Transport Nationalisation

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5283, 20 December 1946, Page 4

Transport Nationalisation

w r^HIS week has brought in the House of Commons the opening of the biggest fight over industrial policy that the British Government has yet undertaken. The debate on the second reading of the Transport , Bill, which is to set up a publiclyowned sVstem of inland transport, except ,by air and port f acilities, took^place this week. The Government is seeking approval of the measure in principle.' Thereafter, the Bill will go to a committee for examination of details and the likelihood is that it will not be available for the House of Lords for three or four months. » ' The Opposition claims that this huge Bill of 127 clauses and 13 schedules raises issues of constitutional principle, and that under general guarantees given by the Government, it ought to be considered not by a Standing Committee limited in numbers, but in Committee by the whole House. Mr. Herbert Morrison, for the Government, has denied that the Bill raises any serious constitutional principles. He said it dealt merely with the question whether the country's transport undertakings were to be owned by a State corporation or by ' private capitalists running them for their ora profit, and this he contended was a matter of expediency. The Government will have/ its way both when the Opposition asks the House to reject the Bill outright and when it votes against the proposal to commit the Bill to the Standing Committee. The Liberals agree that nationalisation of railways and road transport systems owned by railway eompanies, which cover a large proportion of Britain's passenger services, ought to proceed. But they object so strongly to nationalisation of road haulage that they are expected to vote against the whole measure. The Bill asks for power to set up a British Transport Commission to carry goods and passengers by rail, road, and inland waterways, „ to provide port facilities within Britain, and to carry on any activities which those undertakings may properly carry on. The Commission will have under its control separate executives for railways, docks and inland waterways, road transport, London passenger transport, and later, for hotels. The Minister of Transport is to have wide general powers to oversee and if he thinks fit to override decisions of the Commission. The Government is putting forth a bonsiderable team to make its case for the Bill, which it will argue is necessar.y to give the country an efficient and properly integrated transport service. On the lively question of compensation, Mr. W. S. Morrison, a member of former governments and a distinguished lawyer, will join with Mr. Ralph Assheton, a former Financial Secretary to the Treasury, in claiming that the Bill is unjust," not only to big eoncerns that hold railways stocks, but more particularly to the thousands of small stoekhblders known to have eomparatively small packets of them. The most intense fight is likely to be over the proposal to take over road haulage. Some 17,600 owners of 80,500 vehicles carry the goods of others under "A" licences; some 27,700 holders of "B" licences own 54,000 vehicles on which they carry partly their own goods and partly those of others for payment; and there are 149,000 holders of "C" licences who carry their own goods in their own vehicles. All are to be subject to a system of operating under permit — except by permission "B" . and "C" licensed vehicles will not be allowed to carry goods for more than 40 miles from their operating centres. The Opposition has claimed that this provision is far too restrictive, that it is not designed to serve the expanding economy which the Government claims to be trying to promote, and that industrial recovery will not be served by it. To all this, the Government has answers.