Budget Spells the End of Rural Bus Services
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BY A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT THE Budget has removed the last hope of saving unremunerative rural
bus services. The municipal operators have already agreed to a substantial increase in wages, a reduction in the working week and other benefits. Negotiations on a similar claim by the unions on the provincial companies will begin on Monday. Some concession will, no doubt, be given. , Only a large cut in fuel tax could have offset higher expenditure on wages and prevent a new round of applications for increased fares and further pruning of unremunerative services. The Jack Committee, who are investigating rural bus services, are wasting their time.
In this context, the forecast by Mr. Heathcoat Amory, Chancellor of the Exchequer, of higher expenditure on the British Transport Commission has a particularly bitter flavour. In his Budget speech on Monday he said there was to be an important change in the method of financing the Commission. It had become apparent that the prospects of the railways, and of the Commission, no longer justified the continued financing of their deficit by the repayment of advances.
The Commission's future structure would be decided by the Government, but legislation to give effect to it could not be brought in until the next session of Parliament. In anticipation, the Chancellor was transferring £90m. from above the line to below it, and the amount of deficit would have to be made up by' revenue. The Minister of Transport would have to deal with this matter.
This was an admission that the railways are to receive a straight subsidy from the Exchequer.
Members of Parliament generally were disappointed that there was no change in the fuel tax. They thought the Chancellor had missed an opportunity to help to solve the country's transport problems. Instead, they commented, he appeared to be content to overcome them by allowing public transport to disappear, because operators could not afford to carry on.
Members now pin their hopes to action
next year, after the Jack Committee have submitted their report in the autumn. They believe that fuel tax will occupy a prominent position in the report.
The only changes in the Budget directly affecting road transport are technical. One will require the addition of chemical markers to duty-free heavy oils to facilitate their control. The other will amend the statutory definition of a hackney carriage, so that the amount of Excise duty payable will no longer depend oil the period of hiring.
When the Budget was debated in the House of Commons on Tuesday, Mr. Harold Wilson suggested that if oil burned for space heating were taxed at lid. a gallon it would be possible to abolish the duty on derv.
Mr. Eric Johnson (Cons., • Blackley) regretted the absence of any coneession to road users. Fuel tax, he said, would yield about £327m. this year. A reduction in the duty, passed on to consumers in the form of lower prices, would bring down the cost of many goods.
He particularly mentioned the Manchester bus undertaking which earned £6m. and paid £575,000 fuel tax a year, and protested against the discrimination against road users represented by the fact that only they paid a duty on diesel fuel.
Mr. Johnson considered that a 200 per cent. tax on luxuries could not be said to be fair—but this applied to diesel oil, which is "certainly no luxury."