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. an ingenious exercise to get the Geddes Committee to recommend a rail subsidy'
Page 91
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LET us suppose that Dr. Beeching had become convinced some time ago that, in spite of closures and liner trams, the railways could not survive without a subsidy. What action could he take? He would not be alone in his opinion, and in spite of some improvement the figures for 1963 do not offer much encouragement. But Dr. Beeching has expressed his opposition to a subsidy so frequently and so plainly that to seek one now would be too much like an acknowledgement of defeat.
Ample scope remains for indirect action. Facts and figures can be marshalled in such a way as to convince other people that a subsidy is necessary without specifically putting the thought into their minds. There are influential bodies to which the Government must pay heed. One of these bodies is the Geddes Committee which the Government themselves have set up and for whose oracular pronouncements the Labour Party at least pretend to be waiting before finally determining their own policy.
It would be an ingenious exercise to get the Geddes Committee to recommend a rail subsidy as the best solution to the road-rail problem. It could well be that the railway evidence submitted last week is designed for just this purpose. What they have said in effect is that the present licensing system is largely irrelevant to their problems and that no progress can be expected until some way is found of making long-distance hauliers and C licence holders pay more fat the services they provide or undertake. Although the point is not made, it is a natural corollary that the same result could be achieved by financial help to the railwa ys.
The arguments now being put before the Geddes Committee are not out of order, althouoh other bodies which have already given evidence have not concentrated on• taxation and subsidies. As the railways point out, the Salter Committee from whose proposals the original licensing system was devised were asked to look at "the incidence of highway costs" among other matters. Their report was also used for a revision of the licence duties.
Rai ways' Opinion Not Clear
As with many other points made in their evidence, the opinion of the railways on these licence duties is not entirely clear. Almost at the end of the document they do come to the point of declaring it "essential to have a sound fiscal framework for the road transport system so that rates and charges can be fixed in relation to the proper costs of the service provided Lack of adequate data on road transport costs, the railways continue, has not made it possible to use road taxation to co-ordinate road and rail transport. The whole burden has fallen on the licensing system which the railways make clear they regard as totally inadequate if not useless.
To many road operators this approach to licensing may seem quaint. Whatever the fine talk about co-ordination some 30 years ago, the function of the licensing system has been to protect the railways against road competition. So far as hauliers are concerned the results of the system are plain in the very slow increase in the number of road haulage vehicles.
The railways now appear to be arguing that they should have been armed from the beginning with two weapons, one licensing and the other fiscal, To prove the point they have published an appendix a good deal longer than the evidence itself and purporting to reveal, as it were for the first time, the relative true costs of rail and road freight transport over trunk routes.
I referred three weeks ago to the existence of this study. It turns out to be an engaging romp, no doubt much enjoyed by the back room boys of the British . Railways Board, through a maze of statistics and assumptions. A provisional assessment of the conclusion reached is that, if there were no roads and no railways, it would be cheaper to build railways than roads. Evidently Dr. Beeching would go further than this and say that long-distance operators should be taxed twice as heavily as at present for the privilege of using trunk routes.
The Geddes Committee may not be so easily convinced and they would hesitate to recommend the imposition of yet more taxation on road users with the inevitable effect on prices. Dr. Beeching no doubt appreciates this. WhatL ever he may say to the Committee, he has refrained in his written evidence from putting forward definite proposals. The main purpose has been to explain the policy contained in the plan for re-shaping the railways and to suggest that "any changes in the regulatory framework of the industry, whether fiscal or physical, should be compatible with the concept of rationalized transport" outlined in the plan.
What is the best the Geddes Committee can do for the railways? Their line of reasoning could go something like this. The railways are still losing money, although not quite so much as previously, and they are still losing traffic. So far as one can judge motives after 30 years, the licensing system was intended to stop this from happening. It has not succeeded, and something more drastic must be done to restore the balance between road and rail. Otherwise, even the new plans devised by the railways will not prevent the erosion of tralfic.
The main culprits are the long-distance haulier and particularly the C licence holder, whose exclusion from the licensing system is given by the railways as a major reason for the failure of the system to "achieve the proper balance of freight transport expected ". The road operators who have helped themselves to too much traffic, whether or not it is their own, must therefore be restricted. This can be done both by more stringent legislation, which will include the C licence holder and the Contract A operator, and by a railway subsidy rather than by increased road taxation.
Whether the Geddes Committee will reason along these. lines remains to be seen. If they do, much of the credit or blame will lie with the documents submitted to the Committee by the railways. Dr. Beeching has gone as far
as he can without actually asking for a subsidy. The Committee may not think much of his grievance and of the arguments and statistics he brings to justify it. They may feel that they cannot so easily ignore his evident plight.