Licence Decisions Prejudiced ?
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IS every application to the Traffic Commissioners considered entirely on its merits, in accordance with the repeated observations of the Minister of Transport? This question is prompted by certain information that has come to our notice and by the conclusions which we draw from it.
As has been publicly admitted, appeals by passenger-transport operators are not determined by the Minister wholly on the facts, but in furtherance of an administrative policy. It would, therefore, appear to be difficult for the Commissioners always to reach a just decision on the merits of an application if the Minister has, on a previous occasion, dismissed a similar case in accordance with a departmental policy.
It is possible for Commissioners to feel, in exercising their unfettered discretion, that the facts of a case, as presented to them, demand, in justice, that a decision favourable to the applicant should be given, although the Minister may, on previous appeals and for reasons best known to himself, have overruled it. It would obviOusly not be prudent for the Commissioners to make a decision which, in effect, informed the Minister that they were wiser than he, and they would be placed in the position of having to give a ruling with which they did not agree.
This circumstance emphasizes the importance of the establishment of an independent, judicial appeal tribunal for road passenger transport, although coach and bus owners do not appear unanimously to wish that it should be conducted on the same lines as the Appeal Tribunal under the Road and Rail Traffic Act, 1933. In some quarters it is held that the Tribunal concerns itself too greatly with legal quibbles, particularly by the railway companies, to the disadvantage of appellants.