'Impudence' says Labour Peer .
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'THE Government's promis e to "encourage the provision of a modern transport system" took the first prize for impudence, declared Lord Peddie last week.
He would be interested to know how they were going to ach:eve it, said the Labour Peer, for it was the Tory Government that destroyed the integrated system created by the ,Labour Government and which persistently refused to recognize that transport problems could be tackled only' as a whole, and not piecemeal.
Lord Peddie asked:. Was it intelligent to close down 2,000 stations and 5,000 miles of track in a panic hurry before an adequate alternative of roads and motorways could be provided?
Today, we were spending less as a proportion of our national expenditure than we spent in 1939, he said, despite the enormous increase in contribution to the national exchequer made by the road user and motorcar owner. He believed it was impassible to create a modern transport system and at the same time refuse to recognize the need to integrate long-distance road 'haulage in such a system.
These comments by Lord Peddle were typical of Labour anxieties about transport which cropped up frequently during debates on the Queen's Speech, Lord Morrison of Lambeth said that despite all its promises of further industrial expansion and progress, the Government had damaged the economic wellbeing' of the transport industry, probably both road and rail.
He agreed that the Government had to do a lot about road building, but 'thought we must have a sense of propor
tion about the building of roads. We we now to accept the doctrine that the should be an unrestricted access to tl centres of cities by private cars and ear mercial road transport, and that the hig way authorities had got to make highw: provision for them?
He did not accept that, said Lo. Morrison.