Filling the Gaps for the B.T.C.
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The Excuse Superior, the Excuse Ingenuous, the Excuse Comparable and the Excuse Plaintive in the B.T.C.'s Annual Report are Detected by Our Commentator who also Ruminates over its More Abstruse Passages THE back room boys of the Ivory Tower have been given their heads in the preparation of the British Transport Commission's third annual report. • It is 'amply provided with tables and lists to explain away some of the more awkward figures in the actual accounts. It is liberally illustrated with graphs as full of meaning and as pregnant with disaster as the bedside charts in a fever ward. At intervals there are chunks of gristly reading matter straight out of the more pretentious transport textbooks.
Some of these obiter dicta are a little mysterious, as will be seen from the following examples which are all to be found on the same page of the report:— The net profitability of the separate forms of transport is no final test of their relative efficiency,
Rail transport is affected more by internal price factors and the cost of coal and steel, which carry a high proportion of the burden of internal social aims, including social security, now a matter of public policy.
The external value of the currency had not been adjusted to its internal purchasing power, and imports such as oil and rubber were cheaper in consequence.
The previous unbalance in the level of certain cost elements was being partially corrected.
It is possible to worry some sort of meaning out of each of these gobbets, but there is no denying that the going is hard for men of one syllable.
To the politicians, the report is a juicy morsel, and they are not likely to be put off for long by the obscurities of the text. No amount of window-dressing can disguise the fact that the Commission has passed through another year of loss, and that for the first time the Road Haulage Executive shows a gap, amounting to £1,106,476, between revenue and expenditure.
Ravages of War
Naturally, the backroom boys have found plenty of reasons for this deplorable state of affairs. It was no treat surprise to learn that the railways have improved their position as compared with 1949. Recent statements, as well as the periodically published figures. have -nade this plain. The Commission makes the most of he fact by arguing that rail transport has profited and road transport fallen behind as the result of all kinds )f external factors, including the international rate of exchange, changes in taxation and the ability of road :ransport to recover more quickly from the ravages of war, whereas the slower recovery of the railways has mly recently begun to take effect.
The argument is not borne out very well by the fact bat the road passenger services of the Commission, which have remained relatively unaffected by nationalication, still show a handsome if slightly reduced profit, whilst the independent operators of passenger-carrying ind of goods vehicles seemed to find 1950 not at all a )ad year. The Commission therefore finds it necessary o buttress its main point with a number of additional irguments.
One may imagine the politicians making great play
with some of these. There is, as Touchstone would have said, every possible variety of excuse, from the Excuse Superior through the Excuse Ingenuous and the Excuse Comparable to the Excuse Plaintive and beyond. They are such as only a nationalized organization could put forward. Under free enterprise they would many of them be faults, if possible to be concealed.
First, the Excuse Superior. The R.H.E., according to the report, has had to make many improvements in the acquired undertakings, to consolidate and re-organize them. These improvements have been expensive. Presumably, the former undertakings, however badly organized, were previously able to pay their way. The deliberate destruction of a healthy financial position is not usually regarded as a constructive policy.
Next, the Excuse Ingenuous. During 1950, the process of compulsory acquisition had reached the stage when hauliers were able to exercise an option as to whether they would be taken over and compensated or left with their vehicles on their hands and no permit to go beyond 25 mites from their base. In consequence, pleads the Commission, the vehicles and businesses acquired by the free use of the hauliers' option were not "of the most remunerative kind."
The Trusting Angel
It is a little difficult to recognize this picture of the R.H.E. as the friend of the inefficient haulier, the trusting angel upon whom he could unload all the junk he did not want and be well paid for it. In fact, any option the haulier may have had did not mature until in the first place his application for an original permit had been turned down. The R.H.E. had it within its own power to avoid the painful necessity of swallowing any business at all likely to have an unpleasant flavour.
The Excuse Comparable makes an attempt to carry the war into the free-enterprise camp. A year ago, so the argument runs, when Sir Stafford Cripps added 9d. to the tax on fuel, independent hauliers put their rates up by 10 per cent. The R.H.E. was content with 71 per cent. and made a heavy loss as the result of its forbearance. Even this modest increase was obtained only gradually and in some cases not at all.
The transport user will find some novelty in the idea that the R.H.E. does not charge enough. If he has a good memory, he may recall that the Executive took the opportunity provided by the 1950 Budget to put up many of its rates before applying the 7i-per-cent. increase. RILE. charges are, in fact, a painful subject to many of its customers, and before old sores are re-opened it may be as well to pass to the Excuse Plaintive.
The 'RHE. complains that during 1950 it acquired a number of undertakings, only to find that the main customer, or customers, would no longer give it their business. Pleasure that to some extent freedom of choice still seems to exist is tempered by the fact that
the exercise of that freedom left British Road Services with the problem of absorbing or retrenching redundant vehicles and staff. It would have been helpful if the report had elaborated this point and explained not only what the over-fastidious customer did with his traffic, but also whether he took it elsewhere before or after he had given a trial to the R.H.E.
Parliament should take a particular interest in the report on the activities of the R.H.E. in view of the fact that so much of the information would have been useful and relevant had it been available a few months ago, when the Transport (Amendment) Bill was under discussion. Perhaps the Government 'knew what it was doing when it so readily allowed time for the various stages in the House of Commons. Had the Bill been delayed until now, the arguments of the Minister of Transport and his supporters against denationalization would scarcely have held water.
Getting Back £70m.
It can no longer be maintained that the Conservatives and Liberals are proposing to retain in public ownership that part of the transport system which is showing a loss and returning to free enterprise the section of the Commission that shows a profit. The Commission, it may be argued, would have been better off in 1950
without the R.H.E. Certainly, if a policy of denationalization were adopted, the taxpayer would stand more chance of getting back the £70m. he is alleged to have paid for the acquired undertakings.
The Opposition in Parliament may be all the more inclined to stress this point in view of the recent statement by Mr. Arthur Deakin, general secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union, that any considerable widening of the proposals to extend the nationalization of industry would mean the certain and utter rout of the Government at the next General Election. Now that the Socialists themselves begin to see the wisdom of calling a halt to nationalization, they may even be persuaded to beat a retreat on the comparatively small section of the front represented by road transport.
Timeless Spell Naturally, no mention of the Transport (Amendment), Bill disturbs the serene surface of the Commission's report. The timeless spell of the Ivory Tower lies on every page. It is only when a little daylight is let in that the arguments begin to take on the appearance of gossamer. This applies to the wider issues as well as to that part of the report concerned with the R.H.E.
One extraordinary passage calmly throws the responsibility for the Commission's losses on to the shoulders of posterity. After stressing that the total deficit is now almost f40m., the report continues:— This means that transport users during this period have received transport services at less than cost, and transport users in future are left to make good the difference. No part of the deficit falls on the general taxpayer. Also transport users during the past three years have had the benefit of low interest charges on capitalized asset values which cannot be held to be excessive, and nothing has been put cr one side to meet the rising costs of replacing the assets now being used up.
This statement appears to mean not merely that the cost of transport will not decrease, but that it will go up even more rapidly than the cost of other goods and services, once the Commission has firmly established its monopoly.
The next milestone in the life of the Commission will be the publication of its charges scheme, expected some time in August. If the hints in the report are to be trusted, the scheme• will be a bitter pill to trade and industry. In the• short-distance field, the customer is
still able to rely upon the competition of the haulier to keep the Commission% costs down. If, as the report states, it were really not possible to obtain in every case the increase of 74 per cent. —which, it is suggested, was insufficient anyhow for the requirements of the R.H.E.it seems unlikely that any rigid scheme can be applied where there is alternative transport available.
The report, with the forthcoming charges scheme clearly in mind, refers to the introduction of new bases of chalge which will recognize that over a wide field the Commission's services are not a monoply and that the ordinary principles of competitive business must, therefore, be allowed a greater place in the fixing of charges in detail. The railway classification of traffics, with exceptional rates superimposed upon it, means, according to the report, that the remunerative traffic is lost to rail and the unremunerative remains.
This is an impossible position, and the Commission has already announced its intention to propose railway rates which will take much greater account of the actual cost of types of service on the one hand, and what the competitive market will allow on the other.
There is a good deal of sense in this, but one is left to wonder uneasily by what means the Commission, with one eye on the competitive market, is going to mulct customers of sufficient money to close the profitand-loss gap and to make good the £40m. already lost. The fears that the Commission will undercut its competitors and impose exorbitant charges where it has a monopoly seem well on the way to being realized.
No Great Effect
However critical Parliament is of the report, the effect may not be great. The Commission is now well in its stride and shows itself less and less inclined to brook opposition. Those sections of the community who question the wisdom of the policy being followed— whether they be customers or even employees of the Commission—are given short shrift. They must acknowledge the error of their ways before they even receive a hearing.
There is, the report suggests, too much criticism and too clamorous an opposition to changes that are being made solely with the good of the public in mind. Parliament, in its wisdom, will undoubtedly take no notice of this objection. Where a monopoly has been established, it is impossible to have too many safeguards.