FREIGHT-LINER TERMINALS (Hansard, 7 March 1967)

§ THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR SCOTLAND (LORD HUGHES)
My Lords, it may be convenient for the House if at this stage I repeat a Statement which is being made by my right honourable friend the Minister of Transport in another place. I will make use of her own words:
"As the House will know, I have during the last week been holding intensive discussions with the National Union of Railway men on the opening of freight-liner terminals to all road haulage vehicles. The dispute between the National Union of Railwaymen and the Railways Board over open terminals was a long-standing one which had prevented the full use of freight-liner services, and the opportunity to discuss it further arose when the Union asked to see me on February 16 about the completion of the Transport Holding Company's acquisition of the Tartan Arrow Company. I am happy to be able to tell the House that, in the light of the discussions and of the assurances given, the N.U.R. Executive withdrew their objection to open terminals and 1345 agreed to co-operate in the full expansion of the freight-liner network.
"It is a primary aim of my policy to exploit to the full the railways' ability to transport large flows of freight in containers with maximum efficiency; this will be a vital element in developing the new railways.
"The Railways Board will shortly be putting forward for my approval proposals for the investment of some £7 million in Stage 2 of the freightliner project. Expenditure of this order could not have been economically justified without open terminals. The Board will also be seeking my approval for further investment in cartage vehicles to service the freight-liners, and this is expected to total about£2 million. With the establishment of open terminals, I confidently expect that these proposals will prove to be soundly based.
"I am anxious that the Railway Workshops should share in the benefits of the expansion of the freight-liner network, and I have just approved the setting up of a modern and efficient container production line which will enable the Derby workshops to manufacture up to at least 4,000 containers a year. The removal of the present restrictions on the Board's powers of manufacture which I shall propose in my forthcoming Transport Bill will also help to ensure that the railway workshops in general, on whose modernisation some £17 million has been spent in the past few years, are used to their fullest extent.
"As I said in the House before Christmas, the British Railways Board and the Transport Holding Company have already taken the first steps to create an integrated freight system by establishing joint machinery to promote interworking in the parcels and sundries field. As a further step towards integration it has now been agreed between the Railways Board and the Transport Holding Company that the Board will take a50 per cent. holding in Tartan Arrow, and so become joint owners with the Transport Holding Company. The Board and the Holding Company will make an immediate start on securing that mutual benefits to be derived from joint ownership of Tartan Arrow even before the legal formalities are completed. Discussions will cover 1346 means of integrating the use of trains and job opportunities. There will be full consultation with all the Unions concerned.
"The Chairman of the Railways Board has reaffirmed the assurances already offered to railwaymen that there will be no redundancies among cartage or other railway workers as a result of the opening of the terminals to private hauliers and that earnings will be suitably safeguarded. The Board will shortly be starting discussions with the trade unions with the aim of translating these assurances into an agreement which will meet specific points raised by the N.U.R. Executive.
"The service planned by Tartan Arrow will be starting between their own depots at London and Glasgow next month with one train daily in each direction. The Railways Board also intend to add further trains to their own London—Glasgow service in the near future as traffic expands with the establishment of open terminals.
"In these ways we shall continue to work towards the fullest use of freight-liners. I look forward to the continuing expansion of this traffic in which I am confident that all sections of the railway industry will share."
My Lords, that concludes my right honourable friend's Statement.

§ LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD
My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, for this Statement, and also for kindly furnishing me with a copy of it. Is the noble Lord aware that there is great interest in this subject, and that a settlement of this three-year-old dispute, which has been depriving us of the great value of Lord Beeching's brilliant innovation, is welcome indeed? There are several questions I should like to ask the noble Lord by way of clarification.
Is the noble Lord aware that there is some anxiety about the arrangements by which the depots have been opened to Tartan Arrow by the nationalised industries buying out Tartan Arrow? Will the noble Lord assure us that now all liner train depots will be unconditionally opened to all private hauliers? Secondly, is the noble Lord aware that the innovation of the 1347 rail workshops manufacturing containers will be carefully watched to ensure that the railway workshops are not put on a basis to compete with private manufacturers by means of a wasteful subsidy?
Is the noble Lord able to tell us now what overall increase in freight traffic is forecast for the next 12 months, and whether it will be enough to reverse the falling trend of freight traffic over the last two years? Then, is the noble Lord satisfied that the rates to be charged for this service are set at a level which will help to reduce British Railways' deficit, and are not set at an uneconomically low level in order simply to attract traffic off the roads? Finally, can the noble Lord tell us whether in fact any jobs will become superfluous as a result of this very welcome statement?

§ LORD HUGHES
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his welcome of this Statement, which I am quite certain is a welcome generally felt by all Members of your Lordships' House. He has set me quite a considerable task in the variety of questions he has asked. If I may take them not necessarily in the order in which he tabled them, I will do my best to answer.
The noble Lord asked whether there will be any jobs which will become superfluous. He is aware of the fact that my right honourable friend's Statement says that the jobs of those presently employed by the Railways Board will be safeguarded. That, one would imagine, will be done in the ordinary way: that such diminution of employment as may be necessary will arise in the ordinary way through wastage rather than dismissals. On the subject of whether the rates that will be charged will be such as to reduce the deficit, I think that is implicit in the Statement. The whole object of the liner trains arose because Lord Beeching and the Railways Board thought that this was a method by which the railways could take traffic on a remunerative basis; and it would obviously be the height of folly to invest money of this order if it were thought that at the end of the day the deficit would have increased. So I can give a firm assurance that the intention is as the noble Lord hopes.
The noble Lord asked what the freight might be over the next twelve months. 1348 I am not in a position to give any answer to that question, other than this. At the present time the amount of freight is believed to be at the rate of some 750,000 tons a year. The estimate made by the Railways Board some three years ago was that the potential traffic would be some 30 million tons a year. The rate at which we can proceed over the next twelve months must be a matter upon which the advice of a former distinguished Prime Minister is appropriate: let us wait and see.
Because of the speed with which the noble Lord put these questions I wrote them down hurriedly, and I am unable to read my own writing. I think he asked something about the opening of the workshops, and whether there would be a subsidy or whether they would be operated on a commercial basis. I think the answer which I have given to the other question about the rates to be applied is equally appropriate in the case of the opening of the workshops. A considerable amount of money had been invested in these workshops. The purpose of the Government's proposals in relation to the manufacturing activities which are to be available is that the workshops shall be developed in the most economic fashion and that the best possible use shall be made of the money invested in them. I can assure the noble Lord that it is the intention of the Government that this will be work of economic value, and that object would be frustrated if we were merely encouraging them to do things on which they were going to lose money.
The final point to which I am going to reply was, I think, the noble Lord's first one; namely, would all depots be open unconditionally to all hauliers? Whether I would be justified at this stage in putting it exactly in those words I am not quite certain, but it will not have escaped the noble Lord's notice that my right honourable friend's Statement refers specifically to open depots, and when she talks about open depots I think she means exactly what she says.

§ LORD CHAMPION
My Lords, I do not think we ought to pass from this matter without congratulating my right honourable friend on the successful outcome of an extremely difficult set of negotiations. I happen to have been able to look at these negotiations both from 1349 the Government side and also, as a member, still, of the N.U.R., from the N.U.R. side. I should like to feel that we all recognise the tremendous amount of work that my right honourable friend has done and the common sense of the Executive of the N.U.R. in arriving at a settlement which will safeguard their essential interests and at the same time ensure the better use of our railways.

§ LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE
My Lords, could the noble Lord make one point clear? In the Statement the Minister spoke in general terms of assurances given to the N.U.R., and then, later in the Statement, instances were given of a number of such assurances. Can the noble Lord say that the total number of assurances are those read out by the noble Lord to the House and that no other assurances were given, such as a long period of time for manufacture, or assurances in some other direction of which we have not heard?

§ LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD
I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, for the answers which he gave to my questions. On the last point, may I just ask him this further question? Is he aware that the terms of his Statement appear to be rather guarded in regard to the general opening of the terminals as compared with the opening for the Tartan Arrow Company? Further, is the noble Lord aware that it is on this point that public opinion generally has the strongest possible feeling that the wish is to see these depots open to all road traffic?

§ LORD HUGHES
My Lords, perhaps if I were to indicate the build-up of the services it would give some reassurance to the noble Lord. There are now seven two-way services, five days a week, carrying some 1,350 containers weekly. Expansion to 27 services a week by the end of 1967 is planned. Under Stage 1 the present terminals are London (York Way), Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow and Aberdeen. The rest of Stage 1 comprises terminals at London (Willesden), Cardiff, Newcastle-on-Tyne, London (Stratford), Stockton, Sheffield, Leeds, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Hull. Stage 2 consists of eight more terminals, but I cannot yet state precisely where these will be.
To reply to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, I 1350 think the Minister's Statement is very forthcoming about the assurances that have been given. It would be equally wrong to attempt to read into the Statement more than is in it or, on the contrary, to assume that anything has been deliberately omitted from it.