THE INDUSTRY'S THANKS to the Thesiger Committee
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The Thesiger Report as a Student. of Transport Sees it : A Basis for Informal Discussion
by C. S. Dunbar, M .1n st.T. MOST operators who read the Thesiger Report will have heaved a sigh of relief, because if a one-sentence summary of it is needed, it is contained in the phrase: "Let well alone." It provides many subjects for debate, not so much with regard to the committee's definite recommendations as in matters that they have merely touched upon.
There are, however, places where the report is just a little irritating. It is as though, having come to the broad general conclusion that all is well, the committee took care not to become involved with matters the least bit away from their brief. Thus one starts reading most interesting comments on points raised in evidence and then finds that the committee do not wish to take the matter forward.
Nevertheless, in general it can be said that they have earned the thanks of the industry for the lucid way in which they have set out the pros and cons of many controversial points, thus providing a basis for informed discussion on these matters.
A large part of the report is taken up with the vexed question of contract carriages and the difficulty of defining when a party is private and an occasion is special, having regard to the fact that with so many private parties (probably the majority) separate fares are collected by the organizer. We all know in our own minds what Parliament really meant in 1930, but not only the Act of that year. but also amending Acts of 1934 and 1937 have failed to prevent confusion and have, in fact, led to judicial decisions which seem to the layman contrary to common sense.
Flexibility in Private Hire
The Licensing Authorities have also been perplexed as to where to draw the line and to demand that certain private-hire operations should carry road service licences. Thecommittee's recommendation seems to achieve the aim, which is apparent throughout the report, of retaining the flexibility of the present licensing system, while going • a long way towards regularizing contract-carriage operation.
The proposal is to issue a new licence to operators, specifying the vehicles which may be used as contract carriages on occasions when separate fares are charged. Conditions would be attached at the discretion of the Licensing .Authorities, but evidence of need would not be required and the issue of the licence would be automatic. Breaches of the conditions might entail suspension of the use of a vehicle except under a road service licence.
This proposal is an ingenious and well-thought-out attempt to solve a real difficulty and, if adopted, would remove the threat of conviction as a criminal from the innocent organizers of Sunday school treats, mothers' union outings and the like. It will also cover the case of the organizers of the public-house parties whieh for many years were popular in the Midlands and other industrial areas and became illegal under the 1930 Act because it the ban on advertising.
Although the question of contract carriages is the practical one in which most operators will be interested, it is really an administrative difficulty which is subsidiary in importance to the principles discussed earlier in the report, where consideration is given to the constitution and duties of the Licensing Authorities. The committee have come down heavily in favour of leaving things as they are.
3130 It has often been suggested that there is no point in having representatives of local authorities sitting with the whole-time chairmen, that such appointments are only window-dressing and that the panel members can have no really effective voice in dealing with matters which usually lie outside their practical experience. I must admit that I have often regarded the appointment of these members as merely a sop to those municipalities which lost their licensing powers in 1930, but having read the report, I am inclined now to the committee's view that it would be a mistake to make a change.
The presence of the local-authority representatives has contributed to the maintenance of public confidence in the Licensing Authorities and has helped to prevent any development on rigid or bureaucratic lines. The 'committee suggest that it would save unnecessary work if appointments (after the initial one) were made for three years, instead of one, and they draw attention to the little-known point that panel members need not necessarily be councillors or aldermen.
I had not realized this and I agree that it would make for continuity and greatly help the work of the Licensing Authorities if public-spirited persons could be found to accept nomination as council representatives on the panels. I think that they would be forthcoming if this opportunity of service were made known.
On the important subject of the personalities of the chairmen, the committee are emphatically opposed to the idea that these posts should be reserved for lawyers or civil servants—which has been the tendency in recent years. Attention is drawn to the wide field from which Mr. Herbert Morrison drew the first Commissioners and his explanation that he did so because the Commissioners would have to meet together from time to time and it was inadvisable for them to be all of the same type.
Qualifications Out of Balance
There is no doubt that, looking at the matter from this viewpoint, the chairmen, as a body, have, of late years, been getting out of balance. It would be wrong to say that practical experience of transport should be a sine qua non for appointment, but in the past decade there have been occasions when there has not been a single chairman with practical experience of running transport. Surely this is going to the other extreme?
There is one important aspect of the Licensing Authorities' work that the report just touches on, but is a matter of basic principle needing fuller debate. The Authorities have, theoretically, no initiatory powers. Officially, they can only .wait until someone comes along with a proposal for a service and then adjudicate on it. This is not by any means an academic point.
Unless something is done to relieve operators of the intolerable burden of the fuel tax, the tendency to reduce rural services must go on and there is a real danger that many small country operators will be forced out of business altogether. Wide areas may find themselves without stage services.
Atpresent the Licensing Authorities can do little about this, except hope that some other operator will step in. Under present conditions they can hold out no inducements to any whom they might approach to do so. If one man is losing on the services, it is often unlikely that another would do better—a large operator might even find the services more costly to run. This, of course, brings up the question of a subsidy for unremunerative services which are socially necessary.
I think it is helpful in this connection that the Thesiger Committee have refused to fire the bullets for those who want to denationalize the Tilling and Scottish bus companies. The powerful interests who are pulling strings to secure control of these businesses have not alleged that these companies are one whit less efficient than other large operators, but have used the specious argument that the control of them by the British Transport Commission in effect nullifies the control which should legally rest in the hands of the Licensing Authorities.
The report completely demolishes this argument and in some way provides adequate material for those who take the opposite view. The cases where the B.T.C.
will want to subordinate road operation to rail will usually be on long-distance journeys, where the provision of road services is more in the nature of a convenience than a necessity. Even for long-distance work, the Licensing Authorities can be trusted to exercise their discretion wisely, as the Northern Roadways cases have, in general, shown.
For stage-carriage work, the B.T.C.-controlled companies are likely to be more amenable to demands for services on " thin " routes and are in a much better position to put on services to replace withdrawn railway facilities.
The thought that strikes me on this matter is that if denationalization is forced through, is it any use to pretend that co-ordination between road and rail is really practicable? The position has completely changed since 1947, let alone since 1930. Section 72 of the Road Traffic Act requires the Licensing Authorities to have regard (among other matters) to "the co-ordination of all forms of passenger transport, including transport by rail."
Meaning of Co-ordination To my mind this means something more than arranging for buses to start in station yards and to fit in with train departures and arrivals. It means using the most suitable vehicles for the job—taking buses off where trains are better and vice versa—but if that were the real intention of the 1930 Act, the implementation has been lop-sided to say the least. I can think of dozens of branch railway lines being closed, but, without searching my files minutely, I cannot recollect any regular bus services being withdrawn in favour of rail. I am not asking that they should be, but I suggest that the powers-that-be should cease to talk meaningless jargon. Even the small degree of co-ordination that has been achieved is likely to go overboard as the result of the railways' great victory in getting the "Square Deal" that they asked for in 1938.
Their great new powers to secure traffic by cutting fares, if they so desire, seem to be hardly understood. The 1930 Act prescribed co-ordination not at the behest of the planners, but for the practical reason that the railways' hands were tied by old legislation. This no longer the case and if co-ordination is really a desirable goal, the possibility of its attainment has receded almost to the Greek Kalends.
It is just not possible under the new conditions, in my opinion, for the Licensing Authorities really to attempt to act as co-ordinators. They must, of course, continue to have regard to other forms of transport, or they will often be in the undesirable position of encouraging a war which will be to the benefit of neither contestant, but it is logical to suggest that the phrase about co-ordination should be removed as quickly as possible from the 1930 Act. Its continuance will be even more absurd if the British Transport Commission ever lose control of their bus companies.
It was with some surprise that I read of the committee's satisfaction with the present traffic areas. I was recently advising a small operator based in South Oxfordshire, and consequently in the East Midland Traffic Area, It was necessary for us to visit the headquarters of the area, which meant travelling to Nottingham. This is a long journey, and a tedious and expensive one, but it can be paralleled elsewhere. The East Midland Area, stretching from the Wash to the Thames and with its headquarters towards the northern end, is ridiculous and is certainly the worst case.
It is a pity that the old Southern Area was abolished. Some areas, such as the West Midland and Yorkshire, have their headquarters fairly• centrally placed, but a general review would not, I think, be amiss. After all, it must be remembered that the full details of applications can often be seen only at the Authority's office. Notices and Proceedings may give only the vaguest indication of, for example, extensive fare alterations and without reference to the actual schedules deposited, possible objectors are at a great disadvantage.
Notification of Changes A useful suggestion is that it should be obligatory for operators applying for alterations in stage services to post notices of their intention in the vehicles on the route concerned. Whilst I agree with this, I must draw attention to a slight illogicality in the committee's reply to objections made on the ground of impracticability. They say that "each bus is already required to carry the appropriate time-table and fare-tables for the route which it is serving at any moment and no insuperable difficulty would be involved in requiring it to display the notice we have in mind." No doubt it is true that buses do carry time-tables and fare-tables, but outside London and a few other places these are usually in the conductors' ticket-boxes or their pockets!
Some important suggestions were made regarding municipal services. The committee are strongly in favour of the Licensing Authorities retaining control of municipal bus operation and would like to see this extended to the control of tram and trolleybus fares and stopping places and to the licensing of tram and trolley bus drivers and conductors. No one will quarrel with these suggestions: they do not detract in practice from the status of the municipal operators.
Nor will there be much criticism of the proposal to abolish the necessity to obtain consent to run outside, boundaries, in addition to a road service licence for the proposed extension. This has meant unnecessary duplication of work.
Another help to the municipalities is the proposal to repeal Sectionr 72 (7) of the 1930 Act, the effect of which would be to cancel the statutory, maximum fares laid down in the various municipal enabling Acts: The Licensing Authorities; with this difficulty out of the way and with tram and trolleybus fares also under their control, would be in a much better position to deal with fare questions in the areas served by municipal transport.
Maximum or Minimum
On the important question of fares there is one aspect which, I think, the committee have missed. Section 72 (6) of the 1930 Act gives the Licensing Authorities power to fix minimum or maximum fares. I do not know whether this power has ever been exercised, as the usual practice is to authorize the exact fares to be charged. Since the war the emphasis (with one or two exceptions) has been on increasing fares and the committee have apparently given much time to discussing what might be " reasonable " or " unreasonable " fares and the machinery for dealing with applications for increases.
But-the day may come when the reduction of fares is a possibility. Two points develop from this thought, one of which is that Section 72 (6) might be used, so that operators contemplating reductions could make them without going through the usual traffic court procedure.
Where, for instance, there is a complete monopoly of a stage route, would it not be possible to use this section so that existing fares became the maximum, leaving the operator to reduce if and when he thought fit?
The other point is whether the Authorities have power to force reductions. I shall not attempt to develop this theme in the space left to me, as it raises such contentious points as the return on capital, provision for reserves and other matters, but I throw it out for consideration.
Finally, there is the argument about appeals. It is clear that the committee were under strong pressure to recommend the removal of appeals from the jurisdiction of the Minister to a separate court or tribunal, but six out of the seven members preferred the continuance of the present system. Anyone who has had experience as a goods operator will, I think, agree.
Handicap of Rigidity
The cast-iron frame into which goods licensing has been restricted has been a great handicap, because it tends to stereotype the handling of applications and the making of decisions in the light of the legal interpretation of words in an Act, instead of in the light of the necessities of trade and commerce.
Licensing of transport, as the committee point out, is a very different matter from administering justice. The former involves the intelligent anticipation of coming events, whilst the latter necessitates the careful ascertainment of past happenings. It is a great pity that the goods side is so shackled by precedent and the committee are to be congratulated on resisting the demand that similar fetters should be clamped on public service vehicle operators.