I want to direct the attention of the House to a purely domestic matter—the question of railway fares which I raised in the House a short time ago when I received from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport a very extraordinary answer. On that occasion I sought to press three points; first, that railway traffic in this country was falling at an alarming rate; secondly, the cost of fares was not 55 per cent. above the 1948 figure as the Government so loudly proclaimed, but something substantially higher; and, thirdly, that the cheap fare facilities now being offered by the railways were inadequate in view of the number which should be provided.

In reply to those three points the Parliamentary Secretary made many very vigorous assertions—more vigorous, in fact, than accurate. In the first place, he went into a long dissertation upon the improved punctuality, and then he sought to explain how railway fares were increased, which, of course, had nothing to do with the case at all. What we on this side of the House are concerned to have is an assurance that coach and bus fares will not be increased. If tonight the Parliamentary Secretary can give such an assurance to this House and to the country, we shall be very grateful indeed. I await with pleasurable anticipation his announcement that under no circumstances would his right hon. Friend sanction any increase in coach or bus fares in this country.

The remarkable thing was that the statements made by the Parliamentary Secretary were incredibly inaccurate, even for a Minister in the present Socialist Administration. It was made worse by the fact that he accused me of being inaccurate, if not misleading. I want to draw attention to some of the alarming inaccuracies in the reply of the hon. Gentleman. When I was making the case about the percentage cost of fares now compared with 1938, I put forward the proposition that the fares were not 55 per cent. higher on an average because the cost of cheap fares today is much more than 55 per cent. greater than in 1938. I further pointed out that the ratio of cheap fares today in relation to the sum total of fares paid is much lower than it was in 1938.

In pursuit of that object, I gave one or two examples. I said that the cheap fare between Manchester and London was 37s. 6d. today, but the hon. Gentleman said he had a newspaper or some publication which showed that it was 23s. He argued that, therefore, I must be wrong. I did not expect the hon. Gentleman to be so emphatic, but I do expect a Minister, when he comes to this House, at least to quote figures which he can substantiate. I have here a pamphlet published by British Railways, reference No. E.22/R, with details of day excursions between Euston and Manchester and vice versa. It says the fare to Manchester is 37s. 6d., which is precisely what I said. What has the hon. Gentleman done? He is Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport, and yet he has confused a half-day excursion fare with a day excursion fare. That does not help his argument, because although the half-day excursion—the few that have been run since the war—costs 23s., the fare before the war was 10s. 6d. In other words, the cost today is well over 100 per cent. above what it was in 1938. The hon. Gentleman made the same gross error about Bournemouth. He said that the Bournemouth fare was 12s. and that that was cheaper than going by coach, but he ignored the fact that before the war the cheap day fare to Bournemouth was in the neighbourhood of 6s. or 6s. 6d. He ought to have had some regard for accuracy.

Even worse was to come, because he said he was surprised—he certainly had some reason to be surprised—on looking at the present fares to find that they were only 10 per cent. higher than in 1928. I do not know where the hon. Gentleman got those figures. Probably it was from the same publication which misled him about the cheap fares. The third class standard fare in 1928 was about lid. a mile, and today it is 2¼d. I am no good at arithmetic, but that seems to be something like 60 per cent. up. The hon. Gentleman was guilty of a gross error in stating that the fares had only risen by 10 per cent. I want to get home to the hon. Gentleman the fact that it is no good for the Government to repeat that the fares have only gone up by 55 per cent. That is obviously not true, and it cannot be supported by any argument.

I want the Minister to realise that the percentage of cheap fares offered at present is abysmally low. Sir Cyril Hurcomb was good enough to write to me at my request—one has to write to these organisations to get information nowadays—and he advised me that in 1948 approximately 10 per cent. of the passengers travelled on cheap fares and that in 1938 about 50 per cent. of the passengers travelled on cheap fares. If we take into account the fact that there were roughly five times more people travelling on cheap fares in 1938——