§ Mr. Austin MitchellTo ask the Secretary of State for Transport whether he will publish in theOfficial Report a table showing the information he has for the railways in (a) the United Kingdom, (b) Germany, (c) France and (d) Italy on (i) the amount of profit/loss, (ii) the number of passengers, (iii) passenger-kilometres and (iv) tonne-kilometres carried in (1) 1959, (2) 1969, (3) 1979 and (4) in the latest available year, together with the number of employees and the total amount in terms of local currency of the total state contribution and of total investment.
§ Mr. PortilloI do not have information for the years 1959 and 1969. The information readily available is as follows:
interest still had to be paid on this amount, the grant would have to be much higher to achieve the same effect. Other railways have been treated differently: in particular I understand that the West German railway has a large debt burden.
to British Rail, in relation to the size of the network, is marginally higher than for the French railways. This is despite British Rail's smaller network being more heavily used than those in France and West Germany. The current 1097W budget for British Rail investment is also higher than that planned by French railways when the size of the network is taken into account.