Post Office (Subway) Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 17 December 1965.

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Photo of Mr Tony Benn Mr Tony Benn , Bristol South East 12:00, 17 December 1965

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Mr. Speaker, before explaining the Bill may I congratulate you on the astonishing increase in Parliamentary productivity which you have just reported to the House and, with generous modesty, attributed to others rather than to yourself. It is not without difficulty for Ministers and Members, but I think the main strain must have been upon you, Sir, and I congratulate you upon what in the Post Office is known as increasing the speed of answer, in the House.

I strongly support what you have said about Question Time as the main safe- guard of the rights of the House, and I must say that Parliamentary Questions look a lot more effective when one has to answer them than they sometimes do when one has to ask them. At any rate, I feel sure the whole House will wish to join me in congratulating you on what you have achieved. I shall try to be as brief in presenting this Bill as I would were it in answer to a Parliamentary Question.

The object of the Bill is to enable the Post Office to construct a subway under Severn Street in Birmingham, to connect New Street Railway Station to a new letter and parcel sorting office to be built in Severn Street. Let me first explain to the House why we need a new sorting office. The existing sorting office is housed in two linked buildings in Victoria Square in the centre of Birmingham. One of these buildings is nearly 70 years old and the other dates from the end of the First World War. By the start of the last war both buildings were becoming congested and the Post Office has been thinking of a new building ever since the war ended. Unfortunately, we have been prevented from doing anything about it until now by shortage of capital and the lack of a suitable site.

The situation in Birmingham has long been grim and is steadily becoming worse. We are suffering from acute congestion in nearly all phases of our work. In particular, the main unloading platform can deal with only six vehicles at any one time. There is no yard, and at night a long queue of vehicles waits in the street until space becomes available for unloading. During such times vans are often forced to drive round the building to ease congestion. Much of our sorting work has to be out-housed in temporary premises. There is no room to install modern mechanical aids. Both the existing letter and parcel offices are connected to New Street Railway Station by a tunnel. This provides direct and quick access through a British Railways subway to all the station platforms. There is no doubt that, but for the existence of this tunnel, the operation of the Birmingham office would have been impracticable long before now.

Recently we have been able to buy from British Railways a piece of land in Severn Street adjacent to property which we already own and use for a postal garage. We plan to demolish this garage and, on the combined site, to build a new letter and parcel sorting office at a total cost of about £4 million. We intend to spend a further £2 million for electronic letter coding and sorting machines in that office.

This new office will be the largest single postal building in the provinces. It will handle all the letter and parcel traffic posted and delivered throughout the Birmingham area and will deal with a considerable portion of the traffic for the neighbouring towns of Solihull and Sutton Coldfield. It will act extensively as a general forwarding centre for towns in the counties of Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire and to a lesser extent for towns over the greater part of the country. It will also include the Postal Customs Depot which is at present located some six or seven miles out of Birmingham at Sutton Coldfield. It is hoped that building work will begin in July, 1966, which is why we need the Bill this year, and be completed in two years. A further period of up to two years will then be required for installing the initial mechanisation equipment and the office will not be fully operational until the early summer of 1970. This gives an idea of the time span in projects of this kind.

The amount of space available at ground level on the site is not as big as we should have liked. The building will, therefore, be built on stilts so that the whole of the ground floor will be a covered yard. Space will be available for 130 vans to be dealt with at any one time and there will be no need for vans to queue on the public highway. This will be a great benefit to the people of Birmingham. Moreover, the removal of the office from its present site in the centre of the city will in some small way help to ease the general peak hour traffic congestion which, as anyone who travels in a great city knows, can be a serious problem. On the other hand, the change of site will break our present underground tunnel link with New Street Station.

The new subway for which the Bill provides is an essential link between the new office and New Street Railway Station. It will enable mails to pass quickly between the new sorting office and the railway subway system which leads to the station platforms. In fact, it would really be quite impracticable to carry all the mails to and from the station by van as the station does not provide adequate access for postal vans and, after its present reconstruction, will provide even less. Therefore, the subway is an essential part of this major reconstruction project.

The subway to be constructed under the Bill will run throughout its length under public streets; that is to say, it will run under Severn Street and the intersections of Severn Street with other streets. It will be under the carriageway of the street and not under the footway except at the frontage of the new sorting office site at one end and, of course, at the frontage of New Street Station at the other. It will not interfere with any cellars or vaults belonging to private property, and its construction should cause no inconvenience to the public. All the work will be done underground except on the Post Office site itself. The surface of the street will not be broken. The top of the subway will be some 15 to 18 ft. below the street surface. Electrically driven compressors will be used; these are reasonably quiet in operation. The method of construction—that is to say, the use of 14 ft. diameter prefabricated circular sections—will be such that there should be no risk of subsidence. When the subway is in use, the electric tractors and the trollies carrying the mail will not be audible at street level.

The Bill empowers us to construct the subway and gives us the necessary right to use the subsoil under the public highway. This subsoil is virtually without value to the owners and so we have followed the precedents set by certain private Bills and provided for use without compensation. The owners of adjoining property will, of course, be entitled under the Bill to compensation on the usual basis for any injurious affection, as it is called, of their property; that is, for physical damage or depreciation in value.

We expect that the subway will be clear of all underground sewers, water and gas mains and electricity cables but we cannot be absolutely certain about this. The Bill, therefore, makes provision in case it should be found necessary to alter the position of such apparatus or to take protective measures. The Bill also provides, purely by way of precaution, for the underpinning or strengthening of nearby buildings, but for reasons which I have given when I spoke of the circular prefabricated tubes, we do not think that there will be any risk. A provision of this kind, however, is usual in private Bills authorising the construction of works.

The construction of the subway is expected to cost £200,000 which will be paid from the Post Office Fund set up under the Post Office Act, 1961, which, as the House will recall, separated the finances of the Post Office from the Exchequer. Hence there is no necessity for a Money Resolution in connection with the Bill. This is a hybrid Bill and the usual procedure will apply. Anyone whose interests are affected and who wishes to object will have an opportunity to petition and have his case heard by the Select Committee.

I hope, Mr. Speaker, that my speech comes within the acceptable limits of presentation. This is a major project and a very important one for people who live in Birmingham and the neighbouring area. It gives me intense pleasure to bring the Measure forward, because all too often over the last 50 years postal building has been held back and I think that now we are able to look forward to a period where construction of this kind can go ahead. We had the Western District Office opened recently in London and now Birmingham will have an office worthy of a great city. I hope that the House will give the Bill a quick passage through all its stages.