New Clause — (Saving for Statutory Harbour, Dock, and Pier Authorities.)

Part of Orders of the Day — Ministry of Ways and Communications Bill – in the House of Commons at on 1 July 1919.

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Photo of Mr Alfred Waterson Mr Alfred Waterson , Kettering

I am exceedingly sorry that the Government have found it necessary to bring in an Amendment of this kind. Upon reading the Press one was astounded to find that the Government had capitulated to private interests who had been endeavouring to work up that opposition which they desired the Government to think there was but which in reality there was not.

If we are to have a Transport Bill I submit that it should be a Transport Bill and not half a Transport Bill. I should have preferred, at any rate, if the Government had been sufficiently courageous, without introducing Amendments of this kind, to have stood by the Bill as it passed through the Grand Committee stage, and left the decision of the House to be given for or against the Government. The Government is courageous sometimes when particular interests are to be conserved. If they had been courageous on this occasion I am convinced, in my own mind that the country would have been at their back. We were told at the last election that the Government had a policy of reconstruction. This Transport Bill is part and parcel of that policy I regret very much that the Minister-designate and his colleagues should weaken the position, notwithstanding all that has been said about him in the country, by Amendments of this kind. It has been said that the proposal put forward in the Bill is of a burean- cratic nature. We have heard that— much of it— both in the Grand Committee and in the country. I want to submit that it is not so bureaucratic as many hon. Members of this House imagine. This Amendment, I believe, will destroy the advantages accruing from the proper co-ordination of the system of transport in the country. If we can control the railways, why not the ports, canals, piers, and liar-hours, and not a part of them?