Orders of the Day — Finance Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 13 July 1966.

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Photo of Mr James Dance Mr James Dance , Bromsgrove 12:00, 13 July 1966

I want to underline what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Somerset, North (Mr. Dean) about rural buses. In Worcestershire we have been, and are, threatened with railway closures, and some of these have been carried out. When this scheme first came out under Dr. Beeching, most of us approved, provided we got adequate alternative forms of transport. I gave my support to closures of uneconomic lines and insisted that we must have this alternative form of transport.

The ordinary bus is not good enough today. We need a form of goods van such as they have on the Continent, where a woman can pack her pram or her trunk. I have even travelled in France with a thing on top of the vehicle carrying a lot of chickens, ducks and geese—[An HON. MEMBER: "Pigs?"]—yes, let us take a few pigs along, too. We need proper goods vans on our buses.

When I got in touch some time ago with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Mr. Marples) on this subject he produced a photograph of one of these things being tried out. They were not cheap. They were tied to the back of an ordinary single-deck bus and contained quite a lot of things that people in the country areas want to have carried —prams, mail carts, trunks, parcels, and so on, which cannot be taken in the normal bus.

The Government are completely falling down in this respect in not allowing these allowances. This development would cost money, but if the Government intend to pursue their policy, with which I do not disagree, of closure of certain uneconomic railway lines, they must provide this alternative transport. As people in the country areas know, though I do not suppose that everyone in the towns appreciates it, what is needed in the rural areas is not just a bus, but an extra bit of accommodation at the back or on the top of the bus for the carriage of goods.

I therefore plead with the Government to consider this subject again to see whether they cannot grant this allowance for something that is so completely essential for the efficient running of the bus services that I hope we shall have in the future and, in particular, for the welfare of the countryside.