Statute Law Repeals - Law Commission - Ministry of Justice

GROUP 2 – RATES AND CHARGES
INTRODUCTION
9.205 Prior to the grouping of railway operators in 1923 (which standardised the
regulation of railways across Great Britain) 405 railway companies were
autonomous private bodies. They operated within a legislative framework
overseen by the Board of Trade which, amongst other things, established a
regime classifying and prescribing maximum charges for merchandise traffic.
9.206 The Railway and Canal Traffic Act 1888 406 overrode existing statutory provisions
and enacted in their place a new procedure whereby railway companies were
obliged to submit to the Board of Trade revised traffic classifications and
schedules of rates and charges for approval and for preparation of provisional
orders for parliamentary confirmation (via a special Bill procedure). The
arrangement allowed for the lodging of objections by interested parties.
9.207 Although the various provisional order confirmation Acts have long been
superseded by events (not least wholesale nationalisation in 1948 and reversal
by privatisation in 1993) they do not appear to have been repealed. Indeed one of
the Order Confirmation Acts was held in 1931 still to be effective. 407 Today,
however, the various statutes described in this Part are obsolete and have no
useful purpose. 408
9.208 This Part provides an overview of the various rates and charges Acts passed
from 1891 to 1909, 409 but starts with one Act (from 1853) which predates the
1888 framework. 410
405 See the Railways Act 1921 (11 & 12 Geo.5 c.55) (now almost entirely repealed), which
effected the grouping change from January 1923 and established a new Railway Rates
Tribunal. Once the 1921 Act and subordinate legislation were fully in force the previous
charging arrangements became obsolete, except in Ireland (where the railway companies
were to operate under existing legislation pending alternative provision being made by the
proposed Council of Ireland: see section 84). Five sets of SR & Os made in 1927 for the
‘Big Four’ grouped railway companies provided standard terms and conditions of carriage,
superseding the earlier arrangements.
406 51 & 52 Vict. c.25 (1888). This 1888 Act was to be read and construed with the Regulation
of Railways Act 1873 (c.48). Small portions of each Act are still live (mainly in conjunction
with canal operations).
407 See LNER v Brahams (1931) 21 Ry & Can Tr Cases 1 which dealt with a consignment
note made in accordance with the Great Northern Railway Company (Rates and Charges)
Order Confirmation Act 1891 (c.ccxv) (see further below).
408 The Transport Act 1962 (c.46) created the British Railways Board in place of the British
Transport Commission. It may have disapplied the earlier Rates and Charges Order
Confirmation Acts, but did not formally repeal them.
409 For ease of reference the provisional order confirmation Acts are dealt with here
sequentially by year, rather than by railway company name, because their legislative
passage involved corralling a batch of unrelated companies within a particular
parliamentary session.
410 The detailed background to this topic, and to the specific statutes mentioned in it, is set out
in the Law Commission’s consultation paper Railways: Rates and Charges - Proposed
Repeals (SLR 02/09) published in May 2009 and available on the Law Commission’s
website at www.lawcom.gov.uk.
283