Hawick, Kelso, Selkirk and Peebles attended the meeting to fight the case against closure. There were no representatives from English councils; only Northumberland had contacted the TUCC requesting to be informed of the outcome. Arguments made against closure included the inadequacies of local roads and the damage which would be caused to the fabric of Borders life, whilst British Rail pointed to the falling patronage of the line and the increased car ownership in the area. The TUCC's 15-page report was submitted to Barbara Castle in December 1966, but it was only in April 1968 that she concluded that the annual subsidy required for the line's retention – £700,000 for the whole route or £390,000 for Hawick-Edinburgh – could not be justified. Even to run a reduced service between Edinburgh and Hawick, on a single track with most stations closed and with the most stringent economies, a grant of about £250,000 per year would be required, representing 11d per passenger mile. In the Minister's opinion, grants on such a scale, even for a drastically modified and rationalised service, could not be justified on a value-for-money basis. In the meantime, British Rail's Network for Development plans published in May 1967 confirmed that the line was considered neither as a trunk route to be developed, nor as a rural branch line qualifying for subsidy on social grounds. Final decision Barbara Castle's intention to discontinue passenger services on the Waverley Route was opposed by Willie Ross and Anthony Crosland, President of the Board of Trade, who considered that it would call into question the Government's intention to support the economic development of the Borders region and make a mockery of the consultative arrangements for the closure of railway lines by ignoring the findings of the TUCC and rejecting the recommendations of the Scottish Economic Planning Council. Castle was replaced by Richard Marsh in April 1968 after a Cabinet reshuffle. The new minister was unhappy to be moved from his previous position of Minister of Power to a ministry about which he "knew nothing and cared less". On 8 April 1968, two days after the reshuffle, the Ministerial Committee on Environmental Planning (MCEP) met to hear the arguments for and against closure of the line; Marsh referred to statistics which showed that passenger numbers between Edinburgh and Hawick had dipped by 30% between 1964 and 1967, while car ownership had risen by 120% and