Skip to main content

Canal Traffic

Volume 103: debated on Monday 25 February 1918

The text on this page has been created from Hansard archive content, it may contain typographical errors.

3.

asked the President of the Board of Trade, considering the danger that might accrue owing to any interruption to the sea-borne traffic with the Port of London, if he will say what steps are being taken to develop the canal traffic between the Ports of Bristol and Liverpool on the West Coast and London on the East?

The points raised by the hon. and gallant Gentleman have for some time been before the Canal Control Committee, and have recently been specially considered. I am advised that the particular routes to which he refers are not under present conditions, and in view of the great shortage of labour on canals, capable of any great development of through traffic to London, but some traffic has been conveyed.

:Considering the congestion on the railways and the impossibility of feeding London by railways alone, if seaborne traffic should be cut off, should not everything possible be done to make these canals available at an early date?

:Will the hon. Gentleman consider the advisability of calling the attention of the Minister of National Service to this matter, in order to let him have some of the 100,000 Russians here to help him to clear the canals?