I beg to move,

That this House welcomes the actions taken by the Government and by other bodies for research into and the practical application of traffic engineering and calls attention to the great potential in its increase use for the relief of traffic congestion.

It is a great privilege to have the opportunity to move this Motion this morning. I have approached the problem from the point of view of the great and increasing growth of traffic we have experienced in this country since the end of the war. From 1954 until 1958 there was a 40 per cent. increase in the number of vehicles on our roads, the actual figure of increase being about 2 million. In addition, modern developments in the manufacture of the motor car have led to increased size and greatly increased speeds of travel. Today, we are approaching the 8 million mark for the number of motor vehicles on our roads.

I will give an interesting and graphic illustration—it is not my own—of the measure of the problem. If all the vehicles in this country were put upon the available roads, all at the same time —if one can visualise such a state of affairs—there would be no more than between 45 and 50 yards between each vehicle. I find that a very salutary thought and a graphic way of remembering the complexity of our present situation.

Turning to the sombre and sad side of the problem, the number of road accidents, we now have about 300,000 people injured on our roads every year, and of these about 6,000 are fatal cases. That is an appalling figure which must command our closest attention.

For some years past I have considered our traffic problems—I have reason to believe that the Ministry has done the same—not in the light of the number of vehicles today, not even in the light of the present rapid increase, but looking to the time when we shall have 12 million or 15 million vehicles on our roads. Indeed, if our prosperity continues at its present rate, as I and, I am sure, every hon. Member trusts that it will, it is very likely that in due time there will be 15 million motor vehicles on the roads.

The size of the country will not increase and we shall be confronted with the necessity to deal with the progress and movement of that number of vehicles. It has always been my opinion that we have a special problem in this country. Britain is a small, important and well-developed land, with a large number of vehicles. It is a unique situation and demands unique, and, at times, unorthodox, methods to deal with it. We, perhaps more than any other country in the world, need to undertake further reseach into the science of traffic engineering.

The safe and easy flow of traffic can proceed from two means, first, by the construction of new roads—motorways, trunk roads, and the rest and the improvement of existing roads so that they may be made better and safer; and, secondly, by the orderly and proper regulation of traffic on the existing roads. Traffic engineering deals with both those aspects. It means the best possible use of an admixture of both. It is not a new science, except perhaps in respect of the name which has been applied to it in the last few years.

I feel that I should mention the efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Sir R. Nugent) who, with the good offices and financial support of business firms, has worked for the establishment at Birmingham University of a Chair of Traffic and Highway Engineering where is provided a twelvemonth course for those who wish to study this subject. That is a fine move in the right direction, and I wish to pay tribute to the assiduity of my hon. Friend.

Hon. Members, especially those using the Ml, and its ancillary, the M10— which I use frequently myself—are familiar with the pattern of the new roads that are being built—motorways, of which we hope to see more, trunk roads, and the rest. However, we must face the fact that these roads will not solve the problem, especially those aspects relating to the 15 million vehicles to which I have referred. We must take an adult view of this matter and realise that the relief of traffic congestion will not necessarily be achieved by the provision of new roads or facilities of that kind because, among other reasons, we have reached a stage when not only is it financially impracticable, but it is not a right solution to rebuild or to replan our existing towns.

This brings me to the other aspect of traffic engineering which, to put it in the simple language of the nursery, is to make the best use of what we have. In more official language it is to ensure that the existing road space shall be used to the maximum advantage for the safe—I emphasise that word —and easy flow of traffic by means of traffic regulation and guidance. To some extent, this applies in the rural areas where there are problems of traffic congestion on certain roads, but, in particular, it applies to the urban areas.

A person using one of the new roads discovers, when he reaches a town, that the traffic problem there is still at the same stage as it was ten or twenty years ago. That is nobody's fault, it is because at the moment the problem is insoluble. So we are faced with the need to regulate the traffic to avoid congestion in urban areas.

We all know of the schemes for oneway streets, the gyratory systems, the prohibitions on parking in the streets, the provision of traffic lights, and so on. There are many other measures of a short-term and a long-term nature, including the overhaul of traffic signs, which I commend to my hon. Friend as a possibility. When one compares the clear, useful and, at times, life-saving signs on the new motorways with some of the rather antediluvian, old-fashioned and last-generation signs on some of the other roads, one hopes that eventually we shall have up-to-date signs on all roads. I suppose that I make as much use of the new motorway as any hon. Member, but I am aware that far more people travel on other roads.

Other measures which are taken include marking and widening of carriage- ways, and the alteration of junctions, which assist in the control and regulation of traffic and enable us to make proper use of the roads and road ancillaries which we have. One great virtue about such measures is that they are a comparatively quick operation, and their beneficial results in easing the flow of traffic are out of all proportion to the time and expense involved. Often, by a minor improvement, if that be the right expression to use, it proves possible to produce a safe and valuable improvement in the flow of traffic.

Here I come to the special aspect of this science. In the past we in this country, in common with other countries, have tended to deal with traffic problems in a rather hit-and-miss fashion. Fortunately, we have often hit the target, but occasionally we have badly missed it. In the science of traffic engineering all measures which are proposed, whether involving the construction of a new motorway or a trunk road or a more minor operation, are carried out only after a proper study and survey has been made to find out exactly what are the needs of the situation.

Such a study would involve counting the vehicles, noting the type of vehicle and its size, its place of origin and destination, the speed at which it would be likely to travel and how it is being held up by present conditions and the number of parked vehicles on the existing road.

Last, but by no means least, there is the analysis of the cause of accidents if it is a dangerous spot. All these are prerequisites for solving the problems of traffic engineering. We have so much to do today, with the money we have and the effort we can put forward, that we cannot afford to waste anything, and we must have a proper survey beforehand if we are to produce the best results.

Following up that pre-study of the situation, it is necessary to have an after study. That has two virtues. First, it tells us whether we have hit the target, and how well, and, secondly, it shows whether anything is to be learned from the piece of traffic engineering that has been undertaken which will provide a valuable lesson for the future when we wish to carry out a similar plan elsewhere.

I now turn to a subject which is near to my heart. The matter of our traffic is a unique problem, which demands a unique remedy, and we must put no kind of harness or limitation upon the breadth of our thinking in our attempt to solve it, whether on the constructional or the regulatory side of traffic engineering. We must throw over some of the old ideas—I will not call them shibboleths —of the past. We must move away from the idea that the best way to travel from point A to point B is necessarily by the direct and traditional route, or even necessarily at the same level all the time. That idea will have to go. It has been made out-of-date by the growth of traffic. We must realise that, in traffic engineering, contrary to all the geometrical axioms, the shortest distance between two points is not necessarily a direct line.

The efforts that we would have made and the means that we would have adopted to solve a traffic problem fifty years ago are entirely different from those which we must use today. The difference is as great as that between the multiplication table and the electronic brain. We must be prepared to be unorthodox. I hope that the Minister and his advisers will be unorthodox—sometimes extremely so. I do not wish to try to coin an aphorism, but we must remember that, in this changing and complicated world, what is unorthodox today may well be the accepted pattern of tomorrow.

Under the auspices of the Roads Campaign Council, and in other ways, hon. Members on both sides of the House and I have been privileged to visit many countries in Europe where unorthodox developments have been carried out to deal with unique problems. Many of us have seen the three-tier road in Brussels—a road at the ordinary level with one above and one below it. This is an imaginative development, which has proved very satisfactory in meeting the special problem which arose.

In another country we saw something which was known colloquially and locally as the "bear pit." This unorthodox solution took the form of providing separate levels and separate means of movement for vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians, respectively. With the wonderful sense of humour which is a virtue of the human race, this development quickly received the title of the "bear pit." Nevertheless, it has done a very good job of work and has greatly facilitated traffic flow. In Rotterdam, I was privileged to see a system by which a vehicle leaving the road was enabled to rise above the ground floor of the building at which it was calling.

My right hon. Friend the Minister has recently visited the United States. He has been examining the advantages of tidal flow, which we are introducing in London, with other traffic developments. I know that he and the Parliamentary Secretary and their advisers at the Ministry are aware of all these developments and ideas which are being introduced abroad. It is right that tribute should be paid to the assiduity of my right hon. Friend in setting up the London Traffic Management Unit, with Dr. Charlesworth as its director. That is a good move in our effort to solve the special problem of London's traffic.

There is one thing which far and away transcends in importance the question of the easy flow and the economical use of our vehicles, and I would not like to conclude without placing this fact on record. It is a matter on which I have preached loudly and long, and which is very near to my heart. We must keep our eyes on the right horizon in these matters, and I want to emphasise that, side by side with all the problems of traffic, we must consider the rights of the individual to a fair share of the available road space. Everybody who wishes and has the resources to do so must have the right to acquire a vehicle and to use the roads for the progress of that vehicle.

In short, with our increasing prosperity and the development of people's minds and habits, more and more cars will pour on to our roads, bringing with them more and different problems. But I would not stop a single motor vehicle from coming on to our roads. That may seem self-evident, but it is right that it should be said. I believe that it was Voltaire who said:

"I disagree with every word you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it."

While realising that the more vehicles that come upon our roads the greater will be the problems we have to solve, I would regard it as no solution at all if we restricted the inalienable right of the in-individual, side by side with the weal and welfare of the community, to acquire his own means of transport and pleasure if he so desires.

We have shown by practical example that we are second to none in the building of roads. I am quite confident that our experts in the Ministry of Transport, and in our civil engineering profession, both inside and outside local government, have the brains and imagination to produce schemes and provide remedies which can stand comparison with those of any other country. I believe that as time goes on, and traffic problems get even more complex, the quality of that skill, those brains and that imagination will be more and more shown in the continuing and wider use of the science of traffic engineering. If my belief is right, and I am sure that it is, we shall have a safer and easier flow of the ever increasing amount of traffic which, both industrially and individually, is the very lifeblood of our community.

The hon. Member for Bedfordshire, South (Mr. Cole) is to be congratulated on selecting this subject, having been fortunate in the Ballot, because, as he has reminded us, we have a terrible prospect in the next few years of a large increase in the number of vehicles on our inadequate roads. Sometimes I think that there are too many unnecessary vehicles on the roads. We have the railways and our canals which are not being used to the full extent, and much of the traffic now on the roads could well be carried by these alternative means, thereby relieving some of the congestion.

I notice every morning, as I walk to my local tube station, car after car passing me in a long procession with one person in each. I do not know why these people take their cars into London. I suppose that the reason is partly one of prestige. There are certain people in certain jobs who feel that they must have a car. They are cars provided for certain jobs—I think sometimes unnecessarily—but it is a fact which anyone can witness that hundreds, if not thousands, of cars pour into London every morning with one driver in each and no one else, thereby cluttering up the streets in an unnecessary way.

It is still the case, as the hon. Member reminded us, that the roads are inadequate and we must face a big programme of new road construction. One thing which the hon. Member said with which I found myself in slight disagreement was that in this country we were second to none in road construction That sounds very patriotic but after various visits which he himself described to us a few minutes ago to other countries, is he certain that we are the best road builders in the world? Has he seen Brussels?

Yes, I have seen Brussels, Paris, Utrecht, Amsterdam, and Vienna. I thought that the hon. Gentleman was going to refer to the question of quantity, in which case he would have had a point, but if he is referring to quality, I do not take back a single word I said.

I must say, having seen some of the roads in other countries—I do not want to detail them—that it is rather hard to hold to the patriotic boast that we are the best road builders in the world, not only in the quality but in the speed with which those jobs are done. It amazes me sometimes to see how long it takes to build a road or bridge in this country compared with the speed with which it is done elsewhere. I know that Brussels was a special case because there jobs were rushed for the Exhibition, and probably there was more night work and Sunday work in those jobs than the Ministry of Transport would favour in this country.

Nevertheless, I think that if we could borrow some ideas from the engineers who built those roads in Brussels we might do better here. I wonder whether we use our existing facilities sufficiently. Only a few minutes ago I passed in a bus the entrance to the old Kingsway Tunnel, now closed. How many years has the Kingsway Tunnel been closed? Why cannot it be used to divert some of the traffic down the busy streets in the Strand and away from Kingsway? It seems terrible that we should be so slow in some of these respects.

I do not intend to make a long speech, but I want to follow up two points which I have endeavoured to put at Question Time. One is in regard to road signs. The hon. Member touched on this, but he did not deal with the point in which I am particularly interested. That is whether we cannot have a little more standardisation between road traffic signs in this country and those in the rest of Europe. Throughout Europe we see standardised road signs. They are self-explanatory and seem to me to be quite clear. We seem to prefer a different lot altogether and some of them are quite different signs.

We are getting each year more and more traffic from the Continent. We want to encourage tourists to come here with their cars and people to go from this country with their cars to the mainland of Europe. Surely, it is adding to the dangers of driving in other countries when there is not a complete set of standardised road traffic signs. I urge the Minister to have another look at this to see if we can make some progress in that direction.

The other point which I have raised at Question Time, and which I take this opportunity to follow up, concerns the statistics of motor accidents on the roads. We get many sets of statistics, but one set which I have asked for and have never been able to get is that showing the type of cars involved in accidents. It may be that there is a private book kept at the Ministry of Transport with these statistics, and I can well understand that there is perhaps hesitation on the part of the Ministry to publish them because it would upset certain motor manufacturers. I have, however, some reason to believe that, if this information were made known, it would be useful in preventing accidents. Let me put the direct question: are certain makes of cars more accident-prone than others? I believe that the Minister would find a fruitful source of research in that direction.

Those are the only two points which I want to make. I support the Motion, and I could just as easily support the Amendment which is on the Order Paper. What we are concerned about this morning is to rub into the Ministry of Transport the inadequacy of our road system and the necessity for the Ministry to give the Treasury no rest until it gets more money from it to build better roads.

I should like to add my congratulations to those already extended to my hon. Friend the Member for Bedfordshire, South (Mr. Cole) on raising this very interesting topic today.

I was able, about eighteen months ago, to make a contribution in this field after visiting the United States, which has a very long experience of traffic engineering. Such information as I was able to give to the Ministry of Transport is to the credit of the Ministry and its officials, who proceeded to put my ideas into operation. I think that my hon. Friend is perfectly right in his comments on the present state of the congestion on the roads and the steadily increasing accident rate.

As all of us who take part in these debates and are interested in them know, the majority of the accidents, about 75 per cent. of them, take place in the urban areas. My hon. Friend says that the number of motor cars and other vehicles is likely to double or more in the next ten years. One thing is absolutely certain, that the capacity of the streets in the middle of our towns cannot be doubled in the next ten years. We could not double that capacity without pulling down all the houses.

It is, therefore, against this background that we are now considering this science of traffic engineering, which is primarily concerned with controlling and disciplining the movement of traffic. I would think that it is in this atmosphere that people generally would be prepared to accept the disciplines that traffic engineering implies. It is only when we are feeling desperate because of loss of life and of limb, and, indeed, loss of time, from which we all suffer, that we are prepared to accept the disciplines, which apparently will have some interference with our personal convenience.

Traffic engineering means essentially just that—that we are prepared, in, a system of traffic engineering, to accept patterns of movement worked out by the experts, whose results will bring about smoother and safer movement, and eliminate the conflicts Which at present are causing congestion and, indeed, causing accidents. So I would think that now is the time when there is a very fair wind behind the Minister to press ahead with this development.

Traffic engineering is basically the application of the science of engineering to the movement of traffic on the roads. as distinct from highway engineering, which is the application of engineering to the construction of roads. The two are complementary, of course; they should run together, and that will result in the right kind of roads being built, and traffic engineering will then ensure that the right use is made of them once we have built them.

Of course, one of the things that we as a community have to understand and to accept is that the idea that one gets into one's car and goes for a spin, using one's car as, so to speak, the wings of a dove giving one flight, is really finished. We really must understand that when we go on the roads today, whether in the towns or in the country, we are going only from A to B, and we really must accept the disciplines of the road, if we are to do it safely both to ourselves and to everybody else. The wings of a dove cannot be used till we have arrived at our destination. Then we can get out into the country, go for a walk, or go to the seaside and have a swim. On the roads our wings must be clipped.

Perhaps the wings may be more useful if we do not arrive at our destination.

All too often, but the wings I am speaking of I am speaking of metaphorically.

We did, my colleagues and I, in the Report of the Committee on London Roads, in Appendix II, produce a definition of traffic engineering, and it is there set out fully for those who are particularly interested in traffic engineering.

Traffic engineering is not new in this country. That needs saying. Most of our highway engineers have been practising it for many years and particularly in connection with new construction, but its application to traffic movement here, as my hon. Friend said, has been rather sporadic, intersection by intersection. There are some very fine pieces of traffic engineering. Not very far from here, Trafalgar Square is an admirable piece of traffic engineering which achieves coordinated movement there.

What is needed now is the comprehensive application of traffic engineering to whole cities and whole towns so that the whole movement is co-ordinated and planned from the centre, and that could have a dramatic effect in improving traffic movement, in achieving both a smoother flow and a safer flow and the elimination of traffic conflicts.

In speaking of traffic conflicts, I am speaking not only of cars and bicycles, but also of pedestrians. Traffic engineering is just as much concerned with them, too, so that their movement does not conflict with vehicular movement, and so that vehicles and pedestrians can move in safety. I think it would be no exaggeration to say that we might well improve movement by more than 25 per cent. and even up to 50 per cent. in London if we could establish comprehensive traffic engineering throughout the whole movement in the City.

The broad effect is to change the present movement of what may almost be called the free-for-all. Although intersections are controlled, still one can go almost where one likes in one's car. Of course, one must keep to the left of the road, and so on, but still one can go almost where one likes. There must be a change of that philosophy, which comes to us from the past, from the days when the roads were scarcely occupied at all. compared with how they are used today, with our present very heavy congestion.

We shall have to change that situation to one where there are patterns of movement which have been designed by the experts to give free and safe movement, something much more comparable to the movement of trains in the railway system, where operating engineers in the central control room have designed patterns of movement so that trains can move safely, without danger of collision. Indeed, they watch them all the time as they move, and thus they get safe, smooth working. They are always watching and planning from the central control room.

It is that to which we have to move in our cities. I have stood in the control rooms in both Chicago and Baltimore, and in Baltimore particularly one can see on the dials there the volume of traffic flowing along the main arteries, and there are various measures which can be taken—for example, reversible lanes, which we already know about, too, and the off-set of traffic lanes, with which we are not so familiar. It is that concept of traffic engineering which can give us great benefits in this country.

The techniques, as my hon. Friend has rightly said, are really familiar to us. We have traffic lanes, one-way streets, no-parking regulations, reversible lanes, and so on—and, indeed, parking meters, which have an essential part to play. What is not familiar to us is this idea of the comprehensive application of traffic engineering to a whole city.

And here is the point which comes with it: 100 per cent. enforcement of the regulations once they are made. The more precise and the more ingenious the traffic engineering arrangements which are made, the more essential it is that there should be 100 per cent. enforcement, because if we do not have that, then the more ingenious the arrangements which are made the more likely they are to lead to danger rather than safety.

There are, therefore, three things which have to be followed up by my hon. Friend and his right hon. Friend. First, the training of traffic engineers so that we have a supply of the experts; secondly, getting the traffic authorities working in the cities; thirdly, enforcement. Those are the three pillars on which the working of smooth and safe traffic rests.

Some measure of training is going on in the post-graduate courses. I hope that my hon. Friend can tell me what is happening in the one in which I was particularly interested in Birmingham, where we managed to get a Chair of Traffic and Highway Engineering established, with the help of those interested in the roads; and very generous help it was. I should like to hear what is happening also in the two other postgraduate courses. We must get these men trained so that we can get a supply of trained traffic engineers so that we can have trained traffic engineering units available in all our cities.

Secondly, there are the traffic authorities. There is no one traffic authority in the whole of the country other than London, but there are the city and town councils, and they have the necessary authority in their areas. They are the highway authorities and they are also the police authorities. They can get ahead now if they wish to. They can get traffic engineering units going in their cities. The same may be said of the county councils.

The problem really is in London. The Minister has responsibility for traffic in London, but there are 28 Metropolitan boroughs which are highway authorities. Obviously, if we were to have 28 traffic authorities in London the situation would be even worse than it is now. Therefore, somehow my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport has to find means of making his authority effective, welded into one traffic authority which can deal with the whole London picture.

I stress the matter of enforcement. I know that hon. and right hon. Members who have studied the matter here have seen the necessity for 100 per cent. enforcement, but outside the House I am sure that it is not really understood yet. The traditional system of enforcement by the police force is a so-called token enforcement, on the principle that if an occasional offender is picked up and prosecuted it will be sufficient to ensure that others observe the regulations. But all experience shows that this is simply not good enough.

There must be a sufficient number of enforcement personnel to make sure that every offender is picked up, because the offender who goes against the traffic lights or a reversible lane, or parks in the wrong place, is extremely dangerous and he also seriously affects the flow of traffic. My right hon. Friend must consider the question of providing for traffic wardens who will extend the present enforcement and a ticket system which will speed up prosecution. It is not a criminal offence to leave a car in a wrong place, but there must be adequate machinery to pick up every single offender. Then, being a law-abiding community, we shall accept the regulations, knowing that we cannot get away with it. We shall thus have the benefits of these new techniques.

As we get these traffic engineering units and traffic engineers going to work, they must not only work out the right patterns of movement and the right regulations. It is equally important that they should have the ability to sell these ideas to the community and to convince road users, whether they are car drivers or pedestrians, that these regulations, which, in themselves, may appear to some extent to be interfering with their convenience and to be preventing their doing something which they were doing before, taken over all, will benefit the community by making traffic movement safer and smoother.

It is essential that the traffic engineer should learn the techniques of propaganda. In American cities traffic engineers go to an infinity of trouble and take anything from six to twelve months to put over even one regulation and to obtain the co-operation of the public before the regulation is finally enforced. This matter of propaganda should be attended to just as much as the actual traffic engineering techniques that will be involved.

I would say to my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport that, due to the desperate situation on our roads today, especially in the towns, there is a very fair wind behind him and the Minister. Now is the time to press on. There are many difficulties, legislative and otherwise, which will have to be dealt with, but great benefits will be got from all this and I am certain that support will come from both sides of the House. I urge my hon. Friend to press on and make this traffic engineering technique something from which we can all benefit.

I am glad of the opportunity of following in the debate the hon. Member for Guildford (Sir R. Nugent), to whom we always listen with respect, particularly on this subject, in which he has had so much experience. I believe that the mood of the British people is such that if the Government showed initiative they would have all the support that they require. The time when people can expect absolute liberty to take their cars where they like and when they like is coming to an end. The sheer fact of numbers makes it imperative for Her Majesty's Government to issue new directives concerning the rights of people on the road.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bedfordshire, South (Mr. Cole), to whom I listened with great care. I apologise that I was not here at the beginning of the debate. I congratulate the hon. Member on having selected for debate today a subject which, I believe, is the greatest single social problem, with the exception of housing—to put myself right for next week—that we are likely to face during the 1960s.

If we fail to solve this problem within the next decade, we shall lose our place among the major Powers, because this cluttering up and slowing down of the nation's transport has a profound economic effect. But, unlike the hon. Member for Bedfordshire, South, I would be absolutely ruthless with the heavy traffic on our roads. I would force the heavy stuff on to British Railways. I believe that the time is coming when, if we are to have freedom for ordinary transport and the ordinary motorist, the heavy lorries which slow us down and nearly suffocate us with their fumes, which are a major cause of road accidents, will have to have their claws clipped very much indeed. I am sorry if I have mixed my metaphor, but I have the advantage of having done it in a place where that is a common complaint.

We require a national plan to be undertaken with all the enterprise and initiative that we associate with a military action, because if we are to solve this problem it is no good saying that the local authorities have their powers. Even the hon. Member for Guildford seemed a little too complacent about the fact that the road authorities have the powers. He said that they could do this work tomorrow. But that is just not good enough. They have had the powers for a long time and they have not done the work.

There is a very good reason for their failure. Who will pay for all this traffic engineering, for the new flyovers and the crawl-unders? Quite clearly, the Government must tell the local authorities that we accept this as a national problem and that it is not right that certain local areas should bear heavier burdens than others in solving the problem.

Newport, for instance, is a terrible bottleneck in South Wales. It takes all the traffic travelling from the Midlands and the London area to South Wales. Why should Newport have to bear the main burden, or at least a heavy burden?

It is about a quarter of the burden, at the most.

Why should it have to bear a quarter of the burden? All the traffic of South Wales passes through Newport. This is a national problem, not Newport's problem.

Then there is Cardiff. It is the rush hour in Cardiff from seven o'clock in the morning—well soon after, I had better be careful if this speech is reported there; but it seems like the rush hour all day.

We all know that another factor which has aggravated this problem is that the motor companies are imitating the Americans in making ever bigger and bigger motor cars. We all like nice cars. I have a Ford Consul. It is a very good car—if I may be "commercial" for a moment.

Perhaps the hon. Member will now get a new one.

Well, "Barkis is willin'."

It is strange that while the roads are getting more and more congested cars are getting bigger and bigger. I should have thought the Ministry of Transport would be in touch with the large motor firms over their car designs, because the U.S.A. is beginning to turn back to smaller cars—ours, I am pleased to say. So there is a pointer in that fact.

When the Minister replies to his hon. Friend, I hope that he will be able to say that the Ministry has plans for financing the endeavours of local authorities. Secondly, what plans has he got for training skilled personnel in the control of traffic? If the policemen do any more of it, they will not be able to do anything else. So what plans has the Ministry for providing us with a skilled cadre of transport officers throughout the country? Further, is the Minister willing to give the local authorities greater financial support over publicity?

It is not the job of the engineer to educate the public, for he does not know much about publicity. We want the experts to attend to this, and I would suggest having a separate department for it. In my opinion, the transport committees of local authorities are moving into a leading position. I want to see publicity developing side by side with a new traffic warden system and side by side with new freedom given to traffic engineers.

Who deals chiefly with the problem today? The city engineer or the sur- veyors' department. The city engineer is concerned with nearly everything from sewerage to the great problem of road traffic. To think that this is good enough for the 1960s is to ask for defeat. I believe that the officials are "cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd," and that it is the job of the Ministry to set those people free and to show that this is regarded as a major problem which must have high priority.

Like previous speakers I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Bedfordshire, South (Mr. Cole) has chosen this important subject today because traffic is rapidly becoming one of our most important problems and we cannot debate it too often.

My hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Sir R. Nugent) was chairman of the London Roads Committee, which produced an excellent Report last year. He said that there are many local authorities concerned, especially in the London area where there is the greatest trouble in dealing with traffic. There is another aspect of the problem, namely, that in any given place a number of different authorities have to be consulted before anything can be done.

For example, am I not right in thinking that if a one-way street is to be made anywhere in your constituency, Mr. Speaker, not only does the Westminster City Council and the City of London have to be consulted, but also the London County Council, the Metropolitan Police, the Ministry of Transport, the London Chamber of Commerce and the London and Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee, on which all those bodies are represented, and possibly also the Residents' Association?

I hope that the London Traffic Management Committee, which I understand my hon. Friend has set up or is setting up, will be given by legislation almost dictatorial powers for the regulation of traffic on existing roads. Naturally, we cannot give such a body dictatorial powers for making new roads or acquiring property. I cannot help feeling that there is a great delay in carrying out fairly obvious recommendations for one-way traffic schemes, no-parking regulations, and so on.

Most of the previous speakers have dealt with the application of traffic engineering in general terms. I shall refer to one or two special points which will show that there has been appalling delay over the years due to the lack of power. One of the applications of traffic engineering, according to the definition laid down by my hon. Friend in his Report, is one-way streets. Yet there seems to be tremendous delay in getting these schemes put into operation in London.

Looking back over the years in which I have been pressing for one-way streets, I cannot help feeling that there is somewhere in the machinery somebody with an almost pathological hatred of them. I once received a letter from my right hon. Friend the present Minister of Pensions and National Insurance on the subject of one-way streets in reply to one in which I had quoted the excellent system operating in Birmingham. My right hon. Friend replied, "You quote Birmingham at me; I quote Oxford at you". He then quoted the Cornmarket, where one-way working had been abolished and there had been a return to two-way traffic. The quotation was made in triumph, rather as a victory for two-way working. That is the wrong way of looking at the problem today. We should be considering the triumph of one-way working in a place where there has been two-way working.

As an example, I cite the long struggle over Jermyn Street. Everybody knows that it is wide enough for three lines of traffic, but at one time, before there were regulations about no waiting, both sides were taken up by parked cars, leaving room for only one line of traffic between them. For three years there was often complete chaos, which was sometimes caused when two vehicles approached from opposite directions and both had to stop. Finally, after what seemed to be terrible reluctance, one-way working was introduced on an experimental basis in 1956. After the experiment had been going for nine months, an order was made in 1957 introducing permanent one-way working.

The same tiling happened over Queen Anne's Gate, where there is room for only one line of traffic. Hon. Members may also know Strutton Ground, which is off Victoria Street. I was told in 1952 that there was very little traffic there and that anyway it was all local. It is not a question of the volume of traffic but of the fact that two vehicles travelling in opposite directions cannot pass where there is room for only one. If British Railways tried to run two trains travelling in opposite directions on the same line, the result would be chaos. Yet that is what we are trying to do in London in so many of our narrow streets.

I will take the time of the House to quote one other example, Seymour Place in St. Marylebone, the southern end of which is like Queen Anne's Gate, and where there is just room for two vehicles abreast. One Sunday evening last summer, when one side of the street was choked with parked cars, I had to back out across the traffic lights into Upper Berkeley Street to make room for a car coming in the opposite direction. This is highly dangerous and I should say that it contravenes the Highway Code.

In the Answer to a Question which I put in the House, I was told that oneway working is one of the factors which are being taken into consideration in regulating traffic in the street. The other was the introduction of no-waiting regulations. No-waiting regulations never apply in the evenings, when the streets can be choked with cars. Any car that enters that street is apt to come up radiator to radiator with another car coming from the opposite direction. I should like to know whether a stop will be put to this sort of thing.

What is the objection to one-way working? Why was it not introduced ages ago? Will my hon. Friend seriously consider that point? This is only a small instance in a huge area where consideration should be given to the possibility of one-way working in many other streets. I cannot understand the delay over a trivial point like this, and I hope that the London Traffic Management Unit will be given great powers to deal with it.

The hon. Member for Accrington (Mr. H. Hynd) mentioned the Kingsway Tunnel. I should like to support what he said. It is ages since that tunnel ceased to be used for trams. We were told that we might as well choke it up with cement for what good it is. We were then told that possibly it could be used for traffic in one direction. When will this come about, because it would be very useful for carrying traffic from the Embankment into Kingsway?

The way in which streets in every city and town are cluttered up with parked cars all day every day of the week, except possibly Sunday, is appalling. A certain amount of progress has been made, particularly in Westminster and St. Marylebone, by the provision of parking meters, but we have a long way to go before we clear off the streets all the cars in places where there are not and probably never will be parking meters.

I should like to refer to the provision of off-street parking in multi-storey garages or car parks. We are always told that this is a matter for local authorities or private enterprise, but I suggest that the Ministry must give stimulus to both local authorities and private enterprise to do something about it. Selfridge's set a good example, and I hope that other firms and organisations will do the same. If they do not, however, I feel that the Ministry must provide some impetus if the problem is to be solved. It is no good leaving the matter in the hope that something will happen.

In his statement before Christmas, my right hon. Friend said that he proposed to try to reduce the number of right-hand turns. This is tied up with the problem of one-way streets. The more one-way streets that can be introduced in suitable areas—I admit that all areas are not suitable—the more can right-hand turns be prohibited. This will also help to solve the problem of congestion, and, I hope, contribute to road safety. Here I should like to say that I agree with the Amendment of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett). It is vitally important that we should consider the safety angle as well.

I should now like to refer to some points about parking which I have often mentioned before. One of them is particularly topical. There is a lot in the papers this morning about the possibility of the railways selling off land for which they have no use. Is any progress being made with the possibility of using for car parks land which is now occupied, although not used, by the railways, particularly in the semi-outer areas like Hampstead, Kentish Town, Clapham Junction and places like that? Would it not be possible for people to park their cars in places like this and then come into the centre of London by train? Has any progress been made about the problem of building car parks or garages over railways, which I do not think is impossible? It may be costly, but there must be an enormous amount of railway land in the London area—I do not say that it is all waste land; obviously much of it is not—which might be available for use in dealing with this appalling parking problem.

The hon. Member for Accrington wondered why so many people come into London every day by car, often only one person in a car. They do it for comfort, presumably because they prefer that to strap-hanging on British Railways or the Underground. I have always supported the policy of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence of trying to persuade people to park their cars outside London or at stations in the suburban area and then come into London by train. I hope that that policy will be pursued by my right hon. Friend. That is why I say that we must provide parking space or multi-storey garages in the outer areas.

My own Borough of Wembley has tried to find parking space for people who use Wembley Park Station, which is a very suitable station for people who wish to travel on the Bakerloo Line or the Metropolitan Line and thus complete their journeys by train. However, there has been difficulty in finding ground quite close to the station. In another part of Wembley it has been suggested that a car park should be built over a railway cutting on the British Railways line which goes past Wembley Stadium and Wembley Hill Station towards Beaconsfield. It has been calculated that at a cost of about £60,000 a car park could be built over the cutting to provide for about 300 cars. Money is required for this project. It is obviously too much of a burden to put on the local authority. That will help the parking problem in the Borough of Wembley itself, although it will not help the commuters so much.

Coventry has shown that progress can be made. I understand that two large car parks have been built in Coventry, one to provide parking for 1,500 cars at a cost of only 6d. a day. I know that the authorities there have found it easier to deal with the matter, because Coventry was heavily bombed, but surely, with a little ingenuity, plenty of land in London and other places which is now being put to little purpose could toe used to solve this problem.

There are many other points which I could make, but I will not do so because many other hon. Members want to speak. I repeat that we must give almost dictatorial powers to the London Traffic Management Unit if we are to solve the problem. We must cut out the enormous amount of consultation which takes place between the Ministry, the London and Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee, the police, the L.C.C. and the Metropolitan Boroughs, because this causes months of delay. As I have said, I hope that the unit will be given dictatorial powers and will be able to use the principles of traffic engineering, in which, no doubt, all its members will be trained, to help solve this problem.

I should like to add my thanks to those expressed to the hon. Member for Bedfordshire, South (Mr. Cole) for introducing this Motion. Traffic engineering and traffic conditions constitute one of the great problems we face today. I am pleased that Members on both sides who are here today have given great attention to this problem. I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Guildford (Sir R. Nugent). I remember that when he was Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport he took great interest in road safety. He gave me great help in my constituency in getting pedestrian subways built. I am therefore pleased to have this opportunity to pay tribute to him.

This is a big problem, because it is a hangover from past centuries. We have a really beautiful countryside; indeed, when I see our English and Welsh villages and our Scottish small towns, I think we have some of the most beautiful places in the world; but our roads and lanes were not built for the millions of cars now coming on the roads. The problem is an urgent one, and I hope that, when it is tackled by the Ministry, those responsible will do all they can to preserve the British countryside, although we do need these main roads and new by-passes, which are very important in order to avoid traffic congestion in our towns and cities.

I want to give my support also to the points put forward about parking. Barking takes place in London not only in the day, but at night. One can go round Central London at night and see the cars parked not only on the roads, but often on the pavements as well. In all these schemes, therefore, there must be provision for proper parking places and car parks. In relieving traffic congestion on the roads, the greatest social problem— even greater than parking places, though these may help—is how to reduce death on the roads. When in the corridor in the House last night I saw the casualty figures for January on the tape machine, and they shocked me.

In January, more than 500 people were killed on the roads and more than 22,000 were injured. That makes a tragic average for the year of 6,000 dead and more than 250,000 injured. Of all these problems—parking, roads, and garages —the greatest is how to reduce these sad casualties and tragic deaths, and I urge and plead with the Government to give urgent attention to save the lives of our people.

If there were a great tragedy in a town, such as the terrible earthquake abroad recently, and 6,000 people were killed and a quarter of a million injured, the whole nation would be shocked—and in sorrow—

The world would be shocked.

yet these are the casualty figures on our roads in one year. Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary will break up these figures for us. I understand that quite a number of deaths occur among elderly and middle-aged people. If the Ministry does not keep a record—

We do.

I am very pleased to hear that, because this is a matter of great importance and it will assist research into this problem.

I support the plea for pedestrian subways. I believe that in the Hyde Park underpass, which we welcome, there will be pedestrian subways leading to Hyde Park. I hope that in all the urban areas these subways will be built. Recently I put a Question to the Parliamentary Secretary, and I think he said that there were forty-two subways now being constructed in various places. I do not think any hon. Member on either side of the House will begrudge the cost of those subways. They are 100 per cent. safe; old people, children and mothers with their prams can use them. Whatever the cost, I urge the Government to build subways, because I am sure they will lead to greater safety for the pedestrians. I hope that, as far as possible, the Government will try to keep pedestrians off the main roads—indeed, I believe that is the policy on our main motorways.

I hope that we shall press on with new schemes like the Hyde Park underpass. I support the plea by the hon. Member for Wembley, South (Mr. Russell) about the Kingsway Tunnel. I remember when the trams went under Kingsway to the Embankment. The tunnel is still not used and should be given urgent attention. Is it possible for it to be used as an underpass, in order to relieve traffic congestion?

I should also like the Parliamentary Secretary to make sure that attention is paid to urban areas. We think of London, Cardiff, Birmingham and Coventry, but in the outer parts of Middlesex, in places like Wembley, Feltham and Hounslow, some attention should be paid to traffic congestion. In my constituency, Feltham, there is a High Street which was once a village high street, and, indeed, still is in width. The traffic congestion there is enormous. We have been waiting many years for a new shopping centre and a new development plan, although the war has been over for fifteen years. The population of Feltham has grown to 50,000 and it should have a proper high street, so that traffic congestion could be relieved, and a proper shopping centre, for the people of the town.

I support the Motion and also the Amendment in the name of the hon. and gallant Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett). I again urge the Parliamentary Secretary to give urgent attention to the question of road safety. If we cannot entirely and at once wipe out these tragic casualties, at least let us reduce them and also get rid of these terrible deaths on the roads. Let us provide proper roads for traffic and make our highways and byways safe for the British people, both for the motorist and the pedestrian.

I agree with the apposite reference of the hon. Member for Feltham (Mr. Hunter) that the road situation is a hangover. It certainly has all the symptoms, producing many ghastly headaches for planning engineers. I also sympathise with and support him when he refers to the tragic toll of accidents. The great part which traffic engineering can play in preventing accidents, and the congestion they can cause to our traffic, is a major factor in tackling the situation.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bedfordshire, South (Mr. Cole), first on his luck in the draw, and secondly, on his excellent judgment in bringing forward a topic of such great importance. At a time when Parliament is pressing for greater expenditure for new roads and for improvements, it is absolutely vital that we should learn "know-how" by which the roads can be improved and the existing facilities used to the maximum effect.

I welcome the Report produced by my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Sir R. Nugent). He sets out three aspects of traffic engineering: a study of the flow of traffic—probably the first fundamental—the creation of a maximum capacity for traffic to travel through the roads; and the safety factor. In setting out the fact that that applies both to new roads and, as we often forget, to existing roads, he also referred to car parks. Every car that travels into a town every day has to go somewhere, and if it is not put in a car park it will clutter up the roads.

I had something to say on this subject at Question Time the other day. It is essential that not only should the good lead of Selfridge's, in providing car-parking facilities, be followed, but that Government Departments should also play their part. I regret that at the new Air Ministry building, in Whitehall Gardens, there should be set up what will no doubt be attractive rose gardens for the air marshals to look at. The Ministry of Works should be pressing for some of those gardens to be used as car parks, so that some of that traffic can be taken off the roads. I have nothing against the Air Ministry, because I was myself a member of the Royal Air Force.

Another aspect of the problem is pedestrians. In his excellent Report, Mr. J. T. Duff, a senior engineer in the Ministry, has referred to fences or barriers around pavements providing a 10 per cent. reduction in pedestrian casualties. Bearing in mind that very old people form a high proportion of the casualties and, even more tragically, so do very young people, those barriers should be provided wherever possible.

This is a matter which has to be studied by finding out the facts for each road in isolation, when one is considering the setting up of a one-way street, and also in correlation to other roads in that part of the town, and the effect on traffic. I welcome the resounding success with which the new Chair of Traffic and Highway Engineering at Birmingham University has been set up. The first course in traffic engineering began in October, last year, and I hope that it is the precursor of many more successful courses.

I regret that local authorities are unable to send their own traffic engineers to those courses. I know that great expenditure is involved, but it is said in my hon. Friend's Report that London alone will require the expenditure of between £50,000 and £100,000 on traffic engineering and I should have thought that local authorities could have assisted by sending traffic engineers to study the subject scientifically. If local authorities cannot meet all the cost out of the rates, I should have thought that my right hon. Friend could have assisted them with a Ministry grant.

This problem starts with the least spectacular thing, the use of changing of signs and the abolition—I hope universally within a few years—of the right-hand turn, which causes so many accidents and so much distress, and what are called in Mr. Duff's Report, "points of conflict", which is a very apposite way of saying that, and the one-way street. Mr. Duff estimates that when two two-way streets cross each other there are 16 points of conflict, 16 accident points. He says that if one of those streets becomes a one-way street, the number of points of conflict is reduced from 16 to seven.

That is a major reason why we should insist on the scientific investigation of these matters and getting more one-way streets. Even better, if there are two one-way streets in junction, the number of points of conflict is reduced to four, which is a great improvement. I support what my hon. Friend the Member for Wembley, South (Mr. Russell) has said about this subject.

On the more ambitious aspect, when I visited Germany last year I saw the great effects of their excellent studies in what the Report of my hon. Friend calls "destination and origin research". It was found that in the city of Düssel-dorf, one of the bigger cities in Germany, only 16 per cent. of the traffic was through traffic which went in one side and out the other. That is a revolutionary factor in setting up motorways and co-relating motorways in existing cities.

In the old days, the Germans had through motorways which went past a city, with one road going into the city, and all the traffic jammed on that road. Today, the motorways run closer to cities and traffic engineering is causing motorways to become urban motorways, coming closer to and altogether changing the structure of a city. Although this is not a new science, as a nation we are not traffic-engineering-minded and we are thirty years behind Germany and the United States. We should press for more use of this science and for the education of the people in these matters.

The whole concept of a city is in a state of change, probably the most crucial change which has occurred in city life since Roman days. I know that many hon. Members will say that with the setting up of conurbations in the last century, there were great increases in the size of cities, but we still had roads converging on the centre of a city, like a colossal spider's web, as they did in Roman days. I do not suppose that the Romans had many traffic jams with chariots, and probably in those days they were unenlightened about social aspects and cleared people out of the way, if they were in the way, so that there were no points of conflict.

Today, I think that it is recognised that the whole concept is changing. No longer does all traffic have to go to the centre of a city and no longer do all the roads have to converge on the city centre. Cities were often built around a bridge across a river and in those days, all the roads converged on the bridge. In the rebuilding of Cologne and Düsseldorf, which, like Coventry, were blitzed and shattered—an assistance to them in their planning of these matters—the bridges are being built round the outside, round the periphery, and take much traffic from the centre.

Those are only a few aspects of this great problem. All those who have spoken support my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend in their tremendous work to meet the challenge of the motor car. If used properly, the motor car can be a boon and a blessing to all and can bring new horizons to all. It is a challenge before the House and before the country to make sure that the boon is realised and that the motor car does not become something which will strangle the life of all our great cities.

The House recognises that the problems of traffic, both immediate and future, are tremendous. My hon. Friends and I are only too glad to take every opportunity to discuss these important matters. We are therefore, indebted to the hon. Member for Bedfordshire, South (Mr. Cole) and congratulate him on his success in the Ballot and on moving this Motion.

Having been entrusted with the great honour of speaking from this Front Bench, I have had to do a great deal of work, which has meant much research of my own. I set out, first, to find out what a traffic engineer was. I am very glad that I took the trouble to do a lot of research, because I found that "traffic engineer" is something of a misnomer. I believe that we might some time think of a different title.

There can be no denying the traffic engineer's importance in this problem. I have found that the definition of his job is to see that new roads are planned to provide effective traffic flow, combined with safety, and to do so at the lowest cost to the community. He also has to consider existing roads and road systems with a view to ensuring that they are used to the best advantage. That is his primary task.

I also found that the efforts made by this country in this matter disclose a sorry story. I want it to be clearly understood that anything I say is not in any sense a personal attack on the ex-Parliamentary Secretary, the hon. Member for Guildford (Sir R. Nugent). I know him very well, I have a great regard for him, and I know how hard he worked. He was Parliamentary Secretary throughout the period of our economic crisis, and any ideas that he may have had had to remain as ideas because he was always told that they were very fine but that there was no money for them. That is what he would like to be able to say, but as an ordinary member of his party he cannot do so. If he were on this side of the House he would have said it long ago.

Looking back on the problem, and the need for traffic engineers, and having delved into the record of the activities of the Ministry of Transport, I can only express alarm that it is only now that we are trying to face the obvious problems that lie ahead of us. We have been told about the traffic potential of tomorrow. One does not have to do much research to find out about that. The figures are available for everyone to see. It has been said that today there are 9 million vehicles on the roads. In 1964, in case anyone wants to have a bit of fun, there will be 16 million vehicles. If one wants to go further, at the present rate of increase there will be 21 million vehicles on the roads in 1970. It is a lot of fun to think of what it will be like in 1970 when today, when there are about 9 million vehicles on the road, the situation is already appalling.

It cannot be denied that traffic engineers are badly needed for research and to deal with safety on the roads. In 1946, a Traffic and Safety Division of the Road Research Laboratory was formed. The Labour Party was in power at that time, but I take no credit for that. This is not a party argument. Traffic problems are very serious and one cannot get much fun out of saying what we did or what somebody else did not do.

In 1951, the Director of the Road Research Laboratory called a conference of highway engineers, the police, university teachers, and other people to discuss traffic engineering. The House will be delighted to know that since then short courses have been held at the Road Research Laboratory. Only Britain could do this. It is typically British that we have held short courses and given some instruction in traffic engineering to a few people. These short courses are very short. They last one week during which certain people are brought together and given some instruction in traffic engineering.

Some effort has been made to deal with the problem, and I think that the former Parliamentary Secretary can take full credit for this. Recognising the need for traffic engineering experts, it was decided to do something about it at university level, and there are now three universities which have post-graduate courses in traffic engineering—Durham, Birmingham, and University College. I understand that Manchester is also thinking of introducing a course in highway engineering. One thing which I discovered which caused me some amusement is that the London County Council is thinking of providing evening classes to instruct people in traffic engineering.

It is almost frightening that we tackle the problem in this way. We get up and make speeches about the immensity of the problem, but the thing that alarms me is that some of the most important men in the country who have to tackle these problems on a day-to-day basis— I am not talking about traffic engineers, but about highway engineers—have not been invited to attend the courses run by the Road Research Laboratory.

Reference is often made to what goes on in America. Our gallant Minister of Transport—I am sorry that he is not here; I expect he is opening a bridge or road somewhere and making a great speech about what is to happen tomorrow—dashed off to America, and one was led to believe that until he took office there were no transport problems. Suddenly, he discovered them all. I gather that he enjoyed himself in America. He made speeches about what we were proposing to do in Britain. I wish that he would make those speeches here, so that we could find out what is to happen.

I hope that while the right hon. Gentleman was in America he discovered some of the ordinary things that go on there. In America, they take traffic engineering seriously. I understand that Yale has been teaching this subject since 1936, and that there are over 20 American universities which regard the teaching of traffic engineering as an essential part of the curriculum.

Some time ago, Mr. Burton Marsh, the Director of the American Automobile Association's Traffic Engineering and Safety Department, visited Britain. I do not usually support what "foreigners" say, but I will read his comments on our traffic situation, because he was talking about a technical subject on which he was qualified to express an opinion. He said that he was impressed by the great majority of our officials and experts to whom he spoke, and continued:

"We have no advantages over you here, save in numbers working full time on traffic operational problems, in the status of the top traffic engineering official in our large cities, and in our traffic engineering training programme …. Some of the traffic data which I was shown were not well organised. I saw dog-eared plans and projects in old ledgers or in books which hardly held together. Sometimes there were even bits pinned on to original drafts."

Mr. Marsh was critical of what he called the lack of adequate staff in the traffic engineering departments which, he said, had been proved to be essential, and without which they could not manage, in America.

The crisis that we face today and which will grow worse tomorrow is one we could have foreseen. The need for traffic engineers is obvious, and I hope to show that this shortage of traffic engineers is not something which the Ministry of Transport has suddenly discovered. As the House knows only too well, we have Select Committees to consider these matters and go into them thoroughly. I told the House that I had done some research, and that leads me to the next part of my speech, which consists of quoting what some of our Select Committees have said on this subject.

The Report of the Select Committee on Estimates, dealing with our trunk roads, said:

"If the trunk roads themselves are to be built to the most satisfactory standards, research into materials and methods should be well advanced before actual construction gets under way. Your Committee's first concern, therefore, is to see whether the present programme has been adequately prepared. They are not satisfied that it has."

The Report goes on to say:

"When the Director"—

that is, the Director of the Road Research Laboratory—

"was asked, however, whether the Road Research Laboratory had yet begun any research into earth moving, he replied that he did not think so, and his deputy confirmed this. The Sub-Committee asked for figures of expenditure on Road Research since the war, and Your Committee consider that despite the recommendation of the Select Committee on Estimates in 1952–53 that the work of the Laboratory should be expanded, the figures reveal that expenditure on research was not significantly increased until after the beginning of the trunk road programme, instead of in anticipation of it."

I then found that one of the Select Committees dealt with the question of roads in general and the building of roads. This is an example of the inefficiency due to a lack of research and traffic engineering knowledge. Dealing with the Preston by-pass, the Committee said:

"The original trial boreholes had indicated the presence of considerable quantities of clay suitable for embankments, but in the event much of the excavated material proved to be unsuitable for the purpose. Moreover, the boreholes had not revealed an extensive pocket of peat which had to be excavated and made good with imported material. In response to a Treasury inquiry on these matters the Ministry stated that if in dealing with any similar large project they found that early boreholes indicated exceptional difficulties they would seek authority for additional expenditure."

On this road alone, as a result of no research, no real planning and not having the "know-how" at the beginning, the cost went up from an estimated £2·5 million to £3·7 million, largely due to the fact that in the construction of the road the research and planning were not done in the proper way, to such an extent that the Ministry did not have the trained people with the necessary "know-how".

Was that the unanimous view of the Report? I do not believe that it was.

I am quoting from the Report. In my research, I found that these criticisms were made.

I merely make the simple, straight point, which, I hope, the hon. Member will accept from me on a non-party basis, that we cannot have any road building or planning without research or traffic engineering. It is shown conclusively by these Reports that whatever may happen in the future, we have badly let ourselves down in the past by insufficient research.

I shall proceed to point out one or two other examples which have occurred as a result of this typically British way of dealing with these matters. There is not one hon. Member who would deny that the Road Research Laboratory is an integral part of any planning of today and tomorrow. The Select Committee considered the Laboratory and its relations with other Government Departments. I quote from the 1958–59 Report:

"Evidence was received on the drawing up of the Laboratory's programme, and Your Committee note that the Laboratory was from time to time obliged to decline to undertake work for the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation, owing to lack of staff. Your Committee believe that the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation are in a better position to judge priorities in work affecting their own Department than is the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, and conversely they believe that if the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation had control of the Laboratory, they would know in advance what staff and facilities would be available, and would be better able to avoid drawing up schemes for research which could not be undertaken."

It is incredible that a Department such as this has been handicapped for lack of money for a considerable number of years. It has even asked for the rebuilding of its offices, some of which are four miles away from the others.

This is a story of blunder. There has been no planning, not even with the planners, mainly because of a lack of finance. Against that background, we talk about the need for traffic engineers. We can all get up and say that we need them. It is pitiful to be told that some evening classes are to be got going. It is a sombre thought that with luck, at the end of the day another university might produce one or two more graduates who have taken up the course.

I turn now to other general aspects and will deal with them at the local level. The Joint Parliamentary Secretary dealt with the question of local councils and their problems and my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) also mentioned this. We all know the way in which these matters are handled. Because something happened years ago and has been going on in the same way throughout the years, it seems that we must put up with it for ever. I understand that for major improvement schemes on Class I roads, local authorities receive a 75 per cent. grant from the Ministry and a 60 per cent. grant for Class II roads. It was a fair point for my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West to say that the remaining 25 or 40 per cent. is a tremendous burden to a small authority.

Because of the lack of money—again, it could happen only in Britain—we do not have any overtime or weekend working. Have any hon. Members seen anybody working on the roads of Britain at weekends, except, of course, for the Ml, on which there might have been some weekend working. As soon as five o'clock comes, the red lamps go up and that is the lot. Congestion occurs and thousands of pounds are lost. When twelve midday comes on a Saturday, we are lucky if any red lamps are put up around the hole for a Saturday night.

The hon. Member said that no work was done at weekends. If he had had the misfortune to live and work in London over the weekend, he would know that, unfortunately, that was far from true. The peace of Sunday morning and afternoon is disturbed by the loudest of pneumatic drills.

I have lived in London since I was born. To the best of my knowledge, there is no work on major schemes on the roads of London at weekends, largely because local authorities cannot afford their share of the cost. Indeed, they have to get sanction from the Ministry before overtime grant is paid.

I can only suppose that Westminster has special preference. Certainly, it is far from silent on a Sunday.

A 1d. rate in Westminster would yield about ten times as much as in my borough. Therefore, it can afford to be generous. We might have realised that the hon. and gallant Member was talking about Westminster, which, obviously, has the money to do the things which the other Metropolitan boroughs cannot do.

How long are we to continue with the existing set-up concerning major improvements on roads, for which local authorities have to bear their share of the burden? The length of time involved to do the work is conditioned by the amount of money available to the local authorities. I can speak only for my own area in saying that if there is a question of an extra £300 or £400, the local authority shudders at the thought of paying it. A 1d. rate in my constituency brings in only £2,000.

If a big transport scheme costs such a local authority even, say, £4,000 to £5,000, that is the equivalent of a 2d. rate. Consequently, there is no overtime and there are plenty of red lamps all round the little holes. The Tower Bridge is a typical area. There, thousands of cars flow in each direction, but there is no weekend working. The men would love to work overtime, but they are not given the opportunity.

This debate, therefore, is one that we welcome, but the Government are responsible for the position in which we find ourselves today as a result of lack of planning, lack of research, lack of cooperation with the various authorities and not having a determination to build for the future. That is one of the reasons why I feel sorry for the Joint Parliamentary Secretary, who, when he follows me, will try to defend what has happened. I hope that he may tell us that there will be an extension of evening classes throughout the country. He may even say that, with a bit of luck, we might produce even a dozen traffic engineers by the end of 1960. At least, I hope that he will tell us that at long last the Government are determined to take the problem seriously and that we will try not only to equal what has been done in America, but to do even better.

I am certain that the British people are prepared to follow the lead of a progressive Government on a matter of this kind. Given the chance and opportunity, many people in Britain could do this job, and do it well. Those who have been trying to do it, handicapped as they have been by lack of finance, deserve as much credit as we can give them.

I intervene at this stage, not to bring the debate prematurely to an end, but so that I can comment upon some of the points made, not only by the hon. Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish), but by other hon. Members who have spoken. Since the hon. Member asked me what had happened to my right hon. Friend the Minister and why he was not here today to listen to and answer the debate, and since, at the same time, he was somewhat critical of the way in which local authorities are starved of money by my Ministry, the hon. Member may care to know that at this moment my right hon. Friend is opening the first section of the new Inner Ring Road in Birmingham. This is a large local authority project, very greatly helped by my (Ministry, and it has been built to to the very highest traffic engineering standards. So we have not done too badly. The fact that my right hon. Friend is not here at the moment is perhaps an indication of the earnest that he gives to this matter.

All I can say in reply to that is that I hope that the Minister of Transport will not take credit for having built the road personally.

I am quite confident of that, because my right hon. Friend comes from that part of the country, and I know that if he tried it, somebody would be very cross with him.

The Motion moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Bedfordshire, South (Mr. Cole) is one which the Government warmly welcome, and I should like to congratulate my hon. Friend on the speech which he has made this morning. It was a very good speech indeed. It covered an enormous amount of ground, and very ably introduced the subject to the attention of the House. As my hon. Friend said in opening, there is no doubt whatever that at the moment there is very great public interest in and awareness of traffic problems and road accident problems.

Without overdrawing the picture, I think that perhaps we could say that these two things together constitute one of the major economic and social questions which this country has to face at the moment. Traffic is news. Whatever happens in regard to traffic and road accidents is almost inevitably reflected in the Press, and there is every reason, therefore, for me to agree with the observations of my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Sir R. Nugent), who pointed out that the tide is with the Government at the moment, and that the public is expecting action to be taken. I can assure the House and the public that action is going to be taken.

There is no doubt also that we are faced with a mounting volume of traffic on our roads. Several hon. Members have quoted figures, and I think the hon. Member for Bermondsey rather overstated the position, though quite inadvertently, I am sure. The position is that between 1954 and 1959, the number of licensed motor vehicles on our roads went up by about 50 per cent.— from 5·3 million to 7·9 million. If this rate continues—that is, an annual rate of increase of half a million new vehicles a year—the probability is that by 1965 we shall have not 7·9 million but 10½ million vehicles on the roads. Going on a further ten years, by 1975, we shall have 15½ million vehicles on the roads. These are the figures which my Department provides.

A further factor, as the hon. Member for Feltham (Mr. Hunter) quite rightly reminded us, is the appalling toll of road accidents. In 1959, 333,000 of our fellow citizens were either killed or injured on the roads, and of these 6,500 were killed. Both the volume of traffic and the number of road accidents are most acute in the urban areas.

It is frequently said both by people in public life and by the Press that we must somehow learn to live with the motor-car. This is the phrase which we are hearing on all sides. As the Motion and the debate which we have had this morning make clear, if we are to live with the motor car, we need to plan our traffic; and to plan traffic includes an assessment of the functions of public transport. It includes the various methods open to us to improve existing roads and the measures necessary to provide new roads. It is in all these three fields in particular that the traffic engineer can help.

It is also important to understand what traffic engineering is, and it is equally important to understand what it is not. There is a classic definition which I should like to read to the House. It comes from what I suppose is the standard United States textbook, known as "Traffic Engineering," by three authors. Matson, Smith and Hurd, which defines traffic engineering in these terms:

"That branch of engineering which is devoted to the study and improvement of the traffic performance of roads and terminals. Its purpose is to achieve efficient, free and rapid flow of traffic, yet at the same time to reduce traffic accidents and casualties. Its procedures are based on scientific and engineering disciplines. Its methods include regulation and control on one hand and planning and geometric design on the other."

That, I understand, is the locus classicus of definitions of traffic engineering, and, despite that, every hon. Member who has spoken in the debate has given his own definition of what traffic engineering means.

I will not be left out of this. I will give my own definition, roughly like this. Traffic engineering consists of the application to road and traffic problems of common-sense, based on accurate analyses of traffic movement and on a knowledge of proper highway engineering. In short, what the traffic engineer really does is, by observation and collection of data, to analyse a given traffic situation. Having done that, he makes use of that knowledge and experience to provide the remedy. Let us face the fact; a lot of that knowledge and experience consists in the use of commonsense.

I think that that is what traffic engineering is, but what it is not is the next subject about which I should like to speak. There is growing up in this country a temptation to assume that traffic engineering is some kind of general panacea, a sort of cure-all for our traffic problems. It is not. It is a very useful applied science, and a very useful art, which we can bring to the solution of our traffic problems; but, by itself, traffic engineering as a subject, and vast numbers of traffic engineers as individuals, will not, solely and on their own, solve our problems.

Similarly, there is no black magic in the idea of traffic engineering. It is an approach of applied science, and I think that anyone who has even the remotest connection with the subject—and I am quite new to this, as the hon. Member for Bermondsey, and I sympathise with him having to do the research, because I have had to do the same—realises that traffic engineering does not pretend or claim to have any special advantages. A traffic engineer is almost invariably a highway engineer who has this special training and extra speciality which is of the greatest value to us at the moment.

The scope of traffic engineering, as I understand it, consists in the study of five main groups of subjects. The first is the planning and traffic designing of new roads. The second is the physical improvement of existing roads. The third is the improvement of traffic movement by means of regulation and control of the traffic itself. The fourth is the planning and traffic design of what one might call the ancillaries to roads, arrangements for parking, access to premises the building of garages, and things of that kind. The final group of subjects to be dealt with is that of provision for pedestrians. I think it was the hon. Member for Feltham who mentioned pedestrians in particular, and the subject of guard rails. This is preeminently a matter for the traffic engineer because, as another of my hon. Friends said, traffic consists not just of cars, but of everything that uses the roads, both wheeled traffic and traffic on foot.

The proud aim of the traffic engineer in each of these groups of subjects is to reduce delay and congestion, increase the capacity of our roads and increase road safety. Common to all of them is the need to acquire information of traffic movement and accidents and then to analyse it. The acquisition of the information can be in respect of a whole area, perhaps a whole town or even a whole city, or it might relate to one particular traffic situation at one point. A good deal of detailed work is already being done on these subjects in this country, as overseas. So far as the planning of new roads is concerned, here an early traffic appraisal is necessary, based on origin and destination, as several hon. Members have mentioned earlier in the debate. When that has been done, an economic assessment of the proposed roads can be reached. The best location can be decided upon and the detailed design, particularly of junctions and other features can be carried out.

We make a good deal of use, despite the criticisms of the hon. Gentleman, of traffic engineers in the planning of new roads, and a good deal of the complaint that we get from local authorities, in particular for delay in carrying out some of the schemes which they would like to carry out, is due to the fact that we want to get the best type of road. Sometimes when they complain to us, we have to tell them that the reason we cannot authorise approval of the scheme is simply because we must have proper traffic engineering plans and proposals before we finally decide the line of the road. I think this is right. I do not think that this country can afford to build roads haphazardly. They are extremely expensive things and things that will have to endure for a good many years to come. Therefore, we must get them right.

The second part of the scope of traffic engineering that I have been discussing is the physical improvement of existing roads. Here there has to be a coordinated plan, based again on the survey of the traffic needs. When the plan has been drawn up then the traffic engineer can go into action and make the necessary improvements. As I understand it, he does so in four principal ways—first, by the comparatively quick, cheap and simple measures such as the provision of traffic signs, the provision of lane or other road markings, matters which are comparatively easy to institute and which can be done without delay.

Sometimes the situation requires a rather bigger operation and here various types of mandatory measures may be called for. For example, the institution of one-way streets, the abolition of right-hand turns, the installation of traffic lights or the imposition of waiting restrictions.

May I say a word to my hon. Friend the Member for Wembley, South (Mr. Russell) who was most anxious that we should speed up our decisions about oneway streets and also about the banning of right-hand turns? We in the Ministry have no objection to one-way streets. There is no settled policy in the Ministry which would make us refuse the use of one-way streets. We believe that they have a very definite use, and I hope that in the next year or so there will be a considerable extension of one-way streets, particularly in London. We are working towards that, but we have to plan it first.

On the question of right-hand turns and their abolition, I think that my hon. Friend should appreciate that it is not going to be quite so easy to ban right- hand turns in London as it is in some American cities. Those cities are built on what I believe is known as the "gridiron pattern" where roads intersect almost invariably at right angles, whereas in this country, and particularly in London, roads are not on lines of uniform or geometric pattern at all. Therefore, the abolition of the right-hand turn may create many problems for traffic. That is why we must make use of the traffic engineer in order to do the job in the right way.

There is one particular angle about the right-hand turn to which I would like to draw attention. In the case of a long main road with plenty of right-hand turns on both sides, it seems possible to me to take a certain number of them and prohibit their use for turning purposes.

That may well be the case, but it must be done as a result of planning based on the appraisal of traffic needs and what is safe.

Next, of course, come the more complicated measures to deal with the situation. These may involve the substantial alteration of the layout of junctions, the provision of flyovers, flyunders or as I think the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) said "crawl abouts" —roundabouts. These things really need a long-term programme and a good deal of money to carry into effect and they emerge further into the more complicated and much bigger physical improvements such as the enormous scheme now starting on the Hyde Park Corner junctions. I come back to the first point. Before any or' this can be done, a thorough analysis of traffic has to be carried out, and this is where the traffic engineer can help.

I next turn to the provision of waiting space for vehicles at the end of their journeys. Traffic engineering must include measures to control parking on the streets and the traffic design of car parks and garages off the street. All these things are needed to form part of a comprehensive plan for an urban area based on a survey of parking habits, desires and possibilities.

I think we may well find in the years immediately ahead, particularly in London and in other big cities, that this aspect of the traffic engineer's work will be found to be more important than it has been in the past because, as many hon. Members have said and as many people outside are saying—I am glad this is being said—the parked car in our streets is the major cause of traffic congestion today. It is not the sheer volume of traffic on the roads, heavy though that is; it is the fact that our streets are being misused. They are being used as temporary depositories for people's cars and not for the purpose of moving traffic for which they were instituted. That is why with the help of traffic engineers we are bound to do something to clear the streets of parked cars.

I think that what I have said makes it clear that traffic problems are very different to highway constructional problems and therefore require a much more analytical approach. The traffic engineer must collect data on the movement of traffic and on accidents, and, having done that, he must analyse them. A good deal of his work consists quite simply of standing at the corner of streets with a clipboard and a stop watch timing the flow of traffic, filling in cards or providing for the punching of cards, so that subsequently he can analyse all the data.

The traffic engineer must also understand lay-out and apply his experience to ascertain the nature and extent of the particular problem with which he is dealing. Only when he has done that can he select the solution. The traffic engineer must be a trained observer. He must be something of a statistician and something of a town planner, and he must have a good knowledge of highway design and construction. In addition, he must have common-sense and an understanding of human nature.

Is there such a man?

The hon. Gentleman asks if there is such a man. There are quite a lot of such men, though not sufficient of them, of course, but I am coming to that. It is not surprising that, because of all these necessary qualifications, traffic engineers are hard to find.

I come next to the present state of development in engineering in this country. As several hon. Members have said, since 1925 specialist engineers have been employed by the Ministry. It is only in quite recent years that the name "traffic engineer" or the term "traffic engineering" have come to be used. The terms came probably from America, but a knowledge of these techniques and an ability to analyse the traffic situation and to produce an appropriate remedy have been part of the curriculum of the highway and civil engineer for a good many years.

In the Ministry we have sixteen professional traffic engineers in all. They are in what we call our traffic engineering branch. In addition to those we have a staff of five traffic engineers who were attached only very recently to the Traffic Sub-Committee of the London Travel Committee, and they have now been transferred to the new London Traffic Management Unit which is being directed by Dr. Charlesworth, who was seconded to us by the Road Research Laboratory. The intention is to expand this unit as quickly as possible from its present nucleus of five. That is inside the Ministry.

I would remind the House that it is very important to get the matter into perspective. The Minister, as my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford reminded us, is only the traffic authority in respect of London—the Metropolitan Traffic Area. The rest of the country comes under the county councils and county borough councils as the highway authorities for their respective districts. It is here far more than in Berkeley Square House that the need for traffic-engineers arises.

I am told that at present something in the region of twenty-two full-time traffic engineers and sixteen part-time traffic engineers are employed by the county councils and county borough councils. From time to time, they go to other consultants to obtain specialised information and advice. The county councils include the London County Council, Lancashire and East Sussex County Councils, and, I am glad to say, the council of the county part of which I represent in the House, namely, Oxfordshire.

Are there any in Wales?

No, not to my knowledge. I should be grateful if the hon. Gentleman could help us in that respect. Among the county boroughs, Birmingham and Manchester are included, and there may be others. I have not the full details at the moment.

In fact, there are less than a hundred for the country as a whole.

Yes, indeed, that is so. We are not at all complacent about it. I accept the criticisms of the hon. Member for Bermondsey very much in the spirit in which they were made. Frankly, this is something we are not satisfied about and we want to do better. However, I do not think that the answer is really for the Ministry of Transport to acquire to itself a vast staff of traffic engineers. We want them in the regions, in the service of the highway authorities.

I come now to training. This is extremely important, and here we find the major bottleneck which impedes what we should like to do. Again, to put the matter in perspective, I must remind the House that traffic engineering is not in itself a profession; it is a branch of the much wider profession known as highway engineering. Traffic engineering is concerned with a specialised type of knowledge and skill. Many ordinary highway engineers, of course, already have experience and knowledge of traffic engineering techniques, and far more are acquiring such knowledge and skill.

As the hon. Member for Bermondsey said, the Road Research Laboratory began the post-war expansion of traffic engineering interest in this country when, in 1952, it started the annual traffic and safety course, which lasts eight days. It is important to realise that this is not intended and never was intended as a course in traffic engineering. It is a course held for senior police officials and senior highway engineers of highway authorities to bring them up to date with the latest results of research conducted by the Laboratory. It is a kind of refresher course in all the things which are being done and worked out at the Laboratory. Inevitably, of course, a good deal of traffic engineering pure and simple comes into it but, to keep the record straight, I wanted to explain the nature of this course held at the Road Research Laboratory.

There are several university postgraduate courses in highway engineering which include traffic engineering. The Imperial College in London, King's College in Newcastle and the University of Birmingham have these post-graduate courses. Birmingham University has been mentioned several times today. I am very grateful, as we all should be, to my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford, my predecessor in office, for the enormous interest he took in this subject and the work he did to institute the Chair of Traffic and Highway Engineering at Birmingham University. I am told by the officials of my Department, and I can say publicly, that my hon. Friend almost unaided managed to obtain extremely generous donations from a wide range of trades, businesses and organisations to institute this Chair. I have no doubt that it will produce very valuable results.

My hon. Friend asked me what the latest position is. He may like to know that, at the end of the autumn, the one-year post-graduate course in highway engineering and traffic engineering is starting and applications are being received. I will try to keep him acquainted with further developments as we go on.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary is quite right to pay a tribute to the hon. Member for Guildford— indeed, I tried to do the same—but is it not pathetic that he had to go to those lengths to obtain moneys and grants from outside bodies for something which we as a nation badly need?

That is, perhaps, where the hon. Member for Bermondsey and I part company. If there is shown to be a need, it is always the attitude of the Opposition that the Government, which means the taxpayer, must produce all the money to meet it. Why, in heaven's name, was it not equally good for this Chair to be established with the assistance of private industry, which has a good deal of money available, rather than the assistance of the taxpayer? Why should it automatically be a Government responsibility?

We must remember that what is involved here is training in a profession. Where should we stop if we always assumed that, when any profession needed to be developed and more of a particular type of professional man had to be produced, it must automatically and always be the Government's business to find the money?

First of all, the Government receive £537 million odd from the taxpayers of this country for road uses alone. I should have thought that they could use some of that. In any event, is it not absolutely shocking that there should be such delays and that we should have to wait while we ask for private charity for something like that? At least, the hon. Gentleman should have his priorities right.

Before the hon. Gentleman answers, may I ask him another question? Perhaps he would care to answer the two together. Shall we have to wait for an extension of this training until donations come in, or may we look to him to encourage such a Chair in the University of Wales? Surely, he will encourage it there, too.

Before my hon. Friend replies, may I give an explanation? There is machinery, through the University Grants Committee, for grants to universities from public funds on a very generous scale. These matters are settled on a quinquennial basis and, once the programme is set, there it stays for five years. Therefore, if a course is wanted in a hurry, there is no way to get it started quickly except with the aid of voluntary funds from outside. That is the reason I followed that procedure.

That is a terrible thing.

This is a jolly good way to make a speech. I hope that the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford who, I frankly admit, knows far more about this subject than I do, will have satisfied the two hon. Members opposite. Anyhow, I hope that I may get on. There is a good deal more to say about training.

The hon. Member for Bermondsey was a little critical of the week-end courses. Bristol University, which is not so far away from the area represented by the hon. Member for Cardiff, West, and the Institution of Municipal Engineers are instituting these courses and they are proving highly successful and popular. Evening courses—we must remember that this is branch of highway engineering and not full professional training— are being conducted at Northampton College in London and are about to start at the Westminster Technical College. A further development is that a body known as the Rees-Jeffreys Trust is providing £500 a year for three years for a Fellowship in traffic engineering at King's College, Newcastle. The Institution of Highway Engineers has recently instituted a diploma in traffic engineering, and the first examination is to be held next month.

Perhaps one of the most interesting developments during the last few months has been the setting up by the Institution of Civil Engineers of a traffic engineering study group, which is not so much a training organisation, of course, as a body to enable traffic engineers and those interested to keep in touch and learn the latest developments.

Overseas, we take advantage of facilities which are available for the training of traffic engineers. In particular, there are the courses at Yale University in the United States, to which reference has already been made. Four British civil engineers are at present attending the 1959–60 course in traffic engineering, sponsored by this wicked Ministry of Transport which is just not interested in the subject generally.

Why did the Ministry not do that on a charity basis, too?

Perhaps my hon. Friend could not get the money at the time. I do not know. Anyhow, we must see how we get on.

I hope I have said enough to make it clear that the problem we face is twofold—first, to have enough people trained quickly and, second, when we have them trained, to persuade the county councils and the county borough councils, the highway authorities, to accept them and to set up or to expand traffic engineering branches. Not the least value to be obtained from this debate may well be that what has been said during the course of it will be read, marked and inwardly digested by some of the chairmen of highway committees of county councils and county borough councils. We have been trying to persuade the organisations of local authorities about traffic engineering for some time. It is a somewhat slow process, but I hope that it will get a little better after the House has expressed its view in the terms of this Motion.

Despite all this, traffic engineering in this country is still in its infancy. We are gaining experience, however. For example, a Traffic Sub-Committee of the London Travel Committee was started a year ago and it is applying traffic engineering techniques to certain congested sites in London. It is taking five as experimental sites, producing traffic engineering remedies for the problems which arise there and putting them into effect. The latest is the scheme for a modified form of tidal flow traffic during certain hours in Putney High Street, which received extensive publicity in the Press a few weeks ago and which I am told is improving traffic conditions there, particularly in the morning.

At present more sites are under study in connection with this series of experiments and, in addition to this, and conducted under the auspices of the Traffic Sub-Committee, the police carry out a good many experiments based on advice from the traffic engineering branch of the Ministry of Transport. At present thirty-four are in operation throughout London, the latest being a scheme for Shoreditch High Street which is again a modified form of tidal flow for traffic. This also received extensive Press notice recently. The most recent development has been the setting up on 25th February by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport of the London Traffic Management Unit under Dr. Charlesworth.

Since hon. Members will not expect me to speak for too long, I will not go into great detail about what the unit proposes to do and its programme. It is intended to provide for a sort of traffic engineer attack group on a large scale for the whole of the central area of London. It will be staffed by highly competent and highly trained people. If we can provide them, the unit will have powers and money to carry out its duties. It will maintain the closest liaison with other authorities, such as the police and the London Transport Executive, and it will have individual teams to make on-the-spot studies of different problems in different parts of the road system in London.

This is the first part of the plan of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport to deal with the problem of London traffic. The House will remember that in the debate on 10th December my right hon. Friend forecast the setting up of this unit. He also forecast that it might well be that we should have to seek further powers, further legislation. I can now tell the House that the drafting of this legislation is at an advanced stage and, if all goes well, we hope to introduce our new Road Traffic Bill before Easter.

In addition to this, we shall need much more use to be made of the various technical devices, some of which have been mentioned today. We must become much more used, on the advice of traffic engineers, to roadway markings which pay a high dividend in traffic safety and flow. We must be much more imaginative about our signs.

The hon. Member for Accrington (Mr. H. Hynd) asked about the standardisation of European road signs and when that would be applied in this country. This is an idea to which I am greatly attracted. The present position is that we have a committee, under the chairmanship of Sir Colin Anderson, which is advising on motorway signs. It is nearly at the end of its task and we have it in mind to refer the subject of the ratification of the Protocol, and European signs, to that committee for advice and report. I shall give a great deal of attention to this because, with the hon. Gentleman, I believe that our road signs need to be looked at again, figuratively speaking as well as factually, and perhaps made a little more imaginative and clearer.

We must also make use of things like phased traffic lights on a greater scale and, perhaps, electronic control, as in Baltimore. My right hon. Friend came back from his American tour full of what he had seen and particularly what he had seen in Baltimore. Of all the things which he saw, probably the electronically-controlled system of traffic lights in Baltimore impressed him most.

We must be ready wherever possible to eliminate dangerous or traffic-congesting movement, like right-hand turns. Last, but not least, if we are to have any success in the whole of this matter, as was said so rightly by my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford, we must have better enforcement. The legislation to which I referred, and which we hope to introduce shortly, will include certain provisions prompted by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, dealing with traffic wardens and a ticket system of standard penalties. These ideas were canvassed for some time and were warmly welcomed in the debate on 10th October.

Although, naturally, the House would reserve its right to examine these matters with a necessarily critical eye, I have no doubt that we shall obtain a similarly warm welcome for these proposals when they come forward. This will give us an extension of the arm of the traffic engineer. It is not the slightest good having highly-trained men able to carry out projects and analyse and propound remedies for dealing with a traffic situation, and for the Minister or the authority, whichever it may be, to lay down the law to ensure that those remedies are carried into effect, if, at the end of the day, there is not the proper and full enforcement of them. This point was made by several hon. Members in the debate today and it is one of which we are most aware.

I apologise for having spoken for so long. I end as I began. It seems to us that traffic and road safety pose major economic and social problems which we must face. My hon. Friend the Member for Bedfordshire, South said that we must make use of unorthodox remedies. I can assure the House that my right hon. Friend—

He is very unorthodox.

—that may be—my right hon. Friend does not rule out unorthodox or unusual remedies to deal with this acute problem. I am sure that traffic engineering can help to solve some of the problems. This debate will help to focus attention on this important subject and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bedfordshire, South and to other hon. Members for their thoughtful and helpful speeches, and for the encouragement which they have given us in the task to which we have set our hands.

Can the hon. Gentleman say whether the Department will look again at the question of financing local government enterprise, because all his great schemes will come to nought if the local authorities cannot afford them?

I remember the hon. Gentleman making the point about finance in a forceful way. I think he has forgotten one or two things. First of all, where the remedy for traffic problems consists of the building either of new roads or the major improvement of existing roads, we already make very substantial ad hoc grants for that purpose. If the improvement is required on a trunk road, we pay 100 per cent. Where it is a Class 1 road—and most of the major roads in our towns and cities are Class 1 roads—we pay 75 per cent.

The hon. Gentleman thought that a payment of 25 per cent. by the local authority was too much. I would not think it was necessarily too much because, after all, although it is true that in individual places a lot of the traffic using the road may be through traffic— the hon. Gentleman rightly quoted Newport as an example—a good deal of it is local traffic. It may be rough justice to say that local authorities must find 25 per cent. but in some cases no doubt the amount of local traffic is more than 25 per cent. of the traffic. In other cases it may be less, though I should not have thought there were many such cases. We think that the 25 per cent. grant is about right. For many years local authorities have acted on this basis without making very loud noises to the effect that the whole system must be revised.

Under the new local government legislation the general grant includes elements for various forms of traffic improvement, and for road safety in particular. In addition, all highway authorities receive grants, at the rate applicable to the status of the road, in respect of things like traffic-light signals and pedestrian crossings which may be suggested by traffic-engineering techniques. Many types of traffic sign also qualify for different types of grant. On the whole, we do fairly by local authorities.

There is no case for a large expansion of direct Government assistance to local authorities to enable them to bring into effect traffic-engineering remedies because, in practice, either those remedies are carried out by their own people, who are trained in traffic engineering or have some knowledge of it, or they come to us or even to the Road Research Laboratory for detailed advice, which we are always ready to give.

The hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) said that in his opinion transport was the greatest social and economic problem of the day, although, shortly afterwards he told us he classed the problem of housing as being equal. I was very glad to hear those observations, because they are precisely what I have been saying ever since the General Election, except that I would quite firmly put transport in the lead.

During the First World War it was said that Lord Jellicoe was the one man who could lose the war for the Allies in one afternoon. Today, my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport—and I am not saying this in a personal sense— is the one Minister who could lose the next election for the Tories. In spite of the assertion by the hon. Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) that this is a non-party matter, the Government will be judged by the way in which they try to solve this problem.

I am glad to have followed my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, because his speech contained much factual information, most of which calls for careful study. In the course of his speech he made one very important statement, when he told us that a new Road Traffic Bill would be introduced before Easter. I am not quite certain what now becomes of all the arguments he raised against my little motor-cycling Bill, when he said that it would clash with the consolidation Measure, but I am glad to hear that we are to have new legislation.

So that my hon. and gallant Friend should not be under misapprehension, I would remind him that the Road Traffic (Consolidation) Bill is to have its Second Reading on Monday next, and its Committee and remaining stages on the Tuesday. It should be well out of the way by the time any future legislation from the Department comes along.

It is bound to be out of the way before my Bill gets on to the Statute Book. I hope that the Government Measure will have a Long Title which is sufficiently widely drawn to enable me to insert the provisions of my Measure in the form of new Clauses.

When I read my hon. Friend's Motion I thought that its terms were a little narrow, and it was for that reason that, in conjunction with my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr. Gresham Cooke), I ventured to table an Amendment, to leave out from "to" to the end and to add:

"its potential contribution towards road safety and the relief of traffic congestion, and to the importance of ensuring that new techniques can be implemented without delay and subsequently be effectively enforced".

However, I learned at the beginning of the debate that in the view of the Chair it would be possible to discuss the terms of my Amendment and still remain in order on the original Motion.

That has proved to be the case. Had I been moving my Amendment I could not have spoken more comprehensively or effectively than did my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Sir R. Nugent). Furthermore, much of what my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary said was appropriate to the Amendment rather than to the Motion. However, I must admit that my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Webster) made a speech which kept strictly within the limits of the original Motion, and which I found quite fascinating.

I do not intend to detain the House for very long, or to elaborate upon that part of my Amendment which refers to the question of road safety. One reason is that every speaker so far has referred to it. It was a pity that the wording of the original Motion did not couple the question of road safety with that of the smooth flow of traffic, because we cannot emphasise too often that the two things should go hand in hand.

Like my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, I agree that there are limitations to what can be done by traffic engineers or any other engineers in isolation. In these days we all have a tendency to get hold of a new catch-phrase or idea and to regard it as a panacea for all our evils. Once or twice in earlier debates on road traffic I have become conscious of the fact that traffic engineering is being represented as the magic solution to the whole problem, but it is not. Between the wars we had Vita-glass, which was intended to save us all from getting colds in the head. Millions of pounds must have been spent on Vita-glass, but we still get colds. This applies not only to gadgets; between the wars Sir Thomas Inskip was going to eliminate all overlapping between the Services, and get perfect co-ordination —but things did not turn out that way; not that good work was not done. This consideration applies equally to traffic engineering. We must see it in its true proportions.

The great weakness of the system into that which these new and enthusiastic engineers find themselves injected when they are trained lies in the fact that years of argument can take place before a new idea is applied. I had the good fortune to be able to raise an Adjournment debate in connection with a dispute in my constituency on a matter relating to traffic engineering. The question arose whether a certain dangerous road intersection should have a roundabout or should be controlled by traffic lights. My local authority, supported by men who may not have been trained as traffic engineers—and I do not go entirely as far as does the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas), who made some rather disparaging remarks about the advice which local authorities receive from the borough engineers' department—

I did not mean to be too unkind to them. I was saying that it is not their job to be experts in this sphere of operation.

I am glad to hear the hon. Member say that. Nevertheless, some of them are experts, having become so faute de mieux because they have been consulted for so long.

In the case which I raised in the Adjournment debate, the traffic engineers responsible to the local authority recommended one solution and the divisional road engineers available to the Ministry recommended another, and six years of sterile argument continued before anything was done. That was rather dis- heartening, and if such a thing continues we shall not be able to attract the best type of young man into the traffic engineering profession.

I may have misunderstood my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, but I was rather concerned when he seemed clearly to tell us that, while a certain number of new traffic engineers would be located in his Ministry, more would be located in local authorities. This system of dualism will, in the future, rob us of the value of such expert knowledge as these men may have.

Some people go as far as to advocate that all the important roads should be under the control of one central authority. There is a lot to be said for that, but this is not the time to argue it. I would say that we shall not get first-class traffic engineers—and it would not help us if we did get them—unless their ideas can be implemented without undue delay. Even that is very far from being enough. It is no use painting nice coloured lines on the roads to indicate traffic lanes unless people are obliged to keep to those lanes.

To give a better example, the idea of a double white line, one continuous and the other dotted, which gives certain priority for overtaking to one stream of traffic as against the other was the idea of a traffic engineer. To my way of thinking, it was a brilliant idea, but unless it is strictly observed it is not only useless, but highly dangerous.

I defy my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to say that any serious attempt is being made to enforce this rule on the roads where it is employed. Of course, he would not reply to this, because the paradox is that he is not responsible for the enforcement side. What is so ridiculous about the situation which confronts us is that the Minister, who is responsible —in so far as anyone is responsible— for getting the ideas of these men carried out, has no control whatsoever over the body of men who try to enforce them.

I listened with interest to my hon. Friend's statement that the new Bill will contain provision for traffic wardens, with particular duties in relation to parking, and so forth. But that only scratches the fringe of the problem. If we are to run the roads with the same precision as the railways—a point made by several hon. Members—we need a force of traffic police on the roads to carry out the orders of the highway authority. This system of dual control is just not good enough. It was this thought that inspired my Amendment.

I am sorry to interrupt my hon. and gallant Friend for the second time, but he will remember—and it is important to understand this—that almost invariably the highway authority is the same as the police authority. Where we have a county council as the highway authority it is also the police authority. The same position applies in the county boroughs, but it is not the same in the boroughs.

I am well aware of that fact, but it gets us no further. Although the local authority may be the police authority it is perfectly clear that it has no authority to tell the police what they should do. The local authority may be very concerned about the idea of police recruiting and how the police are paid, but it certainly has no direction over their activities as police.

We had an interesting speech in the House not long ago from the Home Secretary, and a Royal Commission is now investigating the position of the police. It may be only a Departmental Committee—I cannot remember—but an inquiry is going on into this matter. I suggest that we do not want to wait for the result of any inquiry before we agree, at any rate, upon one principle, namely, that the position of whatever police are employed on the roads must be perfectly clear. It must be the same as that of the police, who work on the railway system, or inside any self-contained organisation. They must do exactly what they are told by the authority in charge of the organisation— in this case by the highway authority. Even if they think that the regulations and the laws are out of date, none the less it is their duty to apply them until they are changed. That, I submit, is the only condition under which full advantage will be taken of the expertise of the traffic engineers and such innovations as they may introduce to produce a safer and smoother flow of traffic.

There is one other aspect of the enforcement law which I would like to bring to the Minister's attention. It has always seemed to me very curious that no detailed specific guidance is issued as to the best use of particular roads and routes. Having myself been accustomed to the profession of the sea, I have always been accustomed to what are known as Sailing Directions put out by the Admiralty. They are not mandatory, but if one wants to go from A to B in a ship one turns to the set of Directions and finds a lot of advice about the best route to follow.

At some times of the year one is advised to go one way and another time of the year another way. If there is likely to be delay owing to certain shipping conditions in certain areas, one may find that although one route is the quicker it is better to take the longer route. This applies in exactly the same way to the roads.

I should have thought that the Ministry of Transport could arrange for some kind of planning guidance or road instructions to be issued for the benefit of people using the roads. I am sure, for instance, that if I had to drive to Birmingham there are times of the day when one route into the city would be better, from the point of view of everyone, than another. One does not know that without local knowledge, so why should not it be put on paper? I give that just as an idea.

To sum up, traffic engineers, like other experts, are really of value only to the extent that they can gain the ear of someone in authority and with power to make decisions and act. Secondly, improved methods of control of traffic even when they are introduced will avail very little unless we keep in step with improved methods for their enforcement.

I intervene in the debate at this late stage— and I apologise for doing so—only because, as every speaker in the House today has said, this is a vital, essential and most necessary topic for not only full discussion, but much greater understanding by hon. Members and by the public.

As most of the speeches today have been on a broad canvas, dealing with many large and sweeping principles of road engineering and road safety, I should like to turn to one or two specific matters. These, I think, are particularly important, because it should be possible for them to be done without further legislation; indeed, powers exist for them to be done at the moment. It is for those reasons that I take as my thesis the need for much greater and more efficient use of the roads that exist in the country today.

I believe that the flow of traffic could be much more speedy if, in fact, the macadam surface were used properly. What do I mean by that? We have heard this afternoon a great deal about line discipline, but it is quite amazing, when driving around London or anywhere in the country, to see how very few people keep to one side or other of the road when they are driving. So many people seem to think that the road is made only for their cars and take up all their section of it. This is something which we have continually to drive home to all those people who are driving cars.

It cannot be stated frequently enough, and I make no apology for bringing it again to the attention of the House, but with the channelling of traffic I believe that the Ministry ought very quickly to use white lines to direct many of the drivers to where and how they should be using the road. This is particularly necessary at busy intersections. Here is one of the problems, that although it is possible to get two cars abreast, some of the quieter, perhaps less efficient and certainly less adventurous drivers consider themselves in danger if they use two lanes of traffic. Therefore, it seems to me that the Ministry ought to be showing people how they can best use the roads.

I want also to mention the reversible lane and the tidal flow, as it has been mentioned by the Joint Parliamentary Secretary. He talked about the experiments in Putney and in other places which have had great publicity in the past few months, but I remember seeing tidal flow used in the United States of America in 1939, twenty years ago, and yet today we pat ourselves on the back because we are suddenly experimenting with it. That is really crazy.

It seems to me that there are many instances in which even a little common sense can show where tidal flow must be of major use at this very moment. Most hon. Members will be familiar with the exit from Hyde Park at Hyde Park Corner. There are three gates, two into the Park and one out of the Park. I do not know how many hon. Members have ever tried to get out of that gate of the Park between a quarter to nine and ten o'clock in the morning, and have had to wait in a five to seven minute queue so to do—with one gate standing absolutely useless. This is a matter of common sense. This does not require engineering skill. It is a matter of just using the powers which exist at the moment and using them immediately.

I believe—I say it with all respect; nobody in the House today is trying to attack anybody—that a great deal more adventurous action is necessary, and will be encouraged by the British public When it comes from the Ministry of Transport.

I turn for just a moment or two to one-way streets. I do this particularly because this is a matter which is now hotly disputed in Reading, my constituency. I believe that it is necessary for the Ministry and for all people who are interested in road safety and traffic flow to convince traders that they will not lose business by the existence of a one-way street in front of their shops. There is a great resentment, wrong resentment in my view, by certain business people and traders against one-way streets. They think that if there should be one-way traffic in front of their businesses they will financially suffer.

The fact is that that is not the case, and that when one-way traffic comes into being, frequently it will do something to improve their business, because more people are able to drive in when they know they can get into an area or a town more simply and without trouble.

I want to make a specific point which I am sure the Minister ought to have well in mind. That is that when we introduce one-way streets it is no good doing so and then allowing two-way side parking. We have seen it in London, and I have seen it in Reading, that where we introduce a one-way street motorists believe they can park, and we thus still only have one lane of traffic. That is killing the very use we are trying to make of one-way streets.

It seems that this is an opportune moment to talk about parking. I would go further than the Joint Parliamentary Secretary in his statements about the disastrous effects which parked cars have in the streets today. Let us for a moment consider a person who is parking a car. He knows, particularly in London, that he is running a risk by leaving his car in a certain street. He realises that he may be fined. He realises that his car may be towed away. I believe that many people are not concerned about a two guinea or three guinea fine which they may have to pay if they are found out. They do not like it. They do not want it, but they are willing to run that risk.

The inconvenience of towing a car away may be considerable, but the police are delightful about it. I know. I speak, I am sorry to say, with personal knowledge of it.

We are more respectable on this side of the House.

But I do not wish to follow the example set on that side of the House.

Or he may get towed away.

One goes to a depot, to get one's car. There is much good humour, a great joke made of it, and if one takes a taxi to the depot the whole business can be accomplished in ten minutes. There is nothing by way of punishment to deter somebody from parking where he probably knows—as I did when it happened to me—that he ought not to be parking.

I put this to the Minister as something Which I believe would have a vast effect on people parking cars. What would happen if, when a man's car were towed away, it was 14 days before he could pick it up again? That, perhaps, would be drastic, but drastic action is necessary. There would be no impounding, but just 14 days before one could collect one's car. If people had the knowledge that this could happen to them, if they left their cars where they were dubious about leaving them, I believe they would be deterred, completely deterred, from leaving their cars in such a place.

The whole of what I have been say-ing is bound up with enforcement, and on the matter of enforcement I should like to follow what my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett) was saying about the duality of the enforcement procedure. I am concerned that frequently, in my view, the right form of enforcement is not carried out.

We all know of the great effort which has been made against speeding, but I believe that it is the dangerous and careless driver who is the worst offender. A safe driver may drive at speed and not necessarily be dangerous, but the careless driver and the dangerous driver at any speed is a danger on the road. Therefore, I wonder whether the authorities could put greater emphasis on prosecuting and trying to catch the dangerous and the careless driver around the towns and around the countryside. That action alone might do a very great deal in lowering the accident rates, which are so great.

The last thing that I wish to say about traffic engineering is something which has not been mentioned so far in the debate, namely, the need for traffic engineers to apply themselves to the human element, to the person who is driving the car. It terrifies me that many of the most moderate people when they get behind the driving wheel of a car become competitive and spiteful drivers. Heaven alone knows why, but one has only to spend any length of time driving in the town or in the country to realise how many hundreds and thousands of people hate to be overtaken. Why?

People will stay in the centre of the road rather than let somebody else get by. Why? People will swing out from one lane to the other in order to nip round just one other car. Why? This is an amazing pathological approach to the driving of a car and it is an aspect of this whole problem which we shall have to thrust on the shoulders of our traffic engineers. It is another of the ever-growing burden of problems which they must consider when dealing with traffic.

I know how strange this characteristic is in drivers. I have a specific example of one constituent of mine who was so infuriated by the way a car was being driven that he reported the matter to the police. The police made inquiries and they found that it was a hired car. The inquiries went further and an absolutely crestfallen man found that the driver was his future father-in-law, who had hired the car. This did not create a very good impression, but I am glad to say that the couple concerned are now married.

I would say to the spokesman for the Ministry that it is no use saying, "We understand these new methods." We must press on with them faster now than ever before. We have heard Ministry spokesmen saying many times before that they understand these problems, but there is greater urgency than ever now in the need to tackle them.

My last point is that publicity must be given to the new methods of dealing with this problem. It is no use just throwing a decision on a new use of white lines or on new lane discipline without giving it national publicity. Here I would congratulate my right hon. Friend on the way in which publicity was given to the dotted and continuous white lines before they were adopted. I believe that they are proving effective, and mainly because of the publicity that was given to them.

I believe that the powers which local authorities already possess will not be used unless a greater lead comes from the Ministry. I believe that local authorities turn to Whitehall on this matter and want to be helped in dealing with their own local problems. However drastic the action that is necessary, I believe that the public today will back the Minister in taking it, because to lessen fatalities on the roads, to bring greater safety and a better flow of traffic are exactly the things which the British public want. They will give all support in bringing them about.

I approach this problem as a civil engineer. I have not been reading the data which hon. Members have been producing in the debate, because I did not come prepared to make a long speech. There are, however, one or two paints which have been mentioned in the debate on which I should like to comment.

The civil engineering industry welcomes the introduction of this new brother—the traffic engineer. Many of us in the industry have carried out ourselves much of the research work which has been mentioned today. The hon. Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) referred to the fact that the Road Research Laboratory was not carrying out research into excavating. Any practical person knows that one cannot carry out research into what is known as "muck shifting" in a small laboratory. That is a matter which must be done in the industry itself.

One has only to see the vast work carried out on opencast mining to realise that this country is far ahead of others in "muck shifting" and excavating techniques. The knowledge of soil mechanics in this country also bears comparison with that of any country in the world. Research into it is carried out in the laboratories, and my own firm sends engineers to all parts of the world to recommend the application of soil mechanics to road works. We in the industry have the ability and the opportunities to carry out this work and we are doing it.

I am delighted to follow in the debate my hon. Friend the Member for Reading (Mr. Emery). He made a number of points which I had proposed to make, and he referred for the first time in the debate to the need for good manners on the road. The good manners which we used to see in the earlier days of motoring are essential today to traffic enginering itself. Good manners are created by road engineers by clearing up bottlenecks which make people bad-tempered and make them drive recklessly.

A great deal can be done by simple road widening to overcome bottlenecks. As a practical engineer, I suggest that road development and road widening should be concentrated particularly on steep hills, because by widening a short length of a hill one allows lorries to pull in to the side. I disagree with hon. Members opposite. I consider that lorry drivers are the best drivers in the country. By giving them an opportunity of pulling in to the side on a short length of road we can deal more effectively with these bottlenecks. If a lorry being driven at 10 miles an hour uphill is enabled to pull in to the side it will allow a motor car being driven at 30 miles an hour to overtake more easily.

I believe that more use could be made of bridges over the Thames as flyovers. An evening paper suggested a year or two ago that a road should be constructed along the whole length of the Embankment, but I do not think that that is a practical proposition. But at Lambeth and Vauxhall one could build a road which would allow the use of Thames bridges as a flyover. Vauxhall is a particularly good example. The Minister should deal with the "gimcracks" and get things moving.

In Folkestone, there are areas which we want to prepare for making trunk roads. We had layouts for this as far back as 1900. They are well adapted to further extension, but before development goes too far the Minister should do some long-term planning. It may be necessary for the Ministry to have a separate department for long-term planning. Goodness knows, the Minister has enough problems already with the roads and railways, but a small department at the Ministry could be thinking in terms of ten years ahead. These are some of the small points and suggestions which I wish to make and which I hope the Minister will accept.

We have all appreciated hearing from the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Costain) practical points arising from his own experience, and I am sure that the Minister will read what he said with considerable attention. Before we leave the debate, I want to make two or three short points in connection with the Amendment in the name of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett) and myself relating to road safety.

My hon. Friend the Joint Undersecretary is not here at the moment but perhaps the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland will pass on to him the points I shall emphasise. There are many instances of traffic engineering not only ensuring road safety but also resulting in an economic gain to the country. Here is a practical example. Some years ago, I was concerned about the number of accidents taking place on the Bath Road at the corner just west of Newbury, known as Speen Corner. In one summer there were eleven accidents at a narrow bend just below a slope and I suggested to the county surveyor and to the road highway engineer of the Ministry of Transport that the corner should receive attention because it was cambered the wrong way and was too narrow. Attention was given to it at a cost of about £3,000.

The following summer, after the road had been recambered and slightly altered, there were only four accidents. We had prevented seven accidents, and as we know that each accident costs the country around £600, I calculate that we saved over £4,000 in national terms in one year, which was more than the amount paid for the engineering improvement.

There are many dangerous bottlenecks and bad points throughout the country. I once calculated that there were 20,000. If Mr. Antony Armstrong-Jones wishes to motor from the far end of Pimlico Road to Buckingham Palace, he passes two dangerous points. The first is in the Pimlico Road, which is wide and then suddenly narrows, and the second is in the Buckingham Palace Road, outside Buckingham Palace itself, where traffic which is travelling smoothly in two streams is suddenly thrown into one because there is a wide curve of pavement outside the Palace. This is quite unnecessary and it throws the traffic into a single stream.

I see that my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary has returned, and so I ask him if he will get into a car and motor from Putney Bridge to Westminster up the King's Road, because a more loathsome mess of pinchpoints and narrow places and bad engineering layouts I cannot conceive. When the Traffic Bill is introduced I hope that the powers of the twenty-eight local authorities will be taken over and that the Minister will be able to concentrate on much needed simple traffic engineering. We do not need a great deal of research to eleminate our black spots. All that is needed is the power and the money—

Surely what we must do is to streamline the form of consultation in order to cut out unnecessary dalay? The hon. Gentleman is a local government man and it would be a sad day if he said that the local authorities should not come into that. He did not mean that, did he?

I do not know what is in the Traffic Bill but I imagine that there will be a supra-authority to make the decision when all the local authorities have been consulted.

Now I want to draw attention to one or two excellent sentences in the learned paper submitted by Mr. Duff, the Senior Engineer in the Traffic Engineering Branch of the Ministry of Transport. He pointed out how easy it is in police reports for a misleading impression of accident prevention to be given and added that there may be many accidents at a halt sign, and naturally the police will say that is the fault of the driver in not observing it. But when a traffic engineer looks at the place where the halt sign is sited, he may easily find that resisting it may prevent accidents.

Mr. Duff drew attention to the following figures given by the Road Research Laboratory. He said that the average reduction in accidents by the adoption of traffic engineering improvements might be—slippery roads, 80 per cent.; improved alignment at bends on rural roads, 70 per cent.; improved visibility at junctions, 30 per cent.; provision of roundabouts 60 per cent. So there is factual evidence of possible improvements.

Recently I saw a demonstration of the new reflective white strip which can be laid on roads for marking lines. It is made up of little glass balls which reflect light, and to my mind these are superior to cat's eyes because they can be laid easily and do not cause danger to motor cyclists. I would like to see such strips laid on the roads in our big cities.

I will make a small criticism of the length of the double white lines. I am not sure that on bends in the rural trunk roads they are long enough, because although motorists will keep to them for a hundred yards or so, the double white line soon comes to and end and then automatically there is a tendency to overtake the car ahead. I suggest, therefore, that these might be lengthened.

We have heard often that the way to road safety is through the three Es— education, enforcement and engineering. I think we need a double E at the end, that is, enforcement of our traffic engineering improvements. In London, we sometimes find a right-hand lane marked by arrows, demonstrating that anyone who wants to turn right at the next junction, should be in that lane. How often do we see a motorist getting into the left-hand lane fifty yards from the junction and then jinking from one lane to the other, which is a most dangerous practice. To my mind, that is a far greater offence than parking a car in a side street. I know it is difficult for static police to attend to this, but mobile police should be able to give attention to such bad driving by probably ignorant motorists. Again, if double white lines are crossed by motorists, that is a serious offence which should be taken up by the police.

I welcome the Motion, because we have had an extremely interesting debate. I hope that the Minister and the Joint Parliamentary Secretary will be able to absorb all that has been put before them today. Even if they absorb only a small amount, and put into practice a small percentage, we shall have achieved a great step forward in road safety in this country.

I beg to move,

That this House welcomes the Government's support for the Scottish Tourist Board's plans for the development of the tourist industry, and calls attention to the opportunities that these are likely to provide for the growth of other industries in the Highlands.

This is the first time, Mr. Speaker, that I have had the honour to address this House, and I ask for the indulgence which all hon. Members extend to those who have newly joined them. It is with mixed emotions that I have risen to move this Motion. I am acutely aware of a nervousness which, I know, hon. Members will understand and forgive, but I claim a sense of pride also because I stand here as the representative of Perth and East Perthshire, a constituency which, as hon. Members will recognise, is second only to their own. This pride is heightened by the fact that I follow Sir Alan GommeDuncan, whose name is honoured in this House.

The Motion

"welcomes the Government's support for the Scottish Tourist Board's plans for the development of the tourist industry, and calls attention to the opportunities that these are likely to provide for the growth of other industries in the Highlands."

As hon. Members know, these proposals spring from a survey conducted last summer by Mr. Hugh Fraser, at the joint invitation of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Chairman of the Scottish Tourist Board, into the possibility of expanding the tourist industry in the Highlands of Scotland.

At this point, I should like to draw attention to a matter of definition. As far as I know, there is no precise statutory definition of the area of the Highlands, and the description "the Highlands" is often used as a synonym for the seven crofter counties. As a result, some parts of Scotland that lie within the topographical Highland line, and share many of the problems of the seven crofter counties, are strictly excluded from plans of development that apply to the more limited crofter county definition.

Let me give an example. Glenshee, in my own constituency, surely is in the Highlands, but it lies far beyond the boundary laid down for administrative purposes. Similarly, hon. Members may go further west and take the road to the Isles, but they must pass Loch Tummel and Loch Rannoch and, indeed approach Lochaber, before the Scottish Office will recognise their entry into the Highlands. I suggest that perhaps it would be less confusing if the seven crofter counties were referred to as the seven crofter counties and the description "the Highlands" reserved for the mass of land that lies within the traditional Highland line. It is in this sense that the words "the Highlands" are used in the Motion.

I was glad to learn in a letter which my right hon. Friend was good enough to send me that the Scottish Tourist Board's proposals for the development of the tourist industry will extend beyond the rigid crofter county definition and that a certain amount of elasticity will be observed. I hope that in time it will be possible to extend the area further, because there are many tourist attractions in, for example, the Highlands of Perthshire and Aberdeenshire.

The Scottish Tourist Board's plan has been warmly welcomed by the Government and it is taking effect with remarkable speed. It is a progressive scheme in that it is to proceed area by area throughout the Highlands. It is sensibly based on the co-operation of hoteliers and local authorities within those areas. It will be financed by a new company registered this week which will draw its resources from private enterprise. In addition, the Board is to receive a special Government grant of £45,000, to be spread over three years, for the administration of the scheme.

It is good to know that this area by area policy has been welcomed by those on the spot. This is sound commercial practice, and if the plan succeeds in the first two experimental areas it can rapidly be extended to other parts of the Highlands, with whatever modifications the experiments may show to be necessary. Already, a plan for improving the appearance and amenities of Newton-more has been announced, for which the Board is assured of the enthusiastic support of the local people. The bodies responsible for the public services in the area are also actively co-operating with the Board. The new company will make money available on loan for the building of hotel extensions and the like. Tomorrow, a meeting is to be held in Bonar Bridge to announce the new look plan for the second of these two experimental areas. The plan represents a tremendous step forward. All those engaged in it should have the fullest support.

The Highlands offer many attractions to the holiday-maker. It is magnificent country, with a variety and contrast of scenery that is beyond description. The Highlands provide a splendid setting for the sport and entertainment which the country now provides in abundance, and new opportunities for pony trekking and ski-ing are rapidly being developed. Glenshee, near my home, attracts nearly a thousand skiers each weekend. Lochearnhead is becoming equally popular for water ski-ing in the summer. The climate is better than is commonly believed. Some of the driest and sunniest places in Britain are in Scotland. However, if I am to avoid Dr. Johnson's charge that a Scotsman loves Scotland better than truth, I should add that some of the wettest places are in Scotland, also.

Scotland has not the accommodation for visitors which is necessary. There is not enough hotel accommodation, nor can some of the hotels offer the standard of comfort 'that is necessary today. The Board's plan will lead to the building of some hotel extensions and will certainly help hoteliers to improve their standards. In addition, the plans provide for the creation of caravan parks, thus catering for the many families who either cannot afford to stay in a hotel, or want to enjoy a simpler and more independent form of holiday. Nevertheless, if we are to meet the demand that already exists or can be created, I believe that we shall need twice or three times as many hotels in the Highlands as there are today. Also, the tourist season must be extended.

I hope that progress with the present scheme will lead in time to a larger and more ambitious programme. The need for this advance is clear, because the development of tourism in the Highlands can do a great deal to ease the problem of unemployment. The problem of un- employment in the industrial areas of Scotland is well known, and special measures have been adopted not only to attract new industry but to widen the whole basis of industrial activity in Scotland. Unemployment is also relatively high in the Highlands, but there the nature of the problem is different. The population is small and scattered and there are few large towns which can offer the facilities that major industry requires.

The future prosperity of the Highlands surely depends on the comprehensive development of the tourist trade, agriculture and forestry. The growth of the tourist trade can have a wide effect on the country's economy. I take only two examples; it can provide a local outlet for farm produce and also encourage the creation of small enterprises. Last year, more than 5 million people visited Scotland and brought with them a trade worth more than £50 million. This flow of new wealth goes far beyond the hotels and shops. It brings much benefit to agriculture, and this was shown by the records of food purchases of 14 hotels during 1958.

Their combined purchases included nearly 25,000 lb. of butter, 60,000 gallons of milk, more than 180,000 lb. of beef and mutton, more than half a million lb. of potatoes and 50,000 dozen eggs. These were the purchases of just 14 hotels—and there are nearly 5,000 hotels and boarding houses in Scotland. They must represent a large and growing market for Scottish farm produce.

As tourist traffic grows, so do opportunities for other forms of employment. Trade is created, for example, for new garages, or perhaps a new laundry, and new markets are opened up for tweeds, tartans, souvenirs and other products, that can and should be locally made. Of course, small enterprises of this kind may employ only a handful of people, but they can make a world of difference to the small communities of the Highlands.

There is another important aspect of the Scottish Tourist Board plan, and hon. Members may agree that attention should be drawn to it. There are certain places in the Highlands, and, indeed, just outside the Highland line, which would be immeasurably helped by the introduction of light industry. Development of this kind may be hampered, I believe, by a misunderstanding south of the Border of what life in Scotland is really like. For instance, it is not difficult to imagine a situation in which the head of some firm here is prepared to set up a branch in Scotland, but is turned from his purpose by the reluctance of his staff to make the move.

I sometimes suspect that the image of Scotland in the minds of those who have not been there may be rather bleak, and that they would be more inclined to encourage a business extension into Scotland if they knew more of the country. The Tourist Board's plan will provide improvements in the social and general amenities of the areas selected for development. This will undoubtedly attract more people to the Highlands, and I believe that the more they come the more they will want to return, and the more inclined they may be to make their homes there. This could also have an important influence on the establishment of other new industries in other parts of Scotland.

These are some of the reasons for the Motion, which I am glad to have had the opportunity of explaining to the House. I thank hon. Members for the courteous hearing that they have given me.

This is the first occasion on which I have had the privilege of following a maiden speech, and I have been in the House now for fifteen years. I welcome the opportunity today, because we are dealing with a Scottish topic, and I want to congratulate the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. Mac-Arthur) on the way in which he has handled his subject.

It was difficult to realise that one was listening to a maiden speech. The hon. Member had the confidence of a veteran. I felt as though it was he who had been here for fifteen years and I had come here only last week. I hoped and wish that when I made my maiden speech I had shown, perhaps, the knowledge of my subject which he has shown of his, and had been able to deliver what I said with such eloquence and to speak with the confidence he has displayed today.

I am sure that I voice the wishes of hon. Members on both sides of the House that we will hear the hon. Member again on a day other than Friday —which is usually quiet—when we shall be able to introduce him to the cut and thrust of debate and a little of the rough and tumble that sometimes develops. We shall look forward to his next contribution in the House.

The hon. Member has dealt with a topic that is very dear to our hearts. When I read the Motion, which he proposed so ably and so felicitously, I expressed to myself my agreement with its purpose. We want to see the development of our tourist industry and also the development of industry in the Highlands. He referred to the beauties that we find in Scottish scenery. I think that all of us, without being accused of partiality, will say that Scottish scenery is unbeatable.

One afternoon, three years ago, I was seated in an hotel writing an article. I was at the window of my bedroom, very scantily dressed indeed. I was wearing the minimum, because I was in the centre of China, and the sweat was pouring from me like sweat in a Turkish bath. Before me was a lake and rising from its sides were mountains. I was in the centre of China. For an instant I paused from my work to look out of the window and said to myself, "Loch Lomond". It was the nearest approach to Loch Lomond, with the Ben rising in the background, that I have ever seen, and, once again, it reminded me of the fascinating beauty of many of our scenic effects in Scotland.

I am loath to criticise hotels, but I remember one occasion, which my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) will remember very well, when our Scottish Labour Group toured the Highilands to familiarise ourselves at first hand with what was being done by the Tourist Board about hotel accommodation and to see many of the things about which we shall speak today. We were all impressed by the rather inadequate facilities in many hotels and in one or two cases there were somewhat extravagant charges for a bedroom. We protested in Inverness when we were summing up what we had learned in the course of our visit.

I agree with what the hon. Gentleman has said about high charges in some instances, but he will agree that the season is very short for these Highland hotels and that they are bound to charge more than they would like to do because they have to cover expenses for the year.

I appreciate that many of these places are isolated and that their season is short, but I suggest that it should be the endeavour of us all who are interested in the prosperity of the Highlands to expand the season to include participation in winter sports. That is a possibility. When the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire referred to water ski-ing at Lochearn-head, I thought of what was being developed at Loch Lomond. I understand that this is a fine sport, requiring a sense of adventure and a love of cold water.

The hon. Member said that we wanted to develop industry and in that we are all agreed. He referred to tourism, agriculture and forestry as being industries which we wanted to expand. I am sure that it was an oversight which caused him to omit one of the most important, fishing. The shellfish of the Highlands are of a quality unsurpassed. I believe that they sell readily abroad; this is a trade which we want to promote.

We have a great deal to sell. How are we to sell it? I travel regularly to London on Mondays and back home on Fridays by plane and tonight I shall be flying to Prestwich on the Britannia which is bound for New York. I suggest that it would be nice if I could read, when I was on the Britannia, "Come to Scotland". Why not? This is a nationalised transport service and I do not see why it ought not to advertise the beauties of Scotland.

That might reek of partiality, but why not have, "Come to England" and "Come to Ireland", too? A little advertising in B.O.A.C, and in B.E.A. on European routes, would be helpful. I do not want to refer to other methods of advertising, which we all accept.

However, in all the parts of the world I have visited I have discovered the importance of selling the word "Scotland". Without criticising any other group in the House, time and again I have been a member of a visiting party often referred to as, "The English Members of Parliament". I always emphasise that I am not an Englishman, but a Scotsman. We have to identify ourselves in that way, because too many people outside the United Kingdom do not realise that Scotland is a nation in its own right and not merely a part of the English nation, although part of the English-speaking world.

Another notable advertisement was not mentioned by the hon. Member and concerns a very important girl, indeed, a lady, who will soon be surfacing after a long sojourn in the dark waters of Loch Ness; we call her "Nessie". She is due to break water again and her reappearance could attract thousands of people to Loch Ness to try to spot her. As everyone who knows the area realises, one part of Loch Ness, opposite, lnvermoriston, has no bottom. It is so deep that man has not yet fathomed its dark depths and it is believed that in that part of the Loch lives a "gentleman". Maybe this year, when Nessie does surface, there will be one or two little monsters coming to the top.

That would be a tremendous advertisement to people to come to the Highlands, because never before have any little monsters been seen in any Highland loch. This year, there is a chance for any visitor who comes to see not only the little monsters, but the big ones. I would not like to include among the advertisements the German bases. I do not think that they will help the tourist traffic in the Highlands.

What do we need if we are to advertise these beauties and get people to come to see them? We want better transport, and there is no doubt that in that respect the Government have lagged far behind. Roads and bridges are among our great needs. We are getting the bridges on the eastern side of Scotland, but on the west neither bridges nor ferries are sufficient.

We need more money. The hon. Gentleman referred to the Badenoch and Bonar Bridge investments. We welcome those experiments, but we must realise that the Government give the British Travel and Holidays Association over £1 million every year. Out of that sum the Scottish Tourist Board receives only £25,000. That is not a fair share. That sum is not much when one considers that the Isle of Man needs £50,000, and that Northern Ireland receives £60,000. If those two parts of the United Kingdom receive those sums, I suggest that the sum which the Scottish Tourist Board receives is inadequate.

I know that other hon. Members wish to contribute to the debate. I could speak for long on this subject, but time is limited today. I conclude by again congratulating the hon. Gentleman on raising this subject today, and on the way in which he handled it, and thanking him for the chance that he has given us, once again, to put forward the urgent needs of Scotland.

I will not detain the House for very long. I join the hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Rankin) in congratulating the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. MacArthur) on his maiden speech, and on the knowledgeable way in which it was delivered.

I welcome this opportunity to say a few words because of the ever-increasing importance of the tourist industry to Scotland, particularly to the Highlands, to which I shall confine my remarks.

In the Highlands we will always be dependent on agriculture, fishing and afforestation for our basic industries, but, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out, tourism is supplementary to those three industries, particularly in the crofting areas where the crofters now have gardens and are producing for the tourist industry vegetables and other commodities which they would not otherwise have grown.

On Tuesday the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Sir. D. Robertson), who is present today, asked the President of the Board of Trade how many new industrial enterprises his Department had attracted to the Highland counties since 1959. The Undersecretary replied:

"Industrial development certificates have been issued to three projects new to the Highland counties since January, 1959; two of these are in Fort William and one in Inverness."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8th March, 1960; Vol. 619, c. 231.]

No new projects are to be developed north of the line Inverness—Fort William. No new project is planned for my constituency or for Caithness and Sutherland. Other Measures are now being introduced which we hope will help, but there is still a lot to be done.

We have not received the light industries which we hoped and expected to receive as more hydro-electric power became available. Perhaps we were a bit too optimistic, although I agree that there are a lot of other factors involved which it would not be proper to discuss during a debate of this kind. As we are not getting new industries, the tourist industry is all the more valuable because it is a live and thriving industry which is capable of development.

We know that large sums of money are being spent on developing industry in the industrial belt of Scotland. Perhaps not as much is being spent as some people would like, but nevertheless money is being spent on developing that part of the country. Our Highland scenery, which has been referred to already, is our best raw material. The Secretary of State for Scotland must impress on the Government and the Chancellor of the Exchequer that money spent on developing the tourist industry will be a sound investment. We must open up the whole of our western area, particularly in the Highlands.

The question of roads cannot be over-stressed. The other day, a man wrote to me and said that the bottleneck at Strom Ferry, in my constituency, was a scandal, not only to the locality, but to Scotland. Only last week, somebody else said to me, "I am not going back to the Highlands until you improve your road system. I cannot enjoy your scenery. All the time while I was travelling in my car, I seemed to be going along narrow roads looking for a passing place. A big omnibus would come along followed by streams of cars, with a resultant delay of a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes. My whole day was ruined and spoilt". This is scandalous and the Government must do more about it. It is vital to open up these areas and make them more accessible.

I should like to say a word on what might be called the Fraser plan. Two areas have been selected, but they are areas where development is already taking place. It would have been more ambitious to go to more out-of-the-way places, examples of which could be given by any hon. Member attending this debate. I will be selfish and refer to my own constituency.

Cromarty is a beautiful little area, but it has no hope of any light industry developing there for some time unless somebody with plenty of enterprise comes along. It is, however, a place which cries out for development. The areas which have been selected in the Fraser plan are more likely to be able to raise finance by other means, but in a place like Cromarty it is difficult to get finance. Why not be bold and use a place like Cromarty for the experiment? The excuse has been made that what is wanted for the experiment is a place that is developing, to see what further development can be undertaken. That may be one argument, but I do not regard it as the correct one. It would be much better to apply the experiment to places which are dying. The money which remains in these areas could be put by the local people into their own enterprises. Despite the small numbers involved, there is much that can be done in ancillary industries supporting the tourist industry.

In the two experimental areas, are the local authorities expected to find the finance for lighting, the provision of wastepaper baskets and everything else that has been suggested? There is nothing exciting about these suggestions, but I welcome them. If the local authorities are expected to provide the finance, will the suggestions which have been made have priority over other proposals that have been crying out for attention for a long time? I should like my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary to give a little more information about the financial aspect.

We saw in the Scotsman yesterday that a £100,000 development company is to be set up with, I believe, Mr. Fraser, Mr. Murray and Mr. Carnegie as the three directors. Will they lend finance at low interest rates? If people succeed in obtaining finance from this source, will they be debarred from D.A.T.A.C. finance? The people who wish to develop in these areas would like to know the position.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Ross and Cromarty (Mr. John MacLeod) will forgive me if I do not follow his remarks, but I should like to take up a point from the speech made by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Rankin), with the greater part of whose speech I agree. I also support the point made by the hon. Member that the Government should give more money to the Scottish Tourist Board. I feel that in fairness, though, it should be pointed out that the Scottish Tourist Board benefits from the activities of the British Travel and Holidays Association, which works for the whole of the United Kingdom. I still think, however, that it is a valid point that the Scottish Tourist Board should have more money.

That is what I was saying. The British Travel and Holidays Association receives over £1 million from the Government, and of that sum only £25,000 goes to Scotland. I think that we should have more.

I think that I am right in saying that the Association's activities in advertising the whole of the United Kingdom as a good place to spend a holiday do help Scotland as well.

I should also like to compliment my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. MacArthur) on an extremely fine maiden speech, in which he not only spoke lucidly but put the facts very clearly in support of his Motion. I am not sure that I should like to enter into a discussion with him on exactly where the Highland line runs, but I have no doubt that in the old days we would have found some very interesting and suitable method of solving that problem; and I dare say that a certain number of cattle would have changed sides in the course of the discussion.

I wish to make a few remarks about some aspects of tourism as applied to the Highlands, but, before doing so, I should like to draw the attention of the House to the position which Scottish tourism, and Highland tourism in particular, occupies in the economic sphere of United Kingdom tourism and, again, the position which tourism occupies in the economy of the whole United Kingdom. My hon. Friend the Member for Perth and East Perthshire gave some figures about Scotland, which speak for themselves, but I think that these must be seen against the background of the United Kingdom figures.

I believe that last year there were 5 million visitors to Scotland, of whom half a million were foreigners, whereas the overall figure for the United Kingdom was 1½ million visitors. Since half a million went to Scotland, 1 million are left for England and Wales which, I think, compares very favourably with the Goschen formula. Scotland puts into the tourist industry a much relatively higher proportion than she gets out of it, though I am not claiming that that should automatically make us want more money. It is, however, a point worth drawing attention to.

The tourist industry's contribution last year to the United Kingdom economy was £220 million of overseas money. Of this sum, £65 million or more was earned by the ships and aeroplanes bringing these tourists here. Had it not been for the tourist industry, B.E.A., B.O.A.C., and indeed, perhaps other airlines, too, would be coming to the taxpayer for a very big slice of money. Therefore, these air companies should be grateful to the tourist industry for the very great financial support which they get. The tourist industry last year was, in fact, the fifth largest earner of foreign currency, and the second largest earner of dollars, cars being first and whisky third.

I feel that a certain amount of the earnings of tourism might, in effect, be transferred to the whisky industry, because the consumption of whisky in the United Kingdom by 1½ million tourists during the time they are here must be fairly considerable. I think that that could be credited to the whisky industry. I hope that my hon. Friend and my right hon. Friend will do what they can to get the Chancellor of the Exchequer to reduce the duty on whisky, not only for the tourists but for the benefit of the whisky trade and those of us who enjoy drinking whisky.

The importance of the Highlands to Scottish tourism cannot be exaggerated, because it is the Highlands, to a great extent, which make the sentimental appeal to the tourist; the idea of the clans and the clan system reaches out across the whole world. The hon. Member for Govan himself said that when he was in China, he had that nostalgic feeling for Scotland. I wonder how many millions of Scotsmen and Highlanders overseas, and their grandchildren and great grandchildren, get that same feeling? This is one of the elements that bring tourists to our country.

Of course, there is no doubt that the Highlands receive tremendous benefit from tourism. It provides us with a great many full-time and pant-time jobs for our young people. It brings money into the Highlands and it encourages markets for local produce, both agricultural and fishing, and also for such crafts as woollen goods and tweed making. In fact, as speaker after speaker has said today, tourism is complementary to our traditional industries in the Highlands of agriculture, fishing and forestry.

Another aspect of tourism in the Highlands needs remembering. It is that the money and the people that tourism brings to the Highlands will ensure over the succeeding years that our communications and rural services will be improved largely because it is acknowledged that their improvement will encourage more tourists to come to the Highlands and to the United Kingdom.

I wish to refer to what I think is the real root of the problem and also to examine how the Government and the various other people concerned are tackling this problem. I think that we all agree that the Highlands must attract a greater share of the steadily increasing tourist industry in the world. We must attract the tourists to the Highlands and, if possible, persuade them to come back again and to encourage their friends to visit us. Another thing that we must also do is to lengthen the season.

We must do all these things in the face of fierce competition from other countries, especially European countries. Some of the charter companies offer remarkably low all-in rates for holidays on the Continent and in the near future it is likely that air fares will be drastically reduced. Then, no doubt, although we shall run into severe competition from other countries, I believe that we shall be able to compete successfully with them provided that we can marshal what one might call our tourist assets in an orderly way.

The Highlands offer something unique. Reference to that fact has been made by hon. Members on both sides of the House today. The Highlands can offer scenery that is unique and sport of various kinds. I believe that the Highlands should and can offer adequate accommodation. In due course I hope that we can offer adequate communications, for proper communications are essential if we are to have a prosperous tourist industry.

I think that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland was quite right to ask Mr. Hugh Fraser to undertake a survey on behalf of the Scottish Tourist Board and to produce a plan and some ideas for expanding the tourist industry. I do not propose to go into the details of the Fraser plan, but I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the House wish it every success.

Although I am a strong Unionist and a believer in private enterprise, I am bound to say that as I see it the Government have a very big rôle to play in the development of tourism. I would urge my hon. Friend the Joint Undersecretary and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to put their hands in their pockets, because money spent in this direction would be a good investment. They should not be frightened of being called Socialists because they intervene too much in the matter.

I believe that it is through the Scottish Tourist Board, the Government and the local associations, as well as through private enterprise and capital, that tourism must be expanded. I wish here to pay tribute to the work that has been done by the Scottish Tourist Board, especially in the Highlands, where, under a very lively and energetic manager, who is, I am glad to say a fellow clansman of mine, Colonel McLean, it has made very great progress in the North.

I also wish fully to support—and I think that hon. Members on both sides would agree with this—the formation of the local tourist associations which have the necessary local knowledge and which encourage local people to play an active part in developing the tourist industry. I hope that it will be possible for the Scottish Office to ensure that these local tourist associations can obtain limited funds from the county councils, or arrange that the necessary legislation is passed so that district councils will be able to allot small sums out of the rates to them for the purpose of advertising local amenities.

There is in my constituency, on the Island of Skye, one of these local associations—the Skye Tourist Association, which was formed several years ago and has had a remarkable success. It was, perhaps, one of the forerunners of what I now hope will be many such local associations. This association, of course, started "Skye Week" as part of its activities, and I think that hon. Members on both sides would wish to pay tribute to the work done by Dame Flora MacLeod of MacLeod in the interests of tourism in Skye.

Another local association started some time ago, which has worked with a great deal of success, is the Cairngorm Winter Sports Development Association. I remember that, when we discussed this matter in the Scottish Grand Committee, four years ago, I urged strongly that the Government should give a grant of money to help construct a certain road, and hon. Members opposite added their support. After a delay of some years the Government have given the grant and now the scheme is going ahead. My hon. Friend the Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. G. Campbell) and I are doing all we can to encourage the Government to help the various proposals the association put forward in order to develop even further the winter sports. I hope that there will be a ski-lift there in the not-too-distant future, since this will help to attract many more people to the area.

There are now various other local associations throughout the country. Another association, formed recently, is the Loch Ness Tourist Association. As the hon. Member for Govan said, the Loch Ness monster is an attraction and if MacBraynes would put on pleasure trips on Loch Ness, I think that they would make money. Perhaps my hon. Friend will consider urging MacBraynes to do that. We hope also that the Lochaber Tourist Association will one day be able to introduce a lift up Ben Nevis.

What else do the Highlands offer the tourists? We know that they offer unique scenery, splendid sport and a great deal of romantic history. I am very grateful for the work of the National Trust, especially on the battlefield of Culloden Moor, in making it possible for tourists to see this tragic and historic battlefield. I believe that such a scheme helps the tourist industry, and, moreover, it is very appropriate that it should be done. Here I should like to pay tribute to the man who, for nearly fifty years, has been the guardian of Culloden Moor battlefield. I talk of Mr. Nicholson, the secretary of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, who, almost on his own, with the help of only a few other volunteers, has looked after this place and prevented it falling into decay.

There are the Highland Games, the "mods"—or Gaelic concert, shinty and golf, which are an attraction for the tourist. Here again, I am sure that hon. Members opposite will support me when I say that there is much to be done in further providing for animal and bird watching in the nature reserves. I am sure that this hobby could be associated with tourism more than it is at present. I believe that, if it were explained to the tourist what he could do without disturbing the balance of nature or the habits of the animals, we should find him most co-operative.

I come now to the question which hon. Members have already raised. Do we give tourists good enough accommodation? I think that the hoteliers and bed and breakfast people have risen remarkably well to the challenge, but, at the same time, there is no doubt that they will be facing fiercer competition and they will probably have to improve and extend their premises. In doing this, no one must lose sight of the fact that what the tourist comes to Scotland for is not luxury, but good food, perhaps rather simple traditional food, well cooked, with a clean room and adequate washing facilities. Above all, we must beware against the tourist being swindled or overcharged. He must be treated with honesty and politeness. If he is overcharged, he will not come back, and he will tell his friends what a bad time he had in Scotland.

I wish to ask my hon. Friend how many applications he has received from the Highlands and from the seven crofter counties and from Inverness in connection with the expansion of hotel businesses under D.A.T.A.C., and how many have been accepted, how many refused and how many came from hotel keepers or people connected with the tourist trade. I do not expect an answer today, but I hope that in due course he will be able to provide that information. I hope that under the new legislation, procedure and regulations will be more flexible than under the D.A.T.A.C. procedure.

May I also ask my hon Friend, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, to use their influence with the Chancellor of the Exchequer to persuade him to examine sympathetically the possibility of removing the Purchase Tax on equipment needed in the hotel business. For, after all, they are the tools of trade for these people. I hope, also, that sympathetic examination can be given to the possibility of an investment allowance for the hotel business the same way as it is provided for other industries. To the bed and breakfast people and the crofters the most important thing, in my opinion, is that the Government should push ahead with schemes for the provision of piped water, electricity and roads.

I would draw the attention of my hon. Friend to the urgent problem of the provision of camping sites about which I think something has to be done this year. I have heard about a scheme for Glen Benbrittle, in Skye, and I hope that the necessary arrangements, such as the laying on of piped water, can be carried out as soon as possible. I hope that under the new Bill, which, I understand, is soon to be presented, local authorities will be enabled to be more active in providing other such sites as this.

I have taken up a good deal of the time of the House, but, even so, I have not got to the most important problem of the tourist trade. This is that the Government must get on with the developing of all means of communication, sea, land and air, to allow tourism to develop properly. But I must conclude before expanding on this in order to give other hon. Members an opportunity to take part in the debate.

I wish strongly to support the Motion which has been presented so ably by my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. MacArthur) in a fluent maiden speech on which I join with other hon. Members in congratulating him. I welcome the recognition by the Government of the wide prospects for the tourist industry in Scotland and I hope there will be further encouragement in this direction.

In Scotland, we have resources in our scenery, lochs, hills and open spaces which can give pleasure to many thousands of people, particularly city dwellers, and, at the same time, provide a means of bringing employment and prosperity to areas where these are needed. The efforts of the Scottish Tourist Board should be encouraged, not least by the Government.

I wish to draw particular attention to the move the Board has made in opening information offices in industrial areas in the North of England. I understand that in those areas it is difficult to find the kind of open spaces which are found in Scotland. The beaches there are crowded whereas in Scotland there are huge expanses of sandy beaches which are unpopulated in the summer.

The bringing of information to these industrial areas in the North of England, not very far from the Scottish areas which tourists can enjoy, will help people to enjoy holidays which are becoming more and more within their means and enable them to enjoy sport and the pleasure of hills and open countryside.

I want to make some suggestions for future improvements. First, much more information could be provided in London and other centres of population about the attractions of Scotland, and the way in which holidays can be planned there. This information should be made more easily available. It should include details of trains, ferries, hotels, boarding houses, and other information needed in the planning of a holiday. I have often heard of people who had been planning to have a holiday in Scotland and then decided to go elsewhere because they could not find out enough about the places to which they were thinking of going, 500 or 600 miles away.

Secondly, an improvement in roads and ferries is imperative, as was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Ross and Cromarty (Mr. John MacLeod).

Thirdly, there is a need for more co-operation. Where hotel managers and traders have co-operated, great increases have been made in the number of tourists coming to the area concerned. In my constituency, the Moray Firth hoteliers and traders got together, and in the following year this resulted in a 25 per cent. increase in the number of tourists visiting the area. The same thing has been done in the Strathspey area. Government help and encouragement is also required, especially for new schemes which are starting, and I would make that as the fourth suggestion.

I also want to refer to the winter sports aspect of the matter, because if a second tourist season can be provided in those areas where winter sports are possible employment prospects will be greatly increased. I have spent some time in Austria and have been able to study the tourist industry there. That industry is a major factor in Austria's balance of payments. If we encouraged winter sports, admittedly on a very much smaller scale, we could provide a second season in several areas in Scotland.

The Cairngorm Winter Sports Development Board has been mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness (Mr. McLean). The Board has to make some financial outlay to provide ski-lifts and other fixed equipment, such as shelters, which are required in connection with winter sports. Ski-ing is a popular sport. Many people in the North of England and the South of Scotland are finding that taking up the new sport of ski-ing can be well within their means. I have never done any ski-ing, and never will owing to disablement, so I speak as an observer, on the sidelines. It is encouraging to see that many people have been coming to the Cairngorms, especially this winter, and many are learning to ski. Learning involves a certain amount of falling down, I understand, and it is much cheaper to learn in Scotland than after an expensive journey abroad; and half of the short period may possibly be spent in plaster.

Local subscribers have got together and provided sums of money, for which they are to be commended, and the Government have helped in the Cairngorm area by providing a road. But I would urge that more help should be forthcoming, both private and from the Government, to establish a winter sports area to which hundreds and thousands of people can come in future. Our resources in scenery, in the energy of the people, and also in the weather— which is sometimes unduly maligned— can be made to serve Scotland and her people, and to bring tourists there to enjoy holidays and sport, at the same time helping to provide employment.

I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. MacArthur) upon a magnificent speech. I want to refer to one point he made about the Highlands area, which covers what are known in Parliament as the seven crofter counties. They conform closely to the old Highland line, but I am sure that no hon. Member representing a crofter county would grudge bringing into the Highland area a district of a similar type so that it may share the advantages.

The appointment of the new company, under Mr. Hugh Fraser, Major R. A. Murray and Mr. David Carnegie, is a step in the right direction. The Board of Trade machine has failed lamentably, as has the Scottish Office machine, to attract industry to the Highlands—or to attract tourists, for that matter. The new machine may help to fill the gap. Major Murray and Mr. Carnegie are elderly men. I understand that they have retired from business. The other seven or eight members, I suggest, should be selected from among up-and-coming men who have proved themselves in industry in the Lowlands of Scotland. If that is done we shall get a very effective machine.

The only other thing that I want to say at this very late hour is that I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) for making it possible for me to speak at this late stage of the debate. Almost every hon. Member who has spoken has had to hurry and gabble his speech, as the hon. Member for Inverness (Mr. N. McLean) and others have had to do, and I must protest most vigorously that on a Friday afternoon over a dozen hon. Members have been allowed only one and a half hours to discuss 47 per cent. of Scotland—which is what the Highland area means—on a Private Member's Motion. I do not find fault with my hon. Friend for raising this subject. He was right to do so, but one cannot but help get the impression that the Government do not want a proper debate. I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the House will support the plea I make, because I think it is in the interests of good government.

We shall undoubtedly turn our attention on another occasion to the tourist industry in Scotland, particularly when it is tied up with the industrial requirements of that country. I feel sure that this debate will not be regarded by any hon. Member as being a satisfying discussion on this subject for the year 1960.

I should like to join with other hon. Members in congratulating most cordially the hon. Gentleman the Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. MacArthur) on his maiden speech. I do not use notes very much for the purposes of my speeches in this House. I think that the hon. Member used fewer notes for his maiden speech today than any other hon. Member, including myself, who has participated in the debate. It was a remarkable maiden speech. It is common form to congratulate an hon. Member on making his maiden speech, but there have been few occasions on which the congratulations of the House have been better deserved.

What are the needs of the tourists who go to Scotland? The principal need is transport and the availability of communications. There is no point in going to the Highlands to stay put. One goes to the Highlands to move about, but one finds it exceedingly difficult to move about in the Highlands. The whole of the North-West of Scotland is virtually inaccessible to tourists.

I have taken the trouble to go there as a tourist to find out how I would fare. I have also gone there officially when preparations were made for me before I got there. I have since gone as a tourist to see how people get on who are endeavouring to cover that part of the country as tourists.

Most of the tourists whom one finds in that part of the country say, "Never again." Why? The hon. Gentleman the Member for Ross and Cromarty (Mr. John MacLeod) was absolutely right. It is because they have been so scared driving along those little 9 ft. and 10 ft. roads, sometimes looking over a rocky precipice, that they have not been able to enjoy the scenery which they went there to see. Frequently they have to drive into the passing places. When they get back on the ordinary highway they say, "We will never go back there again."

If one goes with a caravan trailing behind one's car and goes along a little 9 ft. road with passing places every hundred yards or so one finds it very hard work. One may just have passed a passing place, when a bus or a lorry, or a motor coach carrying tourists, comes round the turning and one has to get back. It is not very easy with a trailer behind the car to get back along a little 9 ft. roadway, perhaps overlooking a very steep precipice close to the side. It is really a frightening experience.

I do not know of any other country which is catering for tourists which does so little about its roads as we do about our Highland roads. Some reference has been made to the contribution by the Government to the Tourist Board in the Isle of Man and the Tourist Board in Northern Ireland. I do not know what contribution is made by the Government of Eire to the Tourist Board there, but the Irish Tourist Board has certainly gone to work. Last year I went over on tour in Ireland to have a look around and to see what they had been able to provide in the way of attractions for tourists on the west coast of Ireland, which is similar to the West Highlands of Scotland in that the whole terrain is very similar, and the people are very similar. I did not see any roads on the west coast of Ireland anything like the kind of tracks I had to use in the Highlands of Scotland. They have got decent roads all the way. This cost the Irish Government a lot of money, but they are being rewarded by the tremendous increase in tourist traffic.

This is the very first thing we have got to do. Mr. Hugh Fraser and his Committee will not meet with the success they otherwise would unless the Govern- ment get ahead with the construction of new roads. It is lamentable that, as the Government themselves say in their latest White Paper dealing with the Highlands, they are expecting that only by 1965–66 will the crofter counties scheme launched in 1936 be getting near to completion: not that it will be completed after thirty years, but that it will be Hearing completion. Between now and then, in the next five or six years, they are still going on building roads 9 ft. or 10 ft. wide. It is inconceivable that the Government should be providing roads of this size and of this kind in this country in the second half of the twentieth century. That, therefore, is the greatest need at present.

Most of our tourists will come by car and by motor coach. There is no doubt about that. We ought to have improved facilities, of course, for them to come by sea, and we discussed this quite a bit on a Bill which has just left this House for another place. However, most of them will come by road. Most of them will travel about the Highlands by road, using cars or motor coaches, and we have to make it very much easier for them to do so than it is at present.

Most of the tourists, particularly those from overseas, who come to visit the Highlands, are not going to participate in our sports, about which I should like to say something because they are very important. They come just to look round, just to see, just to move about. While it may be that hon. Members well acquainted with the Highlands know virtually all the hotels and every hotelier by name, and may be able to make arrangements for accommodation while they are up there, that is very difficult for the stranger. It is terribly difficult for the stranger to find accommodation in the Highlands. We do not have anything like enough hotels or other places providing accommodation.

People who are moving about in the Highlands by car or motor coach, particularly those who go by car, are not dressed up. They wear jerseys and slacks—and sometimes they have been under their cars. They are not very well dressed, and they do not want to be well dressed. They may have some nice clothes in a case in the boot of the car, but when they arrive at the place where they want to spend the evening, when they arrive at about six or seven o'clock, they want to be able to have a meal and laze about in the clothes they have on, and they do not want to have to spend a fortune on accommodation. They do not want to pay London prices for overnight accommodation.

We must have something on the lines of a motel. This has been tried here and there, but there must be more. There must be simple accommodation where one can have a simple meal and refreshment and laze about, not necessarily in great comfort but in reasonable shelter and at a reasonable price. The prices are far too high at some of the places that are comfortable. I do not want to name the hotels but I have some in mind because I have had to pay those prices. The ordinary tourist who has spent more on getting to the Highlands than would have taken him to the Continent should not be asked to pay exorbitant prices for the rather simple accommodation and simple food he needs.

I know that the Scottish Tourist Board has this in mind and that the Crofters Commission has given thought to it and said something about it. I hope that the Joint Under-Secretary will be able to say that his right hon. Friend will find the money to build better roads, and incidentally provide employment for the jobless in the Highlands using in the main material that is there in plentiful supply. There should be no difficulty, apart from finding the money, in getting on with the job. I hope also that the right hon. Gentleman will do something about providing accommodation for the tourists.

Something has been said in the debate about tourism encouraging the craft industries. The tourist who goes to the Highlands and decides to take home some souvenir buys goods made in the Highlands when he buys tweed, woollens, or knitwear, but if he goes into a shop in Inverness or Dingwall and sees ornaments made of horn, he does not know that it is not sheep country and when he gets home he finds that he has bought something made in Italy. If hon. Members do not believe that, they should buy these goods.

If hon. Members can do anything to stimulate the enterprise of local people in the Highlands to go ahead with local craft industries they will be rendering a service to the Highlands and to Scotland and will be giving satisfaction to tourists who feel cheated when they buy something that looks local to the Highlands and then find that they are of foreign manufacture.

The hon. Member for Inverness (Mr. N. McLean) appealed for certain powers to be given to the district councils. There is one very simple thing that might be done. The District Councils Association is the only local government association which is not represented on the Scottish Tourist Board. It has asked to be represented but the Board has said, "No". That is a pity. The Association is still in correspondence with the Board of Trade and the Scottish Tourist Board on this matter. I would ask the Joint Under-Secretary whether he and the Secretary of State could not bring a little pressure to bear upon the Board to admit representation from the District Councils Association, because the district councils can help the Board a great deal in the work which it is undertaking on behalf of touring in Scotland.

To sum up, I want to see winter sports encouraged. I am delighted to see water ski-ing at some of our lochs. I want to see angling encouraged. I want more use to be made of artificial lochs created by the Hydro-Electricity Board. I want to see other lochs and rivers more widely used. I want to see tourists in Scotland able to get day and weekly tickets at reasonable prices in order to participate in sports.

This is a large subject and hon. Members will realise that we shall have to return to it on some other occasion. As others have done, I will resume my seat quickly in order to give the Minister a chance to reply, and I end as I began by congratulating the hon. Gentleman the Member for Perth and East Perthshire on giving us the opportunity to have this short debate.

In the short time at my disposal I am sure the House will excuse me if I do not answer all the questions that have been asked, although I shall be glad to look at all the points made.

I join with all other hon. Members who have spoken in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. MacArthur) on the use to which he put his good fortune in the Ballot; not only in the choice of an excellent subject, which has, been thoroughly appreciated by all in the House, but also on his excellent speech. Here may I say that all the contributions made will be most useful to the Government and that we shall study them all.

My hon. Friend started in the right way, if I may say so, by a slight pat on the back to the Government. He dealt with scenic beauties; he dealt with trade in Scotland; he dealt with the tourist industry, and he finished on a note of progress. I thought that in every way it was a perfect maiden speech and I congratulate him upon it.

Most of the debate has been on tourism but reference has also been made to industry, and I will reply first to my hon. Friends the Members for Ross and Cromarty (Mr. John MacLeod) and Caithness and Sutherland (Sir D. Robertson) about Government assistance to industry in the Highlands. Since the Distribution of Industry (Industrial Finance) Act of 1958 there has been a marked improvement in industry in the Highlands, and applications for D.A.T.A.C. assistance have been recommended for acceptance involving £250,000 to provide 516 jobs. That is a satisfactory start, and since the beginning of the year there has been the prospect of a plastics industry in Thurso and a glass industry in Wick, both of which are in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness and Sutherland.

There has been a tendency in the past in this country to regard the tourist trade as a sideline, or at best a part-time activity. Last year, however, Scotland received almost as many visitors as her total population, and this was an all-time record. In recent years tourism has become not only an industry in its own right but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness (Mr. N. McLean) said, one of the largest in the country and the second largest earner of dollars. We want Scotland to develop its industry to the full, but to ensure this the capacity of industry to expand must be maintained, and it must expand in the directions most beneficial to the country.

During the debate emphasis has been placed on the Scottish aspect of tourism. In other words we do not want to bring the tourist to Scotland to see something alien; we want to bring him there to see Scotland. The best way to make Scotland attractive for the tourist is to offer everything best in traditional Scottish hospitality, in sport and recreation, in Scottish fare and also in Scottish products. Incidentally I am told that there is a horn industry in Bute.

I also agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. G. Campbell) that we must develop our natural resources to achieve that result. Many voluntary bodies are combining together to achieve this result. Reference has been made to the National Trust and to local tourist associations. I should like to say to my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness that limited financial assistance is available from the Board, which is prepared to give small grants to help in setting up local information centres. Local authorities may also contribute under the Health Resorts and Watering Places Act, 1936. In some cases, powers are available under the Local Government (Scotland) Act, 1947. These have been used. Another way of attracting tourists is through the local angling associations. All these bodies are combining together and the Board aims to give a kind of direction to the whole national effort to increase and improve tourism.

Reference has not been made to another matter, but I think that it would be unfortunate in a debate like this if it were not mentioned. Tourism has been greatly assisted by the Films of Scotland Committee. Hon. Members have seen the films of this Committee. I do not think that they are shown on aircraft but they are certainly shown in ships on their way over to this country. In answer to the hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Rankin, I should say that a very great deal of publicity is made available. I was sorry to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Moray and Nairn that there was difficulty in obtaining information in London. That matter will be looked into because it is most important. Both the Scottish Council and the Scottish Tourist Board do their best to ensure that information is available.

Although the share of the British Travel and Holidays Association grant that is made available to the Scottish Tourist Board appears to be small, nevertheless Scotland benefits and, I think, receives her full share of the benefit of the money that is spent by the British Travel and Holidays Association to attract tourists from abroad. In addition, local authorities have been stepping up their contributions to the Scottish Tourist Board. As a result of discussions between the Secretary of State and the Board, the present campaign in the Highlands was initiated.

We shall have an ample opportunity later to discuss roads, but I ought to say that during this summer it is expected that thirty-two road schemes will be carried out in the Highlands to a total value of £4 million. This is far in excess of anything that has been done before. We all know the deficiencies, but the House can be assured that they are being tackled.

Can the hon. Gentleman say whether it will be easier to get through Newtonmore this summer than it was last summer?

Newtonmore is one of the two places being tackled by the Fraser Committee as special cases. However, the liveliness in Newtonmore is part of the reason why one cannot get through Newtonmore very quickly. In view of my own personal association, I would not deplore the fact that it is not possible to get through there quickly.

While the plan is to develop the Highlands in particular, it is by no means intended that tourist development should be concentrated solely in the Highlands. One must reinforce strength and concentrate on a narrow front to start with if one wants to gain success. It is necessary to start somewhere. I think that a sound start is being made. We hope that it will develop and snowball. As the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) said, we shall have a further opportunity of discussing this matter this year. We are grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and East Perthshire for having raised it now.

There is a widespread feeling in the south Essex area that the transport facilities there are very inadequate, and a desire that there should be some considerable improvement. That is particularly so in Dagenham. The reason the services are inadequate in that part of the Greater London area may be due, possibly, to a bigger variation in use between the rush hours and ordinary times compared with the more central parts of the area. There is also less duplication of services over the same roads as there is in areas nearer the centre of London.

Then with the decline generally in London Transport revenue, there is less inclination by London Transport to develop services or to introduce new ones. Even in the newly developing areas, where there may be the possibility of winning new traffic, it does not seem to show much initiative. There is also the tendency of long-distance bus services running all the way through London to bunch up if they have been delayed by fog or congestion in the central areas. If there is such interference the services are often cut down or turned round or may be cancelled. So there are a number of reasons why there appear to be generally inadequate services in this area.

In Dagenham we feel that there should be better north-south bus services. There need to be more direct links between the northern part of the town and the main part. The northern part has the Hainault industrial estate. Part of this L.C.C. housing estate is in Chigwell, part in Word, and part in Dagenham. The industrial part of the estate is in my constituency and the southern end of the housing area.

That industrial estate was developed at the same time as the housing estate, so that there would be work for the people there. There is complaint, however, that there is shortage of labour for the factories on the estate. There is general complaint in the London area of shortage of labour, but local industrialists complain that if transport facilities were adequate they would have their fair share of the labour available, for local supplies are not adequate, and they want to bring it in from elsewhere. Also, many people on the estate do not have the skills used in the local factories and go out to other industrial areas to work.

Transport facilities to and from the Hainault industrial area today are thought to be inadequate both by the people working there and by the factory owners. The excuse is made that one gets a lot of people trying to use the buses in the rush hour and that there should be a greater staggering of hours. But the initiative really ought to come from London Transport. It should take steps to get a conference of workers and industrialists to try to get a scheme for staggering hours which would ensure better travelling conditions on buses. It is no good saying it should be done if London Transport does not take the initiative.

There are other reasons why we think there should be better facilities to the north from the southern parts of the borough. First, we have recently developed a large new housing estate at Marks Gate. The sons and daughters of residents of the main part of the borough live there and, naturally, their families want to visit them at weekends and evenings, particularly on Sundays which is the day when traffic facilities are most inadequate. There is a large cemetery nearby and at the top end of the borough is Hainault Forest, one of the few pleasant pieces of open country in that part of Essex and a fairly large area. It is very fine country, but it is not known anything like as well as it should be. People cannot get at it and, naturally, do not go to it. London Transport might provide a little publicity about the charm of Hainault Forest as it rightly publicises ancient, historic houses in London and round about. It would be a good idea to have such publicity and to get traffic going to Hainault Forest, helping to make services in that area more remunerative.

We feel that in the whole of south Essex there is a strong need for an overhaul of the routing and schedules of buses. When new estates are built and new roads constructed or widened, the bus services tend to run along the old lines and little attempt is made to bring them into line with changing conditions.

In the middle of Dagenham is a very fine dual carriageway, Becontree Avenue, and it is estimated that 14,500 people live within 250 yards of either side of that road. Many representations have been made by the council and other local bodies to get bus services diverted from routes where they are duplicating other services, to run along that avenue. The main bus services however continue to run along the old routes although this highway is particularly suitable for taking bus traffic.

Along that highway are institutions used by many people and which could be used by many more people if there were bus services to them. There are the Becontree Branch Library, which issued 762 books per day last year; Valence House, an old manor house converted for the use of voluntary organisations, at which there were 1,381 meetings last year and at which there would have been more if there had been better bus services; Valence Baths, which were attended by 74,400 people in the five months of last summer; the council main depot, at which 250 men are employed, and the meeting places of the two largest voluntary organisations in the area, the Y.M.C.A. and the British Legion; while a large shopping centre is nearby. One would have thought that London Transport would have taken account of local knowledge and representations and would have made some attempt to meet the demands for services in that area.

This is not the first time that we have had to complain about transport facilities in that part of Essex. When I was first elected to the House of Commons in 1935 and represented the whole of south Essex, this was a burning issue. I led a deputation of the different local authorities in the area to the then Minister of Transport. As a result, we had a further deputation to Mr. Frank Pick, then in charge of London Transport. The result of that was a general overhaul of the routes and schedules for all bus services in the area, very much to the appreciation of local inhabitants.

A similar overhaul is now needed. There is a feeling that London Transport dislikes taking such action. One knows that altering routes and schedules involves a great deal of work and the dove-tailing of other services elsewhere and has other repercussions. As a result of that, the matter is put off and avoided but a fundamental overhaul of the services to bring them into line with modern needs is now necessary.

As the result of that deputation the South Essex Traffic Advisory Committee, of which I have the honour to be the president, was set up in 1936. I think that I can claim to have been its father. It was set up to keep a watch on the services in the area and to keep in mind changing public needs. We have on it representatives of the local councils and representatives of the bus and train services. My impression is that useful work was done by that Committee, especially during the war years, but there is a wide feeling that in the last five or ten years the Committee has become more and more ineffective. Many people think that it has largely become a farce, because no major improvements have been made in recent years as a result of representations made by the Committee. The Committee is therefore felt to be a waste of time. I hope that some effort will be made to rejuvenate the Committee and make it more effective by seeing that attention is paid to the complaints which it puts forward.

May I now deal with the railways in the area? Enormous alterations are taking place. Barking Station is being reconstructed, and the electrification of the Fenchurch Street—Tilbury line is in hand. I think that on the whole people would agree that despite those enormous alterations there has not been undue interference with the services. On the other hand, there is a feeling that sometimes the fact that these alterations are taking place is used as an excuse for other shortcomings that are not due to those alterations. It is also felt that there is room for improved information ser- vices for the benefit of passengers, so that when alterations have to be made people can be informed in good time. They should be taken into the confidence of the people who run the railways and told why a train has to stop if they have to change into another one.

May I next deal with Dagenham Dock Station. It is on the line to Tilbury which is being electrified. I should like to put the suggestion that the station should be re-sited as part of the electrification plan, or possibly that the communications to the station from the different factories in the area might be improved. It is obviously important that when that line is electrified the station should be able to take as many workers from those factories as possible, and be able to take them either west or east. At present an enormous amount of the labour force travels up by bus to Dagenham Heathway or Dagenham East Stations. That means cutting across all sorts of other people leaving work by other means of transport. If they could be taken direct by railway that would be an enormous relief to the traffic problem when work finishes or when people are coming to work. I hope that that suggestion will be looked at to see whether something can be done to re-site the station or to provide better approaches to it.

My next point deals with the nearby level crossing. This is a very vexed question and I would not have raised it today had I not had representations made to me both by industrialists on the Thames-side estate and by shop stewards asking that something should be done. This level crossing is one of the busiest anywhere in the Greater London area. The figures that I have, show that in September, 1952, 160 vehicles an hour passed over the level crossing, and the gates were closed for 42 per cent. of the time. In February, 1958, 325 vehicles per hour went through, and the gates were closed for 38 per cent. of the time. In early March of this year 422 vehicles an hour went through, and the gates were again shut for 38 per cent. of the time. Over a twelve-hour period between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. 80 trains pass along that line.

When the electrification of the line is complete there will be more traffic on the railway, and, as it is suggested that signal boxes will control a longer length of line, there may be longer periods when the gates are closed, in addition to more traffic. People are worried about what the position will be when the electrification is complete.

A few years ago I took a deputation to the Minister about this. The position is that this is a private road. The Ministry's view was that if the factory owners would combine to put up 50 per cent. or 60 per cent. of the cost it might be possible to provide a bridge in place of a level crossing. Nothing came of that. No one was prepared to do anything. I ask the Minister whether he cannot take the initiative in calling a conference of the parties concerned, particularly the factory owners, the local authority and the workers, to try to devise a practical plan to remove the level crossing and thus obviate the difficulties, which cause an enormous waste of time, petrol, and so on. That could usefully be done.

Most of my constituency consists of London County Council houses built in the 'twenties and the 'thirties, when nobody thought that the day would come when many of the inhabitants would possess their own motor cars. There is, therefore, little room for the building of garages, although a large proportion of the people possess cars. As a result, the vehicles are parked in the roads outside the houses.

The second aspect of the problem is that many of the workers at the industrial area come in by car and park their cars on the roads nearby by day. Car parks are often available, but, as it takes so long to get the vehicles out when work has finished, their owners prefer to leave them on the streets. In addition, long-distance lorries are often parked in the streets for considerable periods at night or evening, so that the drivers can leave early next morning. The result is that an enormous number of vehicles are parked on the estate roads, which are not over-wide. This makes it dangerous for people driving along the roads at night and difficult of access for ambulances, fire engines, garbage vans, delivery vans and the rest.

The Dagenham Council has made an effort to meet the situation by providing a number of parking places, but people will not use them. They prefer to park outside their houses. It would help if the police could direct vehicles, especially those of the non-residents, to the parking places and get people to use them. This would at least remove the long-distance lorries and the cars of people who work in the area during the day and would afford considerable relief and certainly make the police popular with the local inhabitants, who feel they have the first right to park outside their own houses.

As the area is within the Metropolitan traffic area, the local authority has no power to designate streets for parking or even for "no waiting." The usual machinery must be followed and sometimes it takes as long as eighteen months to reach a decision, as happened in a recent case. We believe locally that it would be worth while for the local council to have authority to control parking in its own area and we suggest as an experiment that cars should be parked only on one side of the road. When this suggestion has been made to the police, they have replied that the streets are too narrow and have refused permission. Cars therefore continue to be parked on both sides and nothing is done. At least, it would be a worth-while experiment to have cars parked on only one side of the road.

The council feels that it would be a great help to have power to build garages, not merely, as now, for its own tenants, but for other people. There is little desire to build garages in the area —shops and houses are much more remunerative—but as part of the general policy of trying to provide parking places, the local authority would find it useful to have power to build garages and to collect an adequate rent for them. This would be a contribution towards solving the problem. Possibly, these last two points might be dealt with in the Road Traffic Bill which the Government are soon to present to Parliament.

We would appreciate it if we could have a deputation from the local authorities of the area and its Members of Parliament to the Minister, and, possibly, through him to London Transport, to discuss the whole of these problems, particularly the need for re-routing and for new schedules, and to raise with the Minister our suggestions concerning adequate powers over parking and the building of garages.

If we are to allow the Joint Parliamentary Secretary time to reply, I can hardly do more than support formally what has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Mr. Parker). This I gladly do, for the needs of his constituents and of mine are in many ways identical.

Two points I may mention as of particular interest to people in Barking. The first is that improvements in the Thames View Estate bus service always seem to lag behind the development of the estate. Buses are quite often taken out of service unexpectedly and most inconveniently. Why? Secondly, the recently dieselised rail service between Barking and St. Pancras is not working at all satisfactorily, and British Railways have had to apologise publicly for the delays. Why?

I do not expect the hon. Gentleman to be able to answer these points today, as well as those raised by my hon. Friend, but that, of course, strengthens the case for a deputation from the local authorities and the hon. Members concerned, and I hope that this request at least will receive a favourable reply.

I think that both hon. Gentlemen who have spoken realise my situation in this debate. So many of the matters that are raised are those of management for the London Transport Executive, management matters in which my right hon. Friend has virtually no say, unless, of course, the situation is becoming so serious that it was a national affair, whereupon my right hon. Friend would have the right to give the London Transport Executive a direction. I do not think that either of the hon. Gentlemen would take the view that these matters are as serious as that.

One suggestion made by the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Parker) and endorsed by his hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Mr. Driberg) was that my right hon. Friend should receive a deputation from the local authorities and others. While, of course, we are never averse to receiving deputations if some useful purpose can be served, I ought to say to them that on these matters of management, the better course, in my personal view, would be to approach the London Transport Executive, to begin with, and to ask Mr. Valentine or some of his associates to receive a deputation first.

That might be more productive of results in the long run rather than meeting my right hon. Friend, who could only say that this was a matter of management, and that all he could do was to be a sort of conduit pipe between the deputation and the London Transport Executive. Perhaps if either of the hon. Members wish to pursue the point of the deputation further, we could discuss it, but that is all I can say at the moment.

The hon. Member for Dagenham raised a point about a number of complaints of bus services, and again these are matters of management for which my right hon. Friend the Minister is not responsible. All I can do is to give the hon. Members what information is available, coming from the London Transport Executive. The first complaint was about the inadequate service between the north and south parts of the Hainault industrial estate to Dagenham town centre. I am told that in September, 1959, the London Transport Executive refused a request from the Dagenham Council to run a service of this kind because there was insufficient traffic. It points out that travel is possible from one part of the estate to the centre of the town by the use of the 139 bus, and changing to the 62 bus at Eastern Avenue. The 139A bus was recently withdrawn because of lack of support and insufficient traffic.

Another point raised by the hon. Gentleman concerned the question of routes 139 and 175. He complained particularly of an inadequate service, bunching and bad timekeeping. The answer to this, I am told, is that there is in this area, as the hon. Member himself said, very heavy traffic congestion, and, in addition, perhaps because of the counter attractions of the industrial developments going on so well in his constituency, there is a considerable shortage of staff for the buses. In any event, however, the London Transport Executive tells me that it is considering the regrouping of the two routes so as to provide a better service.

The other point which the hon. Member raised was that of re-routing buses through the estate. I am told that in December, 1951, and again in April, 1956, the London Transport Executive applied to the licensing authority for permission to re-route these buses, but the Dagenham Council, on both occasions, opposed the application because it claimed that the roads were unsuitable for buses. This is a matter in which the Minister must act in a review capacity, and an appeal be made to him, as a result of failure to meet obligations, but I can make no further comment on it beyond that.

The hon. Gentleman also referred to the South-Essex Traffic Advisory Committee. I ought to say that, as he has already inferred, that this is a purely local body set up, I think, in 1936 by the local authorities with the object of putting complaints about transport facilities to the railway and London Transport authorities. I must make it clear that the Minister of Transport is in no way responsible for this Committee, or for its proceedings. Despite the criticism which the hon. Gentleman says is now emerging, the Committee has existed for nearly twenty-five years, and I suppose that to some extent it must be supported by the local authority. I believe it has very close contact with the Executive and with the Eastern Region of British Railways which are represented at the Committee's monthly meetings.

I think that from time to time the Committee has had some successes. Two recent examples have been given to me. One in July, 1959, consisted of the successful diversion of the bus route 62 so as to provide a service to Marksgate Estate in Dagenham, and again, in the autumn of 1958, a special Sunday bus service was provided for the Thames View Estate to which the hon. Member for Barking referred in his brief intervention.

I cannot make any comment about the Committee, because it is not one for which we are responsible, but I would like to draw the attention of the hon. Gentleman's constituents to the existence of the appropriate transport users' consultative committee which is, of course, the channel provided by Parliament for complaints by users of rail or bus transport services. Of course, it is always best for complainants to go first to the Executive or to British Railways and make their complaints, and then, if they do not get satisfaction, to go to the transport users' consultative committee.

A brief word about the level crossing called Chequers Lane. The hon. Gentleman was quite right in telling the House that this is a road for which we are not responsible. I understand that down as far as the station the road is a public road—a Class III road—but that beyond the level crossing it becomes a private road.

Our interest in highways is, of course, principally concerned with through traffic in this sort of case. I am told that here there is no congestion of through traffic in the normal sense. It is mainly the local traffic coming from the estate out into Dagenham and perhaps elsewhere. Certainly, no application has been made to us by the local authority for a bridge to be provided or for a scheme to be propounded with that objective. If such a scheme were put forward we would, of course, look at it, but we should have to regard it critically because it would be somewhat expensive to provide.

The hon. Gentleman suggested that the Minister might call a conference of all parties concerning the bridge. I would have thought that that was a better exercise to be carried out by the local authority to begin with and if later there was a general desire that we should be approached with regard to a grant then we should look at it. I ought to say that the London Transport Executive tells me that electrification of the line and the installation of fully automatic and colour light signalling, which should be completed by 1961, should give a better rail service any way and will speed up the operation of this level crossing. So, perhaps, as time goes on the situation will improve.

Finally, I do not think that at this late hour, the hon. Gentleman will expect me to indulge in a wide dissertation about car parking in Dagenham. With regard to the problem which he mentioned of parking around the Ford Estate, he will now perhaps have received the letter which I wrote to him yesterday telling him of the recent action taken by the police and the result of that action.

I am told that long-term parking by employees of the company in this district has practically ceased. I hope that I am rightly informed. I think that I should also mention that various improvements are proposed for the main road near the Ford factory which should have the effect of reducing delays to all traffic and provide somewhat less temptation for the Ford workers to leave their cars outside the factory in the roads instead of in the very big car parks provided by the company. It is an interesting commentary on our society, particularly on the prosperity in the hon. Gentleman's constituency, that so many cars should be run by the workers in the Ford Company that they are causing a great parking problem outside the factory.

That is all that I have time to say, but we will do what we can to help both hon. Gentlemen on both problems.

Before the hon. Gentleman sits down, could he say whether it is possible to do more by way of advertising in local papers, or otherwise, to make known the existence and whereabouts of the transport users' consultative committee?

We could publicise it, but I do not think that we have the funds for the purpose. Perhaps I could have a word with the hon. Gentleman about it.