophetically when he asks Her Majesty's Government "when they intend to implement the recommendations." I hope it really is as simple as that, that Her Majesty's Government have decided to implement them, and that it is only a question of time. Even if it were, much will have to be done before it begins to be possible to implement these recommendations. For instance, the report of the Working Party to which the noble Lord referred, which I may say, incidentally, is an excellent report and well worth reading—it is one of the best reports that I have read, being simple, clear and definite in its terms—contemplates that legislation will be necessary before its recommendations, particularly those relating to car parking, can be carried out. As one knows, that takes time; and as the noble Lord, Lord Teynham pointed out, it will take a good deal of time before you begin to lay the first brick, or turn over the first sod, or whatever one does in connection with underground car parking. Therefore, the sooner we can go ahead the better.

The noble Lord, Lord Teynham, did not speak at all too strongly about the urgency of the matter. It was regarded as urgent in March, 1950—that was the reason why the London and Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee originally took it up. They took up this question of congestion in inner London in March, 1950, because, to use their own words, they viewed with considerable concern the daily evidence of traffic congestion in London, and also the additional difficulties that were likely to arise when the Government found it possible to relax the restrictions on the use of motor fuel and the supply of vehicles for the home market. As your Lordships know, both those restrictions have substantially been removed—fuel altogether, and the supply of vehicles for the home market almost entirely. We know that there is a much greater availability of vehicles, and also that, unlike most other commodities, a new vehicle does not replace an old one: what we have is both the old and the new on the road together. The noble Earl who is going to reply, will be aware that vehicles which were manufactured in the year 1930 or in 1931, are being sold to-day second-hand at a price of £10 or £15. All these go on the road, thus adding to the numbers. In fact, between 1949 and 1951 there was an increase of 14 per cent. in the number of vehicles in London—this before any of the factors that the noble Lord, Lord Teynham, has mentioned took effect. What the actual number is to-day I do not know, but I should be surprised if, as compared with 1949, there were not an increase of something like 50 per cent. in the number of vehicles in inner London.

I do not think it is an exaggeration to talk of strangulation in London. One knows that at certain times of the day, and in certain areas, it is quicker to walk over a distance of a mile and a half or two miles than to attempt to travel by any vehicle. The cost to the community of that kind of thing must be colossal. No calculation has been made. One of the points in the report of the London and Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee is that we ought to try to get a figure showing what delays to traffic are costing the community. If we got a reliable figure, I think we should be startled by the result. Let me give just one illustration of what this means to the London area. In the last Report of the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis, we are told that no fewer than 555,552 people received verbal warnings from the police in respect of motoring offences. Think of it—over half a million people. There were 204,000 prosecutions or written cautions, rather more than half of that 204,000 being, in fact, actual prosecutions.

There are two points about this which I would ask your Lordships to bear in mind. In the first instance, is it really a good thing that so large a proportion of the people of London should "get across" the police in this way? It is not a good thing. I have learned from bitter experience never to argue with a policeman he always has the last word. I say "from bitter experience" and I ought, perhaps, to amplify that: I mean experience in respect of motoring matters. It is not a good thing for the personal relationships between the citizens and the police that more than half a million of the people of London should have to be verbally cautioned by the police about their conduct, and over 200,000 either prosecuted or given written cautions. But, apart from that, think what this means in terms of manpower. If you visualise the number of people employed in the physical process of delivering over half a million verbal warnings, and in the processes connected with 204,000 prosecutions or written cautions, and consider the whole machinery of administration involved, I think it will be found that the cost to the community will be far more than the £15,000 which Lord Teynham has referred to as the possible deficit in providing underground car parks.

Moreover, at a time when we are all conscious of the increasing delinquency in London, particularly among young people, would it not be a much better proposition to turn over the very large number of police who must be involved to the control of delinquency and the detection of offences, rather than to have them harassing the poor motorist? After all, what is the poor motorist to do? The report of the London and Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee goes into the question as to whether motorists coming into the inner central parts of London, should in any way be restricted. The Committee have come firmly to the conclusion that it is neither practicable nor desirable to stop motorists coming in. Of course, it is not. While I recognise that it might be an economy from the point of view of "vehicle power"—if I may use such an expression—to make people use public transport, the fact remains that people want to get into central London, and they go either by car or by public transport. It is impossible, merely by prohibiting the use of private cars, to prevent people from coming into London. The alternative means of transport would have to be provided at the public expense, and this would involve the public in more capital expendi- ture. As it is, the existing conditions of public transport are not so entirely satisfactory as to make it a really desirable alternative. Omnibuses at busy times are crowded. I have seen queues at bus stops at busy periods extending over a quarter of a mile. So I do not think it would be a really good plan to try to make people abandon their cars and use public transport, at least, until such time as we can provide satisfactory alternative transport.

I ask once more: What is the motorist to do? Assume that he has legitimate and important business. He has his car, and he hopes that, eventually, the use of his car is going to save him a certain amount of time. He attends at a certain place for an appointment, but he may spend half an hour trying to find a suitable place in which to leave his car. In the end, perhaps, he gives it up as a bad job, and leaves his car at a spot in circumstances which he hopes will not lead to his being "pulled up." But when he comes back from his appointment, there is a gentleman in uniform waiting for him, who asks for his name and address and other particulars. That, my Lords, is what is happening. Let me give a personal experience. I lived in a block of flats not far from here, but I just could not get any garage accommodation at all. The result was that I had to leave the car outside the building. I was constantly harassed about this until the time came when I had to decide whether to give up the car or give up my flat. I gave up the flat. That does not indicate a very satisfactory state of affairs. Incidentally, may I say that there are a number of garages in the locality which were requisitioned by the Government at the outbreak of the war and which they still retain? No doubt they are being used quite legitimately and properly, but such use is depriving the citizen of facilities which he might otherwise enjoy. I will tell the noble Earl privately about some of those places: I do not want to go into details about them now.

Undoubtedly a remedy has to be found—and found quickly. The report of the Working Party on Car Parking recommends a number of remedies. Like the noble Lord, Lord Teynham, I wish to concentrate on one in particular, of which I happen to have had some experience—that is, underground car parking. The report deals with this question in an admirable way; it goes very fully into the question of underground car parking. I think it is fair to say that the Working Party started with no predilection in favour of underground parking, but they have been driven, inevitably and logically, to the conclusion that these parks afford a partial solution—not a complete solution—of the problem of car parking in the centre of London. By a process of elimination we find that there are a limited number of areas where underground car parks can, in fact, be provided.

The noble Earl who is going to reply has read the report, and I am sure he realises the difficulties as I do. There are the underground railways to contend with; there are the services underground to be considered. Many other difficulties with regard to levels, engineering difficulties, come into this matter, so, as I was saying, by a process of elimination the conclusion has been reached that there are four London squares underneath which it would be practicable to provide car parking facilities. There are other London squares where facilities are not needed, and clearly it is no use providing parking facilities at a place where very few cars are parked. And members of the public are not keen, and should not be required, in London, to walk more than a quarter of a mile from the car park to their places of business. Of course, that limits the number of squares which can be used. The Committee recommend Grosvenor Square, Berkeley Square, Cavendish Square and St. James's Square—I think in that order of priority. They recommend that a start should be made on Grosvenor Square.

There is one point on which I would take issue with the Committee, a point which the noble Lord, Lord Teynham, also mentioned—the question of mechanical car parking. It may well be that at the time the report was under consideration mechanical car parking had not been brought up to the necessary level of efficiency. But in my opinion—and I have seen something of the working of mechanical car parking—it is to-day at a stage when we should be justified in giving it serious consideration. There are two main reasons why we should do this. The first is that it would enable us to house something like 50 per cent. more cars in a given space than by ordinary means of parking; and secondly, a great deal of time is saved in ingress and egress. Those are two important factors. I realise that there may be objections raised on the ground of amenity. As I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, is going to say a word on that subject, I shall not say much. I do not accept the contention myself, but at the worst we have to weigh up the question of amenity against the public interest and convenience, as we so often have to do in town planning matters. Of course, we are all prepared to pay a price for amenity, but I doubt, to take an extreme case, whether one tree is worth an hour of delay every day to most of the business men of London. We have to be realistic about this, and judge whether, in the long run, the injury to amenity, if it really is an injury, can be seriously set against the immense convenience that would arise if we dealt with this problem of car parking.

What I want to do is to urge upon the Government the pressing nature of this problem. I do not think it is necessary to say much, because every Member of your Lordships' House must have personal experience of it. It really is grave. Apart from anything else, it is fraying to one's nerves, when in a hurry to keep an appointment, to find oneself stuck, say, at the corner of Wellington Street, Strand, for a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes with no hope, as it seems to one at the time, of ever being able to get out of it. I hope the noble Earl who is going to reply will be able to accept the terms of this Motion and tell us when the Government are going to implement the report. I hope he will be able to give us the comforting news that it will be soon. One last word. I want to reinforce what the noble Lord, Lord Teynham, has said—namely, that the recommendations of the Working Party must be taken as a whole. They are interrelated, and it is no use trying to implement one and think that thereby we have solved the problem. I have seen something in the Press about providing meters for car parks. If that were all that was going to be done—and I understand that even that would require legislation—it would be just tinkering with the problem. It might relieve a tiny part of the pressure, but the only way to solve this is to deal with the problem as a whole. I very much hope that the noble Earl will be able to assure us that Her Majesty's Government are dealing with the matter in that spirit and will be able to present us in the very near future with a comprehensive plan for dealing with this most urgent problem.

6.16 p.m.

LORD BLACKFORD

My Lords, I am sorry that this important Motion has not excited more interest in your Lordships' House than apparently it has done, because it appears to me to be one of great interest and one also in which there is room for some difference of opinion. Since 1919—that is to say, for about thirty-four years—I have driven a car almost every day that I have been in London and on a thousand-and-one nights as well. Therefore, I can claim to speak with at least some little experience on this subject. I confess also to being an inveterate short-term and long-term parker. Before dealing with car-parking may I say a word about roads? My experience has not been so unfortunate as that of the noble Lord, Lord Silkin. I have driven thousands of times from the neighbourhood of the Albert Hall to the Mansion House and I consider myself very unlucky if I take more than thirty-five minutes on that journey. The only place where I encounter considerable delay is in Fleet Street, and the reason for that is that there is a cross-roads at Ludgate Circus. Every other junction is a roundabout. Hyde Park Corner is a roundabout, and so almost is Trafalgar Square. The great solution to the speed of traffic is as many roundabouts as possible. The reason that Oxford Street is the worst street in London is that there are no roundabouts in it. If one could be created at Tottenham Court Road and another at Oxford Circus, it would be found that the speed of traffic in Oxford Street would be greatly increased.

It is deeply disappointing to see that local authorities sometimes do things to impede the movement of traffic. I refer specially at this moment to the junction of Bruton Street with Bond Street, one of the worst cross-roads in the whole of the Metropolitan area. Here the Germans were kind enough to blow down two buildings at the corner of Bruton Street and Bond Street on either side of the road. If ever there was a chance to broaden the streets at that point, here was the chance. Yet, incredibly enough, a new building has been put up on the west side of Bond Street on the same building frontage as before, and an hotel is to be built on the other side of the road, not quite on the same frontage, but only arcaded ten feet back. If there is one thing which creates traffic more than another it is an hotel. I suppose this is a free country and it may not be possible to prevent people from building an hotel where they wish to do so, but at least the borough surveyor could sacrifice some of his rate able value and take steps to set back the frontage so as to widen one of the sides of the worst place in the whole of the Metropolitan area. I see there is some talk, which may well have escaped the notice of noble Lords, about the rebuilding of the Berkeley Hotel by certain financiers. There, again, is an exceedingly crowded spot, and I hope that if that hotel is to be rebuilt it will be set back at least fifteen feet. Unless our borough surveyors and other people look years ahead, we shall never solve this problem of traffic.

At the same time, do not let us overstate. The way in which we run our traffic is the admiration of other countries, and this problem of car parking is mainly confined in extreme form to two areas, one the City of London, and the other the West End of London. The recommendations of the Working Party are excellent, but they will take a long time to implement, and they will be costly. Legislation will be required to implement them, and it will be highly controversial. If you want to make a car park under Berkeley Square, it will mean the destruction of fifty or sixty trees, at least; æsthetic societies will be up against you, and to get it through will be a controversial business. Even when you have done that and made Berkeley Square a desert, as the Working Party report admits, it will solve only about half the problem.

The first step surely must be the establishment of a traffic corps, as advocated by my noble friend Lord Teynham. The police cannot possibly take on this extra work: they are undermanned as it is, and they have all they can do to cope with crime; the less they have to do with traffic, the better. Furthermore, if parking meters are to be instituted, the law must be changed, too. Noble Lords will know how these parking meters, as used in Canada and the United States, are operated. They are supervised by the police. A man on a motor cycle goes round, and wherever he see that the car has overstayed its time limit he takes down its number, says that the fine will be one dollar or two dollars, as the case may be, and puts a card on the driver's seat. The driver goes round to the police station the following day and pays in his one or two dollars, unless, of course, he is going to dispute it. In this country, however, as your Lordships know, the policeman has to go to the police court and give evidence and waste his time there; a letter has to be sent to you and a summons served on you; and you can, or need not, go, as you please. There is all the paraphernalia of the law. This parking meter system could not be established under the present legislation. The law must be changed, and the traffic corps must be established in order to carry out the system.

The whole trouble lies with the long-term parker. Eliminate him, and the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, will be able to get to his office in great comfort, and will not have to walk more than a quarter of a mile. Surely, there are only two ways of dealing with the long-term parker: either he must be discouraged from going into Central London, or you must provide a place for him to go to where he will not be a nuisance. We long-term parkers recognise that we are a nuisance. It is an outrage that anyone should go and park his car in Davies Street in front of Lord Courtauld-Thomson's flat, so that for years he has been unable to approach his own front door comfortably. I can well sympathise with him, and with all ratepayers who are so treated. Therefore, long-term parkers should be discouraged. The only way to do that is to make life unbearable for them, until they do keep out of an area.

But one does not want to make life unbearable for anybody unnecessarily. Therefore, can we not use some imagination to improve our existing facilities? I have ceased to take my car into the City of London, because of the great congestion there. I leave it elsewhere, and go into the City by tube. Why cannot other people do the same? What the long-term parker will do, until he is prevented from doing it, is to drive his car as near as he possibly can to his office, because, like the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, he does not like walking more than a quarter of a mile; and there he will leave it all day long. Can he not take his car to the vicinity of a tube station and then take the tube to his office? Of course, we do not want cars left in some car park and people to take a bus, because that, as the noble Lord, Lord Silkin said, would only increase the road congestion. But there is the tube, which is a much quicker form of transport.

Are we using the Royal Parks as much as we might? There seem to me to be several places. Take, for instance, Constitution Hill, from the Arch to the vicinity of the Palace. On the left hand side of the road there is a sandy track which is never used. I drive along there practically every day, and I have never seen anybody on that track for years, except an occasional mounted policeman exercising his horse. Hundreds of cars could be parked along that track without being a nuisance to anybody, and all those car owners could step into the Hyde Park Corner or Green Park tube stations and be carried to their destination. Similarly, why is the road along the north of the Serpentine kept empty? Hundreds of cars could be parked along that road every day. If we use a little imagination and thought, we shall find other places.

LORD SILKIN

Does the noble Lord realise that in some cases you have to use your imagination to find a tube at all? There are a limited number of tubes.

LORD BLACKFORD

I cannot follow that interruption at all. Surely, we are all acquainted with the tube railway, and where the stations are. Certainly these permanent parkers of whom I speak know where the stations are. Why should they not be made to use them?

LORD SILKIN

But there are very few tubes in South London, for instance, and in many other parts.

LORD BLACKFORD

I am dealing now with the West End of London. I cannot pretend that I know London south of the Thames so well as I know London north of the Thames. But the report of this Working Party does not deal with London south of the Thames; it deals entirely with London north of the Thames. All the diagrams are in connection with that part of London, and that is the part with which I am dealing. Let us do one thing at a time. I say there are many places which we could find where long-term parkers could put their cars and continue their journey by tube. But they will not do that until they are forced to do it. Therefore, before you can start forcing them to do it, you must create a traffic corps which will bring that about.

It is late, and I do not wish to delay your Lordships too long. However, I do want to point out that the City of London presents a completely different problem. There are no places under which you can dig underground garages in the City of London, except Finsbury Square, and the traffic there is so light that it certainly would not be worth doing. A further point is that the City of London has been more destroyed than any other part of London, and up to date the long-term parker has been able to make full use of that temporary advantage. But that use is gradually disappearing. For instance, the Fore Street area, which, as your Lordships know, is behind the Guildhall, is totally destroyed, and all day long literally hundreds of cars are parked, top to tail, along those narrow lanes. That will not be possible when that part of London is rebuilt. Close to the Mansion House, in Walbrook, there is a large space on which about 130 cars are parked every day. Within a few months that space will be denied them, due to the erection of Bucklersbury House, which will take up the whole area.

There are only two remedies for this state of affairs in the City of London. One is to make every new developer include in his design a garage in the basement. That has not hitherto been done, and it is only a partial solution. The other solution—apart from what I have been saying about preventing the long-term parker from coming into the City at all—is the erection of multi-storey garages above ground. While the City is so destroyed, now is the time for the City Corporation or the London County Council, whoever is the final authority, to acquire sites for the erection of these multi-storey garages. I feel bound to declare a personal interest here, because I am deputy-chairman of a company which owns a site between Cannon Street Station and London Bridge which is about one and a half acres in extent, and is eminently suited for that very purpose. That one and a half acres could be covered with a multi-storey garage, and there could be a flat roof on which the helicopters of the future could land with complete comfort. I must not pursue that matter, because, as I say, I have an interest in it.

Finally, I wish to point out that by diagonal parking—what I call 45 degree parking—you can get in two or three times the number of cars than you can do by top and tail parking, because every top and tail parker will always leave himself room to get out—that is obvious. The one disadvantage is that when the parker comes to take his car away he has to reverse out, and that may cause congestion. There are streets in which diagonal parking could perfectly well be used. Albemarle Street is one, and there are several broad streets of that kind where diagonal parking could be used. I put forward these few suggestions because they could be carried out at once, and they would cost practically nothing. I should like to add one more, and that is that in certain squares—for instance, Bloomsbury Square—ten yards could easily be knocked off the whole circle and diagonal parking introduced there, and thus about four times the number of cars could be parked there. That will do no harm to the amenities of the Square at all; no trees will be destroyed, or anything of that sort. Our local authorities might use a great deal more imagination and improvisation than they do now. The Working Party's solution cannot be implemented for three years at least. By the time legislation is passed and the work carried out, it will be three years ahead. Cannot we do something during the intervening three years greatly to improve this nuisance?

6.34 p.m.

LORD HAMPTON

My Lords, I should like to add a few words to what my noble friend Lord Teynham has said in proposing this Motion. I should also like to pay a tribute to the Working Party who produced this excellent report. To my mind, they have made a thorough reconnaisance of the whole position, and they have put before us not only their considered opinion as to how to improve the present position but also, very fairly, the great difficulties in doing so.

Apparently we are all agreed this evening in thinking that something has to done; and done quickly. I agree with those speakers who have said that this matter is bound up with the whole of this difficult road problem which is facing us at the present time. This evening, we are dealing only with car parking, though, it is true to say that if we can partially sole the car parking problem in London it will greatly ease the traffic flow through the streets. The present rate of increase of cars registered every year is I suppose, in a way, encouraging. But, at the same time, it is alarming, not only for its added congestion to the roads, and danger to life and limb, but also to the parking problem in all our towns, and particularly in London.

I feel that we have to meet this problem somehow. I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Blackford, that there are certain methods of meeting it, not visualised in the report, which could be, and should be, put in hand at once. The report is quite definite on the subject. As I say, it made a thorough reconnaisance of the situation, and put forward definite schemes for at least partially overcoming the difficulty. The Working Party have realised that there are only three methods: underground and above ground parking, and the use of meters, which I think would be chiefly important in paying for the expense of the garages. Perhaps a further method is the control of side streets for parking purposes. The Working Party make one interesting and important suggestion which has been touched upon; that is, that in all new building development, especially business premises, Government offices and the like, wherever possible—of course, it is not always possible—parking facilities should be allowed for in the plans of the building. I notice that that has been done in the new Government offices in Whitehall. There are quite good parking facilities there, not only for those who work there, but for the casual visitor who may stay for only a short time. I do not know what the plans for the new Colonial Office are, but I hope they have made the same sort of provision there.

We have heard a good deal about the use of bombed sites. I wish it had been found possible, as the noble Lord, Lord Blackford, suggested, for the Government to take over some of these bombed sites, or at least for somebody to take them over, before they were acquired for other purposes, and to erect multi-storey garages there. For instance, the hotel site in Bond Street is just the place. It is there, perhaps, that parking facilities are most needed in the central area. Those spaces are gradually disappearing, and it may be that if something is not done quickly in that respect it will become increasingly difficult to find any sites upon which such buildings could be erected.

The Working Party came to the conclusion—as I think most of us this evening have come to the conclusion—that the solution lies largely in these excavated sites. It was to be expected that when the suggestion was first put forward there would be something of an outcry with regard to the loss of amenities. That is quite understandable and natural. The London population are rather conservative; we value our fine old squares, with their great lime trees, as a prize feature of the city. But we are familiar nowadays with the constant fight between necessity and amenity whenever any big new project is forthcoming. I have in mind what happened some time ago. Your Lordships will remember, for instance, that a power station was to be erected in Durham which would have wrecked one of the finest architectural views in the country. People got together and found an alternative site, and everybody was happy. But in the question of London parking, I do not see that there is any alternative, unless it be that we allow things to go from bad to worse—and that they will do very rapidly.

If we ponder it, need there be any real loss of amenity? If we look at some of the old prints of London—two of which are reproduced in the report—we find that the original architect never designed these squares except as open spaces, without large trees. Perhaps there were quite small trees, but there was nothing on the scale of the tree growth that we have in many other squares at the present time. They were, as I say, open spaces, giving a full view of the surrounding architecture—perhaps in those days a little better worth looking at than to-day—but now around our squares we have fine buildings which cannot be seen, especially in the summer time, because of these great trees. Moreover, your Lordships may think that a complete circle of cars is not exactly an addition to the amenities of a square. If we could get some of them placed underground or out of the way, the amenities would not suffer but would be greatly improved. And it must be remembered that a great many of these trees are very ancient. I do not know what the anticipated life of a plane tree is, but some of these must be very old indeed. I have not noticed any great effort to plant seedlings to take their place in our squares. So in the course of time these trees will either have to be lopped or will become ungainly and have to be removed. If some of them were left round the fringes they could probably be worked in with the construction of the park.

I have just one suggestion of my own to make—it was touched upon by Lord Blackford, and I entirely agree with him. In many of these great squares, Russell Square, Bedford Square, St. James's Square and so forth, parking could be enormously improved if the orders were definitely understood that cars should be parked boot to kerb—as I should prefer. This is done in many squares where you have two or three park attendants, because they instruct drivers. But if you could get that done all over the place, it would add enormously to the number of cars which could be parked there—probably it would doublę it. I suggest to the noble Earl that a simple means of getting that done would be to put up a fairly prominent notice on the parking sign itself, perhaps underneath the "P" to the effect that "All cars must be parked boot to kerb." I think that that direction would be obeyed, and that we should then find that these squares, where the traffic allows of course, would permit of a great deal more parking than many of them do at present.

We all know that this parking problem is tied up entirely with the road problem of the country. We realise that, in this case as in others, the financial difficulties are dominant. But I am quite certain that the Ministry of Transport have their pigeon-holes stuffed with plans for the improvement of our parking which could be implemented as soon as a sign came from the Treasury. We know that the police and all others concerned are doing their utmost to deal with the almost impossible problem of traffic in the streets of London. I was listening-in the other evening to one of Alistair Cooke's letters from New York, in which he described parking conditions in that city. He said that the cleverest man to-day in New York is the man who can find a place to park his car. He gave a most amusing account of the terrible penalties which he had to undergo because he inadvertently parked his car on the wrong side of the road. We have not yet got to that point in London—London, of course, is a different place from New York; we have many more open spaces. But with this great increase in the number of cars we are working towards an impossible position. With other noble Lords, I trust that Her Majesty's Government will see their way at least to allow a pilot scheme to be put into operation so that in the course of time, this great problem may be solved.

6.45 p.m.

EARL HOWE

My Lords, it is an encouraging circumstance that this one isolated aspect of the traffic problem should be brought before your Lordships' House. But I fear that we shall get, at the end of this debate, the same sort of stereotyped answer which we always get when this question is raised in your Lordships' House. I do not hope for very much until Her Majesty's Government get down to business in a big way. It is no use the Government's fobbing off the House with the same old clichés that we have been accustomed to hearing for years whenever one asks a Question or raises this matter in debate. This matter is becoming more and more vital, and the Government really must do something. After all, there are millions of motorists in this country. They pay £1 million a day in taxation and get little, if anything, for it. Furthermore, the cost of everything we use, of everything that comes to us in our daily life, at some stage or other goes on to the road; and the delays in its getting to us add to its cost. That position cannot go on indefinitely without strangling one of the most flourishing and buoyant industries in this country—the motor industry. And I do not see how we can afford to allow it to go on any longer. Unless and until the Government "get down" to the problem, we shall get no improvement; and there is no sign, in the answers which we receive from the Government, that they appreciate its seriousness. We get plenty of lip service paid to the idea, but that is all.

I want to talk to your Lordships about this parking problem. It is certainly not peculiar to London, or to any city in this country or in Europe. Every city is plagued with it. The state of affairs in Paris has to be seen to be believed: it is one stage worse than in this country; it is quite incredible. If anyone wants to see what the position is like in London, let him go to any road leading into or out of the capital at about nine o'clock in the morning of any day; then let him go to the same road—or, indeed, to any other road leading out of London—between five o'clock and six o'clock in the evening. He will then see thousands of cars rushing out of London which have come up in the morning. Their numbers are more or less outlined in this very valuable report of the Working Party.

That is the real, the long-term, problem. The man who lives out of London saves a lot of trouble if he comes up by car, rather than by train, and parks his car as near as possible to his office, and then goes away again in the evening. But it is bringing London almost to a full stop. The Chief Commissioner of Metropolitan Police says that the prospect is alarming, and he goes on to say, with regard to the problem of waiting vehicles, which is the cause of so much congestion: I cannot urge too strongly that the highest possible priority be given to schemes which will relieve the situation of those places where the congestion is heaviest. He points out in this report that the trouble is greatest in the central area of London. The Working Party talk about the development of parking sites. They point out that the parking sites are getting "beautifully less" and that about 3,500 more vehicles will probably have to be accommodated somewhere in some car park or other as a result of the development of these parking sites.

The Working Party then go on to refer to this question of parking meters. The parking meters are, I think, a questionable recommendation. In fact, the only fault I can find with the report of the Working Party is that they advocate the use of parking meters. Parking meters pay no attention whatever to the varying sizes of cars, and may actually result in a considerable waste of space unless diagonal parking, as recommended by the noble Lord, Lord Blackford, can be adopted. It is quite obvious that in the crowded streets of London diagonal parking is, for the most part, quite impossible. There are a few places, like Portland Place, where it can be and is adopted; but for the most part diagonal parking is simply not possible. If you have parking meters put at fixed points along the street, they will naturally be placed to suit the biggest type of car to be found there, whereas not all cars are of the same size. These meters may result in a decrease in the amount of parking space available.

That brings me to another point—the size of cars. Everybody who watches the traffic in the London streets will notice the tremendous difference there is in the size of cars. A man will drive up to London in a large American car, or something like that, which takes up a colossal amount of space, whereas another man will drive up in one of the much more easily handled smaller cars, of which you can probably fit two into the space normally occupied by one large car. It seems to me that, if we could do something to encourage the use of smaller cars in congested areas, that would be an advantage. The large car is much more suitable for handling outside towns, in the country areas. I wish that it were possible to pay more attention to the size of cars in London, perhaps by saying that people who have large cars can use the streets only during certain hours. I do not know what the answer is; I do not like to have in operation a restrictive policy of that sort. There is another point which seems to have had very little attention paid to it in London, and that is the policy of arcading streets. I should like to ask the noble Earl whether the Government have any ideas on that. Everybody will know what I mean by "arcading": simply pushing back the actual shop front and building an arcade to take the weight of the building above it. By using that method we could increase the width of our streets—I do not say that it could be done everywhere, but if it were possible to put arcading in certain streets, I think it might be a great advantage. From the point of view of pedestrians, it would also make the streets much more pleasant in bad weather.

Then again there is the design of works. This is no new problem. The Bressey Report came out years and years ago—I think it was during the 1920's—and was promptly pigeon-holed. Sir Charles Bressey gave endless thought to the problem of London. He recommended a system of ring roads to take the traffic round the centre, rather than straight through it. His Report received little enough attention at the time, and ever since, though lip service has been paid to it by various authorities, nothing whatever has been done, with the result that the alignment which he contemplated for many of his ring roads has been built up, and it is no longer practical politics to think about it. The principle that Sir Charles Bressey advocated may still be possible in certain directions, but again it requires that the Government should go into the matter. The Government ought to go into it, as it seems to me, through the medium either of the London Traffic Advisory Committee or of some other such body, and perhaps with the co-operation of the London County Council it might still be possible to do things in certain areas. I do not know, but I wish that something of the sort were possible.

The noble Lord, Lord Teynham, I thought, was rather severe on the Metropolitan Police and the steps which, in their desperation, they have so far taken to try to remedy a certain amount of congestion in the central area. I do not condemn quite so strongly as he did the efforts that they have made. I dare say there are one or two cases where perhaps they were a little ill-advised but, on the whole, I think that the "No waiting" boards have been of great assistance to traffic. At any rate, they indicate to the driver who perhaps does not know his London so well as some do exactly where he can go and where he cannot go. It gives him a chance to avoid causing an obstruction to the traffic. I think that further consideration might be given to the working of that scheme, and no doubt it will be; but I hope we shall not be too quick to condemn the efforts of the Metropolitan Police, because they are saddled with the most appalling problem. I am delighted that they are making these experiments.

I was interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Blackford, said about roundabouts. Roundabouts are all very well, provided that they have sufficient radius. Endless complication has been caused in the past by roundabouts of insufficient radius where a vehicle towing a trailer could not get round. Roundabouts are not the best way of assisting the traffic flow. They are not nearly so good, for example, as the "fly-over" and "fly-under" systems that one sees in other countries. Nothing of the sort has been tried in this country. I do not believe there is a single "fly-over" and "fly-under" system in this country—at any rate not the sort that one finds in America, Sweden and other countries. I wish it were possible for the Government or other authority generally to make some use of the "fly-over and "fly-under" system. It is an enormous relief to traffic wherever it can be installed and tried. I must not take up too much of your Lordships' time. I only hope that the Government will be able to give us an assurance that they really mean business, and that this valuable report of the Working Party will not be put into another pigeon-hole and left there.

6.59 p.m.

THE EARL OF BIRKENHEAD

My Lords, I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Teynham, has raised this question. It is one of great and increasing gravity, and it is undoubtedly causing keen public anxiety, an anxiety which is not, I think, exclusively that of the motorists. I should like to begin by discussing some of the points that have been made by the noble Lord, Lord Teynham, in his interesting and constructive speech, and also in those of other noble Lords who have spoken. The noble Lord, Lord Teynham, made two observations with regard to the police. The noble Lord is of the opinion that the police have anticipated the report by unilateral action in the parking arrangements in inner London. Whereas the report emphasises, I think on page 9, that the Working Party's plan consists of several interdependent proposals, it would be fundamentally unsound merely to approve one or two of them. Lord Teynham also made an interesting suggestion which was afterwards echoed by other noble Lords, with regard to a body of special traffic police to operate for a start, if I understood him rightly, in inner London. I will certainly bring both those matters to the attention of my right honourable friend. But I am bound to say to the noble Lord that I should have thought that police questions such as these were the responsibility of the Home Office rather than of the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation, since the Home Secretary is, of course, responsible for the police control of traffic.

I will also undertake to see that Lord Teynham's proposal for a parking panel to report to the Minister, and his other suggestion for central co-ordination with a central co-ordinator, are carefully considered. But I can tell him now that so far no steps have been taken to set up a parking panel. The noble Lord spoke of the advantages of mechanical parking. I gather that he was not in full agreement with the report on this question. I understand that there are two views about it, and I am sure that the Minister will consider this matter carefully. I might remind the noble Lord that my right honourable friend has an expert staff which is constantly watching and reporting upon developments of that kind. Lord Silkin asked whether it was only a question of time before this report was acted upon. I think he will be able to draw the necessary inference before I have done. The cautioning and the prosecutions to which the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, referred I dislike, I am sure, every bit as much as he does; but I would say that all this stems from the central evil—so, of course, does the waste of manpower and the diversion of the police from duties far more rewarding to the community—and I cannot see that these unfortunate facts will be altered until the main problem has been solved. I should like most wholeheartedly to associate myself with what the noble Lord said about nerves as the result of parking difficulties. I would put it higher than that; I would say that sometimes one appears to be approaching a form of insanity.

The noble Lord, Lord Blackford, made an interesting speech, and I am in agreement with his remarks about Bruton Street and the proposed erection of a new hotel on the site of the Berkeley, although that may appear a little remote from the Motion which is before your Lordships to-night. However, I may tell him that the L.C.C. has secured that there shall be a car bay, so that cars with passengers will not have to wait in the main traffic stream in Conduit Street. Lord Blackford also supported Lord Teynham's proposal for a special police corps. I have already undertaken to place this proposal before the Minister. I would ask the noble Lord to remember that the question of using any parts of the Royal Parks may encounter severe opposition from the Ministry of Works and the Crown Commissioners.

I now come to the observations of Lord Hampton. I was interested by what he said about the amenities of squares. Lord Hampton did not mind the felling of trees, and thought that the squares might resume their original appearance as open spaces with trees round the fringes. Lord Silkin, I think, shared that view. Of course, this is a matter of opinion, and certainly others will not share the views of the noble Lords. Some may view the removal of trees, with their leafy foliage, which is so cool and pleasant on a hot summer's day, with very different feelings. However, I shall have more to say about that a little later. I should like to say that I, personally, strongly approved of Lord Hampton's suggestion that cars should be parked boot to kerb and that notices should be put up to this effect, and I will see that due attention is given to it. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, made a late but welcome appearance on the list of speakers. I had almost despaired of him; but no, he appeared at the last moment deus ex machina. I am sorry that the noble Earl thinks so badly of the answer which I had not begun to give when he was speaking. He might have received one more satisfactory to his ardent nature had he bothered to give me notice of his rather late intervention. I would also add that his description of previous answers to him in this House struck me as being grossly unfair.

The noble Earl was critical of the proposal for parking meters. I am afraid that my knowledge of this machine is not sufficient for me to follow the noble Earl in this respect. I was, however, impressed to read in the report that they were in use in 3,000 American cities and that, even though there had been qualms about them originally, many people had been won round as the result of experience. I myself have used them in America without any untoward results. I would also remind the noble Earl that the ideal machine must be a matter presumably of experience and detail, and that legislation would be required before the principle could be adopted at all. With regard to the arcading of streets, which the noble Earl says will increase the width of the streets, I think it can be done, but it is not easy. It can be done when redevelopment is proceeding, but there are difficulties. For example, you would have to have a long street all of which was being redeveloped.

My Lords, I do not wish to take too long. The Working Party realised that their recommendations would take many years to carry out and, as we have heard, they urged the Government to commence with a pilot scheme of four garages in the four squares of which we have heard—Grosvenor Square, Cavendish Square, Berkeley Square and St. James's Square. According to their calculations, as Lord Teynham said, after taking into account the revenue anticipated from parking meters, the loss on providing and running these four garages would be in the neighbourhood of £15,000 a year. Since the report has been published, there has been a good deal of favourable comment in some sections of the Press on the recommendations. There has, however, been serious criticism of the effect which the carrying out of the recommendations would have on the amenities of the London squares. We have heard Lord Hampton's point of view, and I think he will have many supporters. Lord Silk in said, "We must weigh very carefully the value of trees against the immediate problem with which we are trying to grapple." None the less, there has been serious criticism on those grounds; in particular, if these large car parks were built under the squares, undoubtedly several trees would have to be felled and I imagine others might be adversely affected at their roots. This is a prospect which, as one noble Lord said, would arouse considerable opposition in æsthetic circles. In spite of what Lord Hampton said, I would draw your Lordships' attention to the Minister's powers in this direction—they can be found at page 12 of the report: Without prejudice to the Minister's action in any actual case that may arise, it can be said that any project involving wholesale destruction of trees or other drastic alteration of character in any of the famous or historic Squares of London would prima facie be a case that the Minister would call in for decision by himself and in respect of which, before making his decision, he would be likely to order a public inquiry so as to allow for a full expression of views. Since the report was published, my right honourable friend has been asked several questions in another place, and he has congratulated the authors of that report on the excellent work they have put into it. He has said that he has given it his careful attention, and he hopes to reach a decision fairly soon. Noble Lords will, therefore, I think, not expect me to say any more at this stage than that the Government fully appreciate the importance of tackling the present congestion in inner London. They are not in a state of lethargy as Lord Howe would have us believe. At this moment, they are giving urgent and careful attention to points raised in the report, and they intend to announce their conclusions as soon as possible. No thinking person, in fact no one but an imbecile, can fail to be profoundly disturbed at the present state of affairs. While the production of motor vehicles, as noble Lords have pointed out, is rising in leaps and bounds, the ancient, and often narrow, streets of London remain unaltered. The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, brought out very clearly, I thought, the alarming increase in the number of vehicles—and he is perfectly right. And this increase has led many people to a sombre anticipation of complete stagnation. I trust that the noble Lord who moved the Motion which has been the subject of debate, and also my old adversary Lord Howe, will not regard this as a stalling answer camouflaging vacillating purpose. That is far from being the case. I have good reason to hope that before long noble Lords will have news of definite steps to be taken.

7.12 p.m.

LORD TEYNHAM

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, for the support which he has given me. I think he said that we ought to try to find out what is the, total loss to industry that may result from the heavy congestion of traffic in the City of London. It may interest your Lordships if I give you a figure relating to New York. They have similar difficulties there and they have carried out a careful survey by means of a somewhat similar organisation to our Working Party. This is what they report: There's a one billion dollar a year blight plaguing New York City; almost two-thirds of the city's fiscal 1953 budget. That's the conclusion of the Citizens Traffic Safety Board, Inc., after a study of the cost of traffic congestion in this city. So they are very much alive to the size of the problem in New York, and they are getting on with the job of dealing with it. They are building numbers of both above-ground and underground garages. I feel sure that we ought to do the same in London as soon as possible.

I was glad to hear that Lord Silkin agreed that no restriction should be, placed on motorists coming into inner London by car, and I quite agree with the arguments which he put forward. I was a little surprised at what the noble Earl, Lord Howe, said about possible restrictions on motorists. Indeed, I may say I was most surprised to hear it coming from him. The noble Lord, Lord Blackford, certainly seemed to have attained considerable success in making the journey from the Albert Hall to the Mansion House, seeing that he did it in twenty minutes. I cannot say that I have been able to do that yet. With regard to the noble Lord's suggestion that motorists should leave their cars in the vicinity of underground railway stations and complete their journeys by train, I would point out that the trouble is that, generally speaking, there are no parking grounds at the underground stations. So I do not think the noble Lord's suggestion would help very much. What we must concentrate on is providing proper parking places both in underground buildings and above the ground. I was a little dissatisfied to hear from the noble Earl, Lord Birkenhead, that the parking advisory panel has not yet been set up. I trust he will do all he can to impress on the Minister of Transport the importance of starting this panel as soon as possible. Without such a panel we have no co-ordinating influence at all in the matter of parking in London. In view of the assurances given by the noble Earl in his speech, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.