Cheap fares are far too few. The falling off in traffic at present is a most serious affair. I want to emphasise to hon. Members how serious it really is. The figures for 1947 were roughly 100 million less passengers than in 1938, and the figure for 1948 looks like being 200 million less than in 1938. That is a serious falling off, and it is even more serious when one realises that in 1947 and 1948 about 50 million journeys were undertaken by the War Department, which swells the figures, abnormally.

When one realises that, in the main, there is no petrol for holiday journeys, that hundreds of thousands of people who previously travelled by road in their own cars, now have to travel by train, one realises how tremendous has been the loss to the railway companies. Take, for instance, the question of holidays with pay. Ought that not to have swollen considerably the amount of traffic on the railways? And in a period of full employment is it not natural to expect that there would have been a considerable expansion of the demands on the railways as there has been for almost every other service in the country? Without having any actual figures to guide me, I should say that the railways today are losing something like 500 million passengers a year compared with what they ought to be getting, if they were getting the same proportion of the traffic as that which was available in 1938.

Therefore, something has to be done to encourage the number of passengers on the railways. It is no good the Parliamentary Secretary or hon. Gentlemen behind him merely saying that we have not enough locomotives. I quote Sir Eustace Missenden, who is an excellent and able man. He said in the "Railway Gazette" of 5th November, 1948: Today there are sufficient locomotives and the condition of the fleet is better than before the war. That disposes of the argument that we are short of locomotives.

We have the further argument that we are short of carriages, and that argument, of course, has more weight, but it still remains the fact that carriages are running on the railways day in and day out, day and night, poorly filled, and the first job of the Railway Executive is not to complain that they cannot supply the carriages but to fill the carriages they have. That is what they are not doing at present. This is one of the inevitable defects of State monopoly. In support of that statement I quote the extraordinary reply which the hon. Gentleman gave me when this subject was last debated. He said that it was the desire of the Railway Executive to reduce fares but that they wanted to do it if they could be reasonably certain of securing additional revenue from reduced fares.

This is the dilemma into which everybody is thrown through a State monopoly. If the railways can be reasonably certain that they will recover more than they will lose in the way of cheap day fares, they will go for it. But in the old days of private enterprise the railway companies had to take a chance, and what I can now see happening here is a determination on the part of the Minister and the railways to play for safety. They are saying to themselves, "We might fill up these empty carriages but we might not, and therefore we shall not take a chance. We shall wait until coach and bus fares are increased and then more people will utilise our service." That is the inevitable dilemma attached to State monopoly, and I do not blame the Minister of Transport because he is part of a system which is a bad one. However, the people of this country have a right to make full use of the railways, and they have a right to take advantage of the services that are available.

While fares are so high, some attempt ought to be made to fill those empty carriages. They can only be filled by making rail travel cheaper than it is at present. People will not pay twice the price for the privilege of travelling on British Railways in preference to using a coach or a 'bus. The sooner the railway Executive and the Ministers concerned realise this, the sooner we shall get these empty carriages filled. The Railway Executive is punishing itself and the community as long as it withholds the cheap fare facilities which would fill them.

I raised this issue because I thought it was of some importance. I thought particularly that it was my duty to raise it in view of misstatements which the hon. Gentleman, perhaps quite unwittingly, made on the last occasion. I agree that then I was in a somewhat boisterous mood myself and that I may have goaded the hon. Gentleman into putting forward a defence stronger, perhaps, than the case merited. To that extent I accept whatever share of responsibility is mine.

Leaving aside all party questions, here we have the case of a national asset which is not being utilised to the full, a case where the railway system of this country is losing, perhaps, 500 million passengers a year which it ought to have. The time has come when we should treat this matter seriously. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will be able to tell us tonight that he will see that a really substantial effort is made by the Railway Executive to go after this missing traffic. I believe that by cheap fares the railway companies got the business in the 1930's in very difficult circumstances, and that the railways can get it again, if they will give the public the full advantage of cheap facilities.