p ARLIAMENTARY ritual requires that the next few weeks or even
Page 60
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
months must be spent on the Committee stage of the Transport Bill. Its huge uncouth bulk will be set up like a wax image so that its enemies may stick pins into it. Before the process ends there may be more than a thousand amendments. Not all of them will be given the opportunity of reaching the target and it is practically certain that none of them will be allowed to damage a vital part. For the most part the Government majority of 17 to 13 will ensure that only minor changes
are accepted.
Often the amendments will arrange themselves so as to make possible a kind of Dutch auction on the clause under discussion. The first proposal might be to defeat the whole clause. When this fails less and less drastic alternatives will be tried until perhaps a point of balance is reached at which the Minister of Transport is prepared to give way. Otherwise the successive amendments will be repulsed one by one and the clause left intact.
Other things being equal the Government's breaking point will come earlier where the pressure is stronger. Road operators are justified in keeping up their campaign against the Bill. Their Parliamentary tactics may have to change during the Committee stage. It will be natural to concentrate on the 30 MPs forming the Committee; and although the broad issues must not be neglected more attention ought to be paid to some of the details.
Last week and the week previously I dealt with some of the provisions concerning the appointment of transport managers and the exemption of international traffic from quantity licensing. Neither item is regarded as a major target by the interests opposed to the Bill but both items provide scope for change and improvement which can best be urged at this stage.
A reflection
There will be no shortage of amendments to sections 67 to 77 headed "Special authorizations for use of large goods vehicles". They will be examined and probed for every ambiguity and nuance.
It is in one sense a reflection on the justice and common sense of the provisions that words have to be squeezed and spun out to such a length merely to ensure that without a permit vehicles may not carry goods beyond 100 miles or carry certain goods at all.
One strange omission in spite of so much verbiage is a list of these excluded traffics. The Minister must surely know what they are. Her White Paper referred to "certain specified bulk materials such as coal, vari
ous extracted materials, and iron and steel (mainly in the unfinished and semi-finished categories)".
The Bill limits itself to the laconic description of "prescribed goods" and some time later reveals that "prescribed" means prescribed by regulations.
Until these regulations are made, which may not be for some considerable time to come, operators carrying a wide range of goods will be left in doubt. When their businesses are threatened in so many ways it is not unreasonable to ask that the Minister should be spec& wherever possible.
Hauliers dismayed
Hauliers in particular may be dismayed by the leisurely process laid down for dealing with applications for special authorizations. Comprehensive details have . to be submitted to the Licensing Authority. He must send them to the railways and to the Freight Corporation and they have 14 days in which to object. If either of them exercises the right an inquiry takes place and there may be a subsequent appeal to the Transport Tribunal.
What happens to the traffic in the meantime even if there are no objections? The customer is not likely to wait patiently. He will find some other way of moving the goods.
There is provision for an expedited grant in cases of emergency. Before it can be put into effect the Licensing Authority has to be satisfied of the urgency of the case, that the emergency of the case could not reasonably have been foreseen and "that the need cannot be met by the Railways Board or the Freight Corporation, or by any subsidiary of the Board or Corporation, wholly or partly by rail".
In these circumstances the State-owned bodies do not even have to prove that their service will be as good and as cheap as that offered by the applicant. All that the Licensing Authority is required to find out is that they are actually in a position to carry the traffic.
The absurdity of artificial limits is well illustrated by the way in which the Bill circles round the apparently simple concept of 100 miles. Nothing must be left to chance. There must be no loophole for evasion.
As a consequence the curious situation arises that an operator would need no special authorization to carry traffic from one side of the Bristol Channel to the other, for example between Cornwall and South Wales, provided the collection and delivery points are not "separated by a distance exceeding 100 miles". He might have to travel well over 200 miles by road.
On the other hand he must seek and might be refused permission to take a load to one of the towns he would pass on the journey if the town happened to be separated by more than 100 miles from his starting point.
Nor would he be allowed to drop a part load at that town on his way to South Wales since the South Wales consignment would then be carried on "part of a controlled journey".
Short of travelling in the fourth dimension it would be difficult to find a more confusing set of circumstances. The surprises in Section 67 do not end there. A lorry carrying goods may itself be carried on a "vessel, aircraft or other means of transport". It would not be fair to regard this part of the journey as included in the permitted 100 miles.
The proposal is that the "distances separating the points between which the vehicle is not so carried" should be added together.
Presumably "other means of transport" could include another lorry or a low-loader. It may be argued therefore that a vehicle which travels 50 miles, is then carried a further 100 miles on another vehicle, and finished another 50 miles solo, would be covering a total distance of 200 miles but would not need a special authorization.
Perhaps no operator would think this a practical proposition even to spite Mrs. Castle., The suggestion is put forward for what it is worth.
The reference to Mrs. Castle calls to mind the promise in the White Paper that she will introduce quantity licensing only "when she is satisfied that the Freightliner services have developed sufficiently to justify its introduction".
There is no such specific promise in the Bill. The Minister will have power to fix the "appointed day" when she pleases. Here is yet another point which may well be picked up in amendments during the Committee stage.