TRANSPORT BILL (Hansard, 3 July 1962)

LORD HAWKE
My Lords, owing to a slight aberration on my part I find that it was not the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, who was replying to the wrong Amendment: it was I who had been moving the wrong Amendment. Therefore, as Amendments Nos. 13 and 14 are very closely connected, I think the best thing would be for me to withdraw No. 13 and to proceed to make my argument on No. 14, allowing my noble friend to reply on 13 and 14 together, if that has his agreement.

§ THE EARL OF DUNDEE
Yes, my Lords. I would apologise for having been under the impression that my noble friend was moving the two Amendments, to lines 15 and 16, together, but the first one, if he will forgive me for saying so, is so trivial when broken down that I did not think he was moving it by itself. But as he is kind enough now to discuss them both together, I will leave that until he is finished.

LORD HAWKE
Then I must withdraw Amendment No. 13, I think, before we can go on to No. 14.

§ THE EARL OF DUNDEE
I do not know that you need do that.

LORD HAWKE
Then I will take my opportunity of speaking twice. I might even be able to speak three times, if the House will allow it. My Lords, we are trying to discover now what are the proper routes which the London Board may inherit from the London Executive, and, moreover, inherit in perpetuity. We have already dealt with routes on the list I spoke about on the last Amendment, but there are various other routes which they are operating and which they operate only by means of working agreements with other, private operators. Where the working agreements lapse, the right to operate should lapse, too, and not move into perpetuity. As the Bill is drafted, there is at least one of these cases which is not yet caught by the Bill, and which would give to the London Board in the future an unfair power that was never intended. We had some sort of debate on this on the Committee stage, but not a very full one.
1227 I would refer, in particular, to the case of Crawley New Town. When Crawley New Town was created (and the map I have with me has a certain nostalgic property about it, because it pictures it all fields and trees as I remember it), the boundary of the London Transport Executive and the Southdown Bus Company met in the middle of what is now this big new town. There was obviously a case for making a working agreement, so that one party could run through into the territory of the other party, and vice versa. But owing to certain legal repeals which have taken place, the London Transport Executive had no power to cross the boundary to implement any agreement that they might come to to work the New Town by a working agreement, and the British Transport Commission had to give them power, using their power under the Act of 1947, to delegate; and it was that delegation which enabled the London Transport Executive to leave their own boundary in the Crawley area, and to make an effective working agreement with Southdown. The delegation was made at the end of 1947, and a working agreement was signed in May, 1948; and the London Transport Executive are to-day operating in Crawley by virtue of this agreement. Southdown are also operating over the London border, and I understand the service to the general public is perfectly satisfactory.
The agreement, which I have here, is one which can be terminated by six months' notice by either party after December 31, 1970. Clause 8 deals with that termination. Clause 9 goes on to say that the Executive shall forthwith, on the termination of this Agreement, cease to operate within the area, and that the company shall also cease to operate within that area. So that at any moment, on six months' notice, after 1970 this working agreement can be terminated by either party. Yet, as the Bill now stands, it would be perfectly possible after 1970 for the London Transport Executive to terminate that agreement, and their power to operate in Crawley would still exist, springing, as they claim it to do, from a delegation by the British Transport Commission, whereas the power of the other party with whom they made the agreement 1228 would cease. That is not only unfair, but is a state of affairs which was certainly never visualised at the time when the working agreement came into being.
I think it is a clear case, my Lords, that the delegation had to be given, in order that the working agreement could come into force. If a working agreement had never been in question, there would never have been any delegation of the overall powers of the Transport Commission. Yet it is claimed that because the Transport Commission did give these powers by delegation, it is those powers which are the charter for the Executive to continue to run into Crawley. They would have the perpetual right to do so by reason of those powers; yet we claim that they do so only because they went in there to fulfil an operating agreement with their partners in the area, the Southdown Bus Company. I suggest that it is a very legalistic point, and it is not in keeping with the spirit of the intention, which was to divide the work in Crawley, that this state of affairs should be allowed to continue under this Bill. I have put down these two Amendments, Nos. 13 and 14, to make it clear that routes cannot be the property of the London Board in perpetuity merely because they have been derived in the past from a working agreement with some other bus company.

§ THE EARL OF DUNDEE
My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend for saving time by putting his arguments on these two Amendments to the second paragraph of subsection (5) of Clause 8 together. In my reply before we adjourned for the Royal Commission, under the misapprehension that he had moved both I began by staiting the general principle, which in fact applies to both: that we wish to preserve the status quo in this matter. In order not to go to the length of analysing the precise effect of these Amendments, I think my noble friend will agree that his first Amendment, No. 13, affects only two small routes, Windsor-Datchet and Royston-Buntingford. The second Amendment, which is a far more important one, would affect two very important areas, Crawley and Dagen-ham, in which the London Board is now operating and has been operating for 1229 some time. Since my noble friend expressed his willingness to withdraw Amendment No. 13, I will not, therefore, spend time on the Royston-Buntingford question.
I do not know that the world would come to an end if the power which has not been exercised for the last twelve months of the London Transport to run this route were abrogated, but as it happens to be a statutory power we do not see any good reason why it should be taken away, even though it has not been used in the last twelve months. In an earlier speech my noble friend suggested that there might be some doubt as to the extent powers to run transport services have been exercised. That, of course, is for the Minister to ascertain. Subsection (5) authorises the Minister to ascertain the facts and to issue a Statutory Instrument, not creating any new powers, but stating what the existing facts are. Subject to what his inquiries may ascertain, the only two routes which would be affected at present by the first of my noble friend's Amendments are the two small ones to which we have already alluded.
Amendment No. 14 would have much more important effects because it would take away from the London Board power to run services in the areas of Crawley and Dagenham. I think that I ought to go over the legal position. I was already halfway through it when we adjourned. The 1933 Act did not give statutory power but enabled working agreements to be made, and where they have been made the actual vires derive from the agreement and not from the Statute. When a power to run a transport service arises not from a working agreement but from a Statute, we want to continue the status quo, which I think is right, even though it might be supplemented later by a working agreement, as has been done in the case of Crawley and Dagenham. This is the point which we went into in Committee and which I would put to your Lordships again.
The Bill as drafted would exclude only three minor routes, with which I will not bother your Lordships at the moment, whereas my noble friend's Amendment would exclude most particularly the important services in the Crawley area which are at present run jointly by London Transport and Southdown Motor Services. There is a 1230 distinction between practices which have been created by voluntary working agreements and those which do not depend for their existence on such agreements, although an agreement may have been made supplementary to the statutory power. And subsection (5) of this clause as at present drafted excludes only the routes on which the power springs solely from working agreements and not those operated under statutory power. Where the necessary power was delegated to London Transport by the Transport Commission under Section 5 of the 1947 Act, we think that it is right to continue it, quite apart from the merits of the case. Whether such cases can or cannot be considered on their merits is another question. We think it is reasonable under the Bill to leave the statutory power as it is. After all, half of Crawley is in the London area, anyhow. The agreement enables the London Board, in conjunction with this private motor company, to run services in the area of Crawley beyond the actual boundary of the London area.
Although I am anxious to consider any reasonable case which my noble friend puts forward, as I always am, I cannot see any justification for abrogating an established practice of this kind. Power in this case does not depend on the working agreement itself but on statutory power delegated by the Commission, and the fact that there is a subsequent working agreement in force about the detailed operation of these services is, in my submission to your Lordships, beside the point since the agreement is not the source of power to run the services but has been concluded as a matter of convenience and for operational reasons. I do not think that any new arguments have been put forward since your Lordships decided this in Committee which would justify us in coming to a different conclusion on Report. Therefore I appeal to my noble friend not to press this Amendment, which would have the effect of upsetting these established arrangements which I think are working well, and would not result in any general improvement in the transport system in the London area and its neighbourhood.

LORD HAWKE
My Lords, I am sorry to say that I have listened to my noble friend's explanation with considerable dismay. He takes a fundamentally 1231 different point of view on behalf of Her Majesty's Government to the view taken by the private operators. They say that the reason for the delegation by the Transport Commission of power to cross the boundary was in order to fulfil the working agreement. My noble friend puts it the other way round and says that the working agreement was subsidiary to the power to cross the boundary. Frankly, I cannot accept that that is the more probable of the two explanations. I should have thought that when this New Town was created, the first thing to be thought of was an arrangement by which each concern could cross the other's boundary and in order to arrive at that it was necessary for the London Transport Executive to have power to get into the new area.

§ THE EARL OF DUNDEE
They were already half in the London area.

LORD HAWKE
But it was necessary to cross the boundary to make a proper service. They could not have a proper service if one bus service was confined to each half. I am not going to take the point to a Division, but would voice the view that the private operators are getting an extremely harsh and legalistic deal in this particular matter.

§ LORD MILLS
My Lords, it has been proposed that this would be a convenient point at which to adjourn consideration on Report. If that be the wish of your Lordships, I would beg leave to move that consideration on Report be now adjourned.