'Mr. Marples let public transport wither'
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Q PEAKING at Sunderland on Friday, Mrs. Barbara Castle, Minister of Transport, alleged that Mr. Ernest Marples had failed to cope with private transport and had "sat back and let public transport wither and die" when he was Minister. "Not for him a concerted effort to get heavy freight off the road and on to rail, as we propose to do by re-intergrating public road and rail transport under a national freight authority."
Mr. Marples preferred the arid dogma of competition between road and rail, said Mrs. Castle, which destroyed all hope of co-ordination, robbed the railways of some of their most lucrative traffic, pushed up their deficit and cumbered our roads with freight which ought to have gone by rail.
Nor had he planned to do anything about road safety. The road casualty figures for 1965 showed once again that this was one of the great challenges of the modern age. "I introduced into the Commons a Road Safety Bill to deal with the threat to motorists and pedestrians from badly maintained heavy vehicles", said Mrs. Castle. "As long as I am Minister of Transport I shall spare no efforts, however much I may be criticized, to reduce the appalling casualties on our roads."
"If only we had had a Labour Government in those 13 wasted years." she continued, "we should not be faced with the appalling congestion and casualties on our roads, and the traffic chaos in our towns we have today.
"The Tories were spending only am. on roads in 1955, and in the next nine years only managed to pull up their average yearly expenditure to £50m.
"Next year I shall be spending £148m. on new and improved roads in England alone. By 1970, Labour Government expenditure on roads in Britain will rise to £280m."