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Action Soon on Rural Bus Subsidies?
Page 13
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FROM OUR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT hiTR. MAR PLES successfully took the Beeching plan over its first hurdle last week, when a meeting of Tory backbenchers received the proposals with some admiration, if not full agreement.
The next test to be faced is a debate in the Commons, which is expected to take place before the end of this month. In this debate, the Minister is expected to give Tory transport policy its new look--that is, to give at least some indication of the new co-ordination to which The Commercial Motor referred last week.
In addition, Mr. Marples should also have preliminary news on the series of inter-departmental studies which have been going on since the first copies of the Beeching report were available. The Ministry of Labour and the Board of Trade are deeply involved in the report's implications. So are other Ministries.
Rural transport operators are now looking to the Government for a decision about the subsidies recommended in the Jack report, though the special studies which have been commissioned may hold this up for a while.
Obviously, the implementation of the Government's promises about_alternative transport for withdrawn rail closures may take some of the pressure from rural operations. But there is also the point that subsidies once conceded (via the Beeching report) to former rail services will be hard to deny to struggling buses which even now provide the only means of rural transport in some areas.
Action on several other reports can be expected in the coming months. Apart from Jack, the Government must look at the Hall Committee's call for a proper division of transport investment and the Rochdale Committee's request for better facilities at the docks,
The Buchanan group should soon be reporting on the long-term problems of urban traffic and the overdue report of the Channel crossing study group surely must come in next Month.
Dr. Beeching's new plans for freight— on which talks -are going on with customers and the unions—are being designed with a Channel tunnel in mind. However, there are still some big questions hanging over any Anglo-French co-operation at this stage, and many people would not mind if this whole project were shelved for the time being.
M.P.s Press' for Pipeline Details • ABOUR M.P.s last week pressed Mr. Richard Wood, the Minister of Power, to see that they are given all details about pipeline schemes submitted to him for authorization.
He pointed out that he had received two applications, from United Kingdom Oil Pipelines Ltd.; which he was considering, and from Rugby Portland Cement Co. Ltd., which had been allowed to go ahead. He was expecting the Trunk Pipelines Ltd. application quite soon and would examine this and the competing application on their merits.
Not Vehicle Depots THE Lords this 'week rejected an amendment by Lord Latham to the Offices, Shops and Railway Premises Bill which would have brought road vehicle depots under the Bill. Lord Carrington. moving the rejection, said the Government had decided against including these: it was very difficult to establish which road transport workers were employed in the depots for a fair proportion of their time.