asked the Postmaster-General what plans he has for altering the system in public telephone booths on manually operated exchanges, whereby operators cannot answer the caller until two pennies have been inserted in the coin box.

One-fifth of all public telephones operate on this system. In emergency, the special attention of the operator is obtained by using the emergency press button. A change of system would be too costly in labour and materials.

asked the Postmaster-General if he will make a substantial increase in the next allocation of public telephone kiosks to Dorset, having regard to the fact that this year's allocation is two and a half times less than the allocation to Devon.

No. The allocations, which have been agreed with the Rural District Councils Association, take account of population, size of rural areas and the numbers of existing public telephones. Judged on those considerations, they seem to me reasonable.