• The Labour Party is still aiming to ambush Government
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plans to introduce continuous 0-licensing in a Bill which returns to the House of Lords for its final stages this week.
Labour warns that if 0licences are granted for life, authorities will have less control over the monitoring of hauliers to check they are legal.
In a report, Danger Ahead, it calls for the Government to introduce a "more vigorous enforcement of the existing licensing system", under which licences are renewed every five years. The problems caused by continuous 0-licensing would be compounded by a 20% cut in the Department of Transport's budget in the next two years, says Labour.
It says that this budget cut will lead to "a drastic reduction in road traffic enforcement".
Labour spokesman Derek Fatchett NIP says: "Given the alarming number of accidents involving NM's, it would be foolish and dangerous to relax the controls."
The Association of Chief Police Officers has already appealed to the Government to reconsider its plans, which ACP° says would be impossible to enforce and "open to abuse." It is concerned about plans to do away with requirements for 0-licence windscreen discs to display an expiry date or registration number.
ACP0 questions how enforcement staff on roadside checks would be able to check if the operator had paid the annual fee for the licence. It warns that if a disc was not vehicle specific, it would be a time consuming job to establish if the licencee was authorised to operate a specific truck.