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WESTM NS TER HAUL

16th August 1980
Page 7
Page 7, 16th August 1980 — WESTM NS TER HAUL
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

THERE ARE vehicles and vehicles. And for most of the MPs who debated the problems of the motor industry — all of them from the Midlands — it was obvious that the only ones which bothered them were cars.

Indeed, Metros, ltals and Fiestas so held the centre of the road that when at long last Jocelyn Cadbury, who represents the Northfield area of Birmingham, turned everyone's attention to commercial vehicles he was stating the obvious when he observed that their surreptitious invasion had been relatively unnoticed.

But Mr Cadbury had noticed them — and had the figures to prove it. In the first six months of this year imports of goods vehicles of less than three tonnes had risen by 30 per cent in value, and those over that size by 21 per cent.

And it was not just the Japanese who were the villains of the piece, even though they were doing serious damage to the British commercial vehicle industry. Mr Cadbury was not happy with the Common Market either — we had failed to stem the tide of vehicles from Wolfburg, Rouen and Turin, let alone the flood from Osaka.

He had an answer to the Japanese problem — they should be asked to hold their sales to ten per cent of the UK market. But he was less positive about the Europeans, although he suggested that controls on imports should at least equal those imposed by our competitors.

And he backed up his argument by recalling that a Leyland Truck manager had told him it was possible to have a new Renault on our roads within a few weeks, whereas the equivalent BL truck would take over a year to get onto the French roads.

Eighteen months, corrected Hal Miller, the Tory from nearby Bromsgrove and Redditch, who was most put out by the fact that we had no type approval for commercial vehicles.

The surprising thing about Mr Miller's speech was that there were no cries of dissent when he talked of the need to increase the payload of lorries — he has roused wrath with far more innocuous statements.

But the Tories did not make all the running. Terry Davis, the Labour man from Stechford, for instance, was also worried about foreign lorries and the lack of type approval: -This country is wide open."

Alas, Junior Industry Minister Michael Marshall had little reassuring news for any of them. His boss was keeping a very close watch on Japanese commercial vehicles, while the Transport Minister was giving urgent thought to commercial vehicle type approval. And that was that.


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