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'LUNATIC DECISION' ON ROADS

19th November 1965
Page 18
Page 18, 19th November 1965 — 'LUNATIC DECISION' ON ROADS
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Keywords : Politics

WHEN the Commons resumed the debate on the Queen's Speech this week Opposition Front Bencher Sir Martin Redmayne moved an amendment regretting that the Speech contained little promise of progress in the modernization of industry, notably in the fields of

transport and technology.

He said he had sought long and zealously to find out what the Minister of Transport had done this year and could not find that he had done very well. In March, recalled Sir Martin, the Minister had said the Government was determined not to cut the road programme, yet in August he had explained that he had been persuaded to postpone necessary plans. This decision really did seem lunatic.

Sir Martin asked: Was it the Minister's intention to proceed on next year's programme as already planned, plus the deferred projects, or were they to have another batch of deferments in January? There could be no possible doubt that for many years ahead the road programme had got to be well above the average of national growth, he said.

The Opposition, went on Sir Martin, would be interested to learn whether the Bill on road safety would concern itself solely with the implementation of that part of the 1962 Act which dealt with drink and driving, or whether the Minister proposed more far-reaching proposals.

He promised that the Opposition would support any large-scale experiments to deal with the fog hazard and if some of them were not successful the Opposition would not hammer at them.

Mr. Fraser said that we had under way at the moment the biggest road programme that this country had ever had. He asked the Opposition what else should have been cut in the Government expenditure to maintain the programme uninterrupted.

He pointed out that liner trains had just run for the first time and said they would not have done so if he had not had the courage to take a decision about them. The former Conservative Minister had not had the courage to do this.

Road-to-Rail Switch Dealing with the co-ordination of transport Mr. Fraser pointed out that he had set in hand a number of studies which he hoped would report before the end of the year.

, These had proceeded against the background of his belief that a very great social benefit would come from reversing the trend and putting traffic now carried by road on to the railways.

He believed that many people outside political parties were convinced that this country's social needs would be more adequately met if we could get a lot of the traffic now travelling on the highways back on the railways.

Mr. Fraser warned that this did not mean that all the existing railway lines should be preserved. On the contrary, he believed it was essential to stop wasting precious resources on unproductive services so that we might be able to devote more to the technological advance of the railways.

He believed we did not have as good a railway service as we ought to have and could have. If we were going to make sense of the National Plan it would be necessary to proceed with the closure of a lot of unproductive services.

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