I apologise to my hon. Friends who wish to join in this Debate, but time is getting on. This is in the nature of Act 1, Scene 2. The cast is .the same, there are one or two new characters who have entered, but the plot has not altered. The villain of the piece is the nationalised railways and the dashing young knight who comes to the rescue sits opposite in the person of the hon. Member for Bucklow (Mr. Shepherd). Broadly speaking we do not seem to have advanced much further.

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has returned to the charge this time because he did not like to lie under the stigma of a 1,500 per cent. error in the loss the railways made in 1947, or the 700 per cent. error in the number of special trains that were run during the last year, and therefore he thought this was the opportunity to recover a little of the lost ground. I am bound to say that I do not propose to remind him of those errors of last time. I shall let the record speak for itself, but I must comment on the errors with which he charged me.

His speech this evening has been much more reasonable than it was last time. Whether that is because I had the opportunity of reading the speech he had just made in one of the technical journals last week before it was made, and with which I acquainted him, I do not know. It is always an advantage to know beforehand the sort of arguments that are to be deployed against one. I have been told that I made a gross error or misled the House. I am not sure which—perhaps both—in connection with cheap fare facilities. Two of the illustrations I gave, Manchester and Bournemouth, are quoted against me. The hon. Gentleman happened, in the course of his comments last time, to read out the excursion fare from Manchester to London. I happened to be perusing one of our London evening papers at the same moment and I saw an advertisement in it——