HL Deb 17 June 1963 vol 250 cc1093-5
THE EARL OF SANDWICH

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

[The Question was as follows:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will frame legislation to amend Section 135 of the Road Traffic Act 1960 so as to enable persons owning small buses to test the need for public transport in rural areas through provisional licences granted by traffic commissioners.]

LORD CHESHAM

My Lords, the traffic commissioners, already have power to grant short-term licences, and where a new service would take no traffic from existing services it is unlikely that such a licence, or even one for a full term, would be refused. But where, as is more often the case, the new service would be likely, even if only for a short period of experiment, to take traffic from another service already running, I think it is in the interests of the public as a whole that the commissioners should apply all the criteria of Section 135 of the Road Traffic Act, 1960, to decide where the final balance of advantage lies.

THE EARL OF SANDWICH

My Lords, I do not know whether your Lordships are aware that Section 135 states that traffic commissioners, in exercising their discretion to grant or refuse a road service licence in respect of any routes and their discretion to attach conditions to any such licence shall have regard to the following matters … (b) the extent, if any, to which the needs of the proposed routes for any of them are already adequately served". Are the Government aware of the enormous disparity which exists between the public interest quick and cheap rural transport and the extent to which that need is satisfied, for example, by the arrival of a large 32-seater bus in a small village week by week at a most inconvenient hour? Will the Government undertake a further study of this problem, which is causing great anxiety in rural areas? Finally, may I appeal to the noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth (I notice that he has left the Chamber for the moment), who piloted the Road Traffic Act, 1930, and who is responsible for the present state of affairs which has been carried on by subsequent legislation, to consider whether this is not a good time to have a revision of this law without going back to the internecine competition which drove small-scale enterprises into ruinous and often dangerous activities in those days?

LORD CHESHAM

My Lords, I am not quite sure where to start; nor which half of the supplementary question was addressed to me and which to the noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth, to which, no doubt, he will reply in due course. Taking what I believe to be the noble Earl's main point, I do not think that any useful purpose would be served by taking steps to promote the internecine competition which he condemned in the course of his supplementary question. I think that to leave it to the discretion of operators of small buses to decide which routes they wish to try would not be serving the public, part of whose troubles with bus services is already due to the fact that not sufficient people use them.

LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH

My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord a simple question? Does the power of the traffic commissioners which he has mentioned extend to the licensing of small 12-seater buses, which on a number of these routes would be quite adequate to take people from village to railway station and from railway station to village, and where a 32-seater bus is a totally uneconomic proposition?

LORD CHESHAM

My Lords, as I understand the position, it does.

LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH

Yes. I asked the question because there is some doubt about it.

LORD STONHAM

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the total overall loss on rural buses amounts to about £15 million a year? There is not likely to be much private competition for that kind of trade. But is he also aware that the vitally necessary thing in rural areas is for the Government to implement the recommendation of the Jack Committee?

LORD CHESHAM

My Lords, I think that what I am aware of principally is that I have answered the noble Earl's Question about the possibility of new routes being developed by small buses, which does not require a change in the law and can be done, quite possibly with profit in all its senses, as things are.

THE EARL OF SANDWICH

My Lords, owing to the sterile and unsatisfactory nature of the Government reply I will refer to this matter on a later occasion.

LORD CHESHAM

My Lords, it has always been my experience in your Lordships' House that any reply which is not the one desired is always "sterile and unsatisfactory."