LOOKING-GLASS
Page 55
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Political Commentary By JANUS
ONE criticism sometimes made of Mr. Ernest Marples is that he listens to too many people and even keeps the flood of advice in spate by launching a new inquiry or setting up a new committee. He does not deserve too much blame for this. Much of what he hears is confusing or contradictory, whether it comes from vested or political interests; from the experts or from apparently neutral observers. He is the man who has to make up his mind in the end and act upon his decisions. so that he may be excused for continuing to listen until at last he comes upon something that makes sense.
On the subject of British Railways, the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries are as nearly neutral as it is possible to be. Their membership is drawn from both sides of the House of Commons and contains hardly any people who would care to style themselves as experts on the railways, although some of them have spoken on the subject in the course of Parliamentary debates. Their verdict should be valuable, for although they had only six months in which to make their inquiry they were able to call on the experts as witnesses and to weigh them one against the other.
Inevitably, the Committee found themselves involved in the arguments that crop up whenever transport is under discussion. Their handling of these arguments is as good a test as any of the soundness of their approach. On the whole they come out very well. As might be expected. they were not overawed by the• eminence or qualifications of any of the witnesses, and had no hesitation in saying what they thought. Such comments as " this did not seem a particularly good argument." or " all the prophecies must be called in doubt," are sprinkled throughout the report made to the House of Commons shortly before they rose for the summer holiday.
If it were possible to set a test that must be passed by any person or body wishing to put forward views on transport, a question on track costs might be useful. The Committee obligingly give their reply and emerge with distinction. The contention that railways should be relieved of track costs, say the Committee, is based upon the belief that the burden is unfair when viewed in the' context of competition with road users. In fact the road users pay each year in taxes considerably more than the annual cost of road maintenance, signalling and construction.
Reassuring Answer This may not seem a particularly difficult obstacle for an alert committee, although the argument about track costs has in the past been dragged by the British Transport Commission from one platform to another. The last has assuredly not been heard of it, for the Commission do not give up as easily as that. What is reassuring is to have the decided answer from the Select Committee. One is more inclined than before to accept their judgment on railway matters in general.
Plainly showing through the report is the bewilderment of the Committee at entering the looking-glass land of the 13.T.C., where values are reversed and nothing seems to stay in the same place for five minutes at a time. Time and again the Committee come back to the railway modernization scheme, as though fascinated by the many features that nobody seemed able to explain to them satisfactorily. They had no doubt assumed that, before ever submitting their scheme to the Minister of Transport. let alone launching it, the Commission would have worked out in detail exactly what they proposed to do. how much each item would cost, and what results might be expected from it.
Among the replies from the experts the Committee struggled in vain for what they had come to seek. The man from the Treasury described the scheme to them as a hotch-potch of the many things the Commission thought it would be desirable to achieve by 1970, " ill-qualified and not really readily explainable."
The plan was produced without any major over-riding priorities in mind, say the Committee. They give several examples of modernization already carried out, some of them successful, some the reverse. What evidently worries the Committee is the failure to apply or even devise a straightforward test of whether a particular item is worth doing, or whether, when put into effect, it comes up to specification. The fact remains that large expenditures have been undertaken on modernizing parts of the undertaking, without any precise calculation of what the profitability of those parts will be on completion."
• Turn for the Better What Parliament and the Minister may learn from the report is what they may some time ago have come to suspect: that financial irresponsibility is spreading through the Commission. This was the year when, according to the original modernization scheme, things would take a turn for the better, the losses would begin to shrink and the nationalized undertaking' would be on the road towards solvency and profits. Instead of this, the railways incurred a loss of £84m. last year and face the certainty of a much greater loss this year.
Having no financial criterion by which to judge the efficiency of the Commission, the Select Committee tried in vain to find a substitute. With some misgivings they settled on the statistics showing " wagon turn-round time." although the Commission themselves cast doubts on the value of the figures. They certainly give little comfort. The average turn-round time for British Railways wagons in 1948 was 8.26 days, and in 19'59 it had increased by 22 per cent. to 10.10 days.
A commendable attempt was made by the Committee to separate the cost of carrying goods and passengers on the railways. "We find one of the most difficult things in the Ministry is to discover where money is actually being lost," the Committtee were told by the Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Transport. One conclusion in the report is that the major cause of the loss is on the passenger side of the business. This is probably what the Commission wished them to think. On the other hand. the Committee cannot accept that the passenger side is responsible for the whole of the deficit.
Long-distance passenger services are generally profitable. and commuter traffic is not thought to lose a great deal.
It is the stopping trains that are the major source of loss. but it is hard for the Committee to believe that so small a sphere of operation could be responsible for an operating loss of as much as £42m. in a year. It seems likely, they say, that other passenger services, and freight, "do less well than stated." Once again the Committee find themselves at a blank wall because the information they automatically expect to find is not available. "The Commission cannot say with any precision where this £42m. is lost."