Minister tells committee ' I am starting PTA talks'
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• The moves to set up PTAs start this week.
"I am losing no time", commented Mrs. Barbara Castle, when she told MPs last week that talks were about to begin with the four conurbation areas and their authorities about what should be the designated area in these cases.
"I am getting down to it now", added the Minister, "so that we can take months over this before the Bill becomes law. I an trying to go into this exhaustively."
Mrs. Castle made her announcement just before the Standing Committee on the Transport Bill gave its approval to the Clause setting up PTAs.
The Committee turned to passenger transport after seven meetings on the Bill's first section, dealing with the National Freight Corporation and the Freight Integration Council.
The final discussions on the NFC were marked by the Government accepting an Opposition amendment. This change in the Bill lays down that functions of the Railways Board in connection with the carriage of goods by rail cannot be transferred to the Freight Corporation.
Accepting the amendment, Mr. John Morris, Parliamentary Secretary to the MoT, pointed out that they were guarding against a contingency so remote as to be unthinkable.
There was no such accommodation when Liberal Mr. Peter Bessell started off the discussion on PTAs by trying to split the country up into passenger transport regions. His plan, he claimed, was a better and more logical one than that proposed in the Bill, would be cheaper to administer and less costly in operation, and would not require anything like the vast army of Civil Servants which would have to be recruited for carrying the Minister's proposals into effect.
• Tory spokesman Mr. Michael Heseltine said that his party would not be able to support Mr. Bessell in this, while Mrs. Castle said that she could not possibly accept his amendment.
Mr. Bessell insisted on a vote—he was the only one who supported the amendment, 15 Labour members were against it, and the Tories abstained.
The Committee rejected, by 15 votes to 9, an Opposition attempt to alter the Bill so that the Minister would not designate an area until a majority of the local authorities there had asked her to do so.
Commending this idea, Mr. Heseltine said that the Minister knew there was no support for her proposals anywhere in the country.
Mr. James Bennett (Labour, Bridgeton) moved an amendment to ensure that wherever practicable and desirable, rural services would be brought within the PTA's jurisdiction. There was, he said, no evidence that PTAs would be given any encouragement to take over rural services at present run by private, independent firms.
Expressing sympathy with this view, Mr. Swingler said the amendment could not be accepted simply because there were certain parts of the country which would make passenger transport areas, but which were very highly urbanized. Therefore in designating passenger transport areas it might be impossible for the Minister always to combine a rural and urban service together.
Mr. Bessell complained of a lack of information on who would sit on the Authority. "I get the impression of a cold, secret organization working behind closed doors without any provisions for efficiency", he commented.
Mr. Heseltine, noted the White Paper, said that as PTAs and the Government would be working closely together, with the help of substantial Exchequer grants, the Minister would appoint two or three members of the Authority. Other local authority operations received support from rates and capital grants, so why had this local authority operation been singled out for treatment specifically different from anything of which he was aware in any other relationship between local and central government? Mr. Heseltine also asked what was the Minister's motive in putting her nominees on the PTA itself, with full votes, instead of on the specialist subcommittees.
Mrs. Castle replied that if local authorities were left to appoint six-sevenths of the PTA representatives there was no guarantee that there would be representation of transport experience or trade unions.
One of the matters she had strongly in mind in retaining for the Minister the power to make one-seventh of the total appointment had been the desire to guarantee a form of worker participation.
But an even more overwhelming argument for the right of the Minister to make appointments was that they would be able to counteract any tendency on the part of the local authority appointed members to take too limited and parochial a view. This was an interim solution to meet an interim situation.
The need for the Minister's appointees would disappear, just as it had done in London, because we would have a single unified authority or a much simpler grouping of authorities.
Ministerial appointees would be responsible to the Authorities and not to the Minister. There was no power for the Minister to give directions to the appointees, except in respect of the form of accounts and where agreement could not be reached between the Executive and the Railways Board, and where it was for the Minister to find a solution. On policy the Minister's appointees would be completely free and would be expected to work as in any corporate organization.
Mr. Heseltine said that perhaps a new element in the constitution of the country had suddenly been introduced. It was perfectly possible that there could be an occasion when a freely, democratically elected majority of local Tory authorities were to hold a numerical advantage on the PTA and the Minister's nominees would be able to overrule this majority.
The chances were that the Minister would be appointing people with Socialist inclinations. That would give to the Socialist Party a permanent possibility of overruling the politically elected majority, where it was relatively small. This seemed to be a remarkable breach of the constitution, said Mr. Heseltine. It was no use trying to pretend that it did not exist. The Committee voted against a Tory proposal that the Minister should not make an Order until her proposals had been approved by a simple majority of the local authorities in the area proposed for the PTA.
This caused Mr. Heseltine to warn that the Minister would have the right to set up a PTA in
any area, no matter if all the local authorities
there had declared their vehement opposition to such a proposal. Ownership of buses merely complicated the activities for which PTAs should have been set up, said Mr. Heseltine, when he suggested this week in Committee that the Passenger Transport Executives should have no power to carry passengers by road. "We have in mind a totally different concept of the PTA from that held by Ministers."
Nobody on his side opposed the overall concept of a wider planning and consultative body in the wider conurbations. The best, most effective and cheapest way of achieving the results and rationalization in these areas was to make the organiza tion strictly a planning and consultative body. "What is seriously in dispute is whether it is necessary for the PTE to own a single bus to achieve those results."
The likely results of changes of ownership of buses must be the subject of the greatest anxiety to all those who have made a study of the problem, went on Mr. Heseltine. The granting of powers of operation to the PTE would involve its staff in an immense examination of the detailed running of buses, of routes, of the number of passengers, and of the relative cost structure which might be necessary in the area. This examination was already conducted by many operators and municipalities.