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ELEVATION to the House of Lords is supposed to enrich that body with specialized knowledge at the highest level and with the ripe wisdom and experience of the elder statesman. No doubt the man or woman remains the same as before in spite of the translation, but is nevertheless expected to act in accordance with the traditions of the Upper Chamber. .There is no logical reason why this should happen, and the debate on the nationalized transport undertakings last week shows that an M.P., for example, does not change merely because he has been given a title, but transfers upstairs the same kind of debating technique as he has practised in the House of Commons.
Mr. Herbert Morrison, thinly disguised as Lord Morrison of Lambeth, repeated with variations the performance he has already given many times over. His verdict on the White Paper was that the Government had done their best to see that the railways did not pay their way, by cutting off the profitable elements beginning with road transport. The Minister of Transport he indicated as a great enemy of the railways, who had stimulated road competition to the greatest possible extent. The Conservatives, said Lord Morrison, were guilty of "deliberate disintegration" and the deliberate weakening of the railways.
THE mixture as before also came from Lord Lindgren, once Mr. George Lindgren and a Socialist M.P. "Ignore politics," he said, "forget nationalization or private enterprise," but was unable to take the advice himself. The 1947 Transport Act, in his opinion, failed because it did not deal with the problem of the C licence. The 1953 Act was "a pay-off to the road hauliers of this country for contributions they had made to Tory party funds." Every traffic expert who had ever expressed an opinion on the organization of transport, he declared, had always come down on the side of integration.
Far too much of this kind of knockabout fun characterized the debate. A few good things were said also, but one had hoped for more from the occasion. Considerable differences of opinion, not all of them on party lines, had been revealed in the House of Commons at the end of January. Much of the criticism there was negative. It was none the less interesting and the discussion •had continued outside Parliament. The House of Lords had a great opportunity six weeks later to take the matter a stage further and even try to force it to a conclusion.
There was no lack of material to hand. Reflection after the Commons debate tended to show that the most noteworthy contribution had come from Mr. Aubrey Jones, who had put his finger on one or two obscure points in the White Paper. His most notable criticism was of the lack of definition about the part that the Minister would play in the proposed new organization for nationalized transport. The family tree at the end of the White Paper showed the Minister apparently in full command, with a nationalized transport advisory council below him and rather diffidently on one side, Further down there were four boards, one for each of the main arms of what is at present the British Transport Commission and a holding company for a mixed bag of supposedly profitable assets, of which British Road Services was one.
Mr. Jones pointed out the lack of information about the
extent of the power the Minister would wield. By tradition the Minister tended to supervise and control the railways, while establishing his reputation by building roads. This dual role made him unfitted to be the dominant element in the proposed new organization, and he would find it difficult to be objective when acting as chairman of the proposed advisory council.
OTHER M.P.s as well as Mr. Jones pressed a further important point in seeking publication of the report of the Stedeford group. Road operators were strongly in agreement. Although the plight of the railways was the starting point of the group's deliberations, other forms of transport were very much concerned. Reluctance to publish the report might well mean that it differed in many important respects from the White Paper. Road operators would like to know what the differences were. Lack of this knowledge handicapped the House of Commons and it was not surprising that so many Members protested.
If the House of Lords had done no more than concentrate on the ambiguous powers of the Minister and on the Stedeford report, they would have performed a useful service. Lord Chesham, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport, who wound up for the Government, might have felt compelled to give some answer, which would have kept the issues open. They were not entirely ignored in the debate, but they were not in the forefront. Too much energy was devoted to grubbing up the past, or in making party political points.
Some of the speakers were more concerned with issues of their own. Lord Stonham (at one time a Socialist M.P.. Mr. Victor Collins) grumbled that the White Paper did not cure what he considered the deep-seated cause of the transport problem, the " unbalance in the flow of longdistance freight traffic between rail and road." Instead of competition, he would prefer to see "the kind of co-ordination which will lift millions of tons of freight from our over-used roads to our under-used rails."
ALL this seemed to be some distance from the centre of the subject under discussion. What with one thing and another, after two long debates, one in each House, we still know little more than the White Paper can tell us about the Government's precise plans. Road operators would prefer to have more knowledge, especially on Mr. Jones' point about the extent of the Minister's powers. If the Minister is in due course placed in a position where he has ultimate control over the railways, he will tend to identify their interests with his own and to support them whatever happens. This would be a dangerous situation from the point of view of C licence holders as well as hauliers.
Inconclusive and desultory discussion has left Mr. Ernest Marples with the initiative. He now has in effect the approval of both Houses to his White Paper. Further details of the structure it proposes will be filled in by the Bill that the Minister will introduce. Some of its provisions may well be unacceptable to road operators and to their champions in Parliament, but once the legislation has appeared in print, there will be great difficulty in securing any substantial amendment. The prestige of the Government will be at stake and Government supporters will be under strong pressure to vote for the measure as it stands.