These things distort transport progress
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• Development of road transport in Britain had been distorted by the retention of an outdated, protectionist carriers' licensing system, and by the existence of a large Stateowned sector, said Mr. Michael Heseltine, Conservative MP for Tavistock, on Tuesday. Mr. Heseltine is vice-chairman of the Tory transport committee, but was giving his strictly personal Views to members of the Transport Association.
He would have liked to have seen the Tory party remove the protection of the A. B. C carriers' licensing system years ago—and he did not see how the Transport Holding Company's existence could have been regarded as compatible with his party's support for free enterprise.
Nationalized organizations tended to be resistant to change; they lacked the stimulus provided by private shareholders, and politicians would not take or encourage the bold, harsh decisions which private commercial concerns had to take to meet the challenge of changing circumstances.
Mr. Heseltine invited suggestions from the transport industry for consideration by the transport research group which the Conservatives had now set the task of taking a completely new look at the industry.
He personally felt that hauliers had little to fear from C-licensees taking their traffic: he thought that in many cases the own-account operator would be only too glad to hand his traffic over.
When Mr. J. McVeigh (McVeigh Transport) asked whether anything could be done to overcome docks and Customs clearance problems, Mr. Heseltine said he would welcome specific problems for examination. But in the long-term he could not see nationalization of the ports offering solutions. The fear of being wrong so often inhibited action by the State; everything had to be so weighed and investigated that decisions were quite unreasonably delayed, and so the chances of progress were missed.
On the Transport Act, he thought it most unlikely that quantity licensing would ever be introduced—especially by the present Minister. But if it were, the Tories would scrap it.