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Hidden Hand

29th May 1959, Page 60
29th May 1959
Page 60
Page 60, 29th May 1959 — Hidden Hand
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

ACCORDING to tradition, the civil servant has an impassive and completely neutral attitude towards the work that his successive Parliamentary masters call upon him to do. Sir Gilmour Jenkins, who has recently retired after nearly 12 years as Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Transport, contrives with an unobtrusive art that must be the fruit of a lifetime's practice to remain impartial whilst giving an account of an extremely stormy quarter of a century in the book he has just published about the Ministry. If he has any views of his own about nationalization, or licensing, or roads, or the railways, he has successfully disguised them in "The Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation."

.Another book by an ex-civil servant, Mr. R. Kelf-Cohen's "Nationalization in Britain," not only takes its readers behind the scenes when plans for the State ownership of industries are being drawn up, but shows the author as profoundly affected by the history he helped to make. Mr. Kelf-Cohen began as an enthusiastic, even a starry-eyed, supporter of nationalization, but sub-titles his book "The End of a Dogma." Perhaps the book that takes the lid off the Ministry of Transport will appear in due course. It will surely not be written by Sir Gilmour, who is careful to let events speak for themselves, and to omit opinion.

Detailed Recommendations The role of the civil servant was perhaps easiest to play during the spate of legislation in the 1930s. There had been a Royal Commission on Transport, which had bred a number of important committees and councils. The almost constant deliberations of all these official bodies produced a flow of detailed -recommendations on roads, taxation, labour conditions, road safety, licensing of road passenger and goods operation, road-rail co-ordination, and so on. On many of the subjects, the translation from a recommendation into a clause or section of a Bill was no more than a straightforward piece of drafting.

In spite of this, there are many road operators who maintained, and who still maintain, that the Ministry of Transport was staffed almost entirely with railway supporters, who disliked road users and managed to etch their dislike indelibly, into the numerous Acts of Parliament passed before the war. Ministers of Transport at that time, it is true to say, followed each other so quickly that one might suspect they had little knowledge of the industry and leaned heavily upon the permanent officials. Parliament had the opportunity in the course of the debate to correct any bias in the original Bills, but the railway lobby was strong and road users disorganized.

After the war, the suspicions of road operators seemed to receive some confirmation from the apparent zest with which the Ministry entered upon the task of drafting what ultimately became the Transport Act, 1947. Although the Labour party had apparently been thinking the matter over since the turn of the century, their ideas were still nebulous. Another Royal Commission might have helped them, but for the unfortunate likelihood of a recommendation in favour of preserving free enterprise. The 1947 Act itself betrays the lack of a proper plan. It did little more than set up the British Transport Commission and expect that body to work miracles.

Where the Act is compelled to get down to brass tacks, it is not without an even diabolical ingenuity. The plans for taking over road-haulage businesses left no loophole that operators were able to find. The unfolding of the 1326 process started by the Act followed its appointed course whatever hauliers. tried to do, and they were inexorably being herded into the scanty reservations prepared for them when the Conservatives inconsiderately put a spanner in the works by winning a general election. Credit for working out the details of acquisition must go to the civil servants. The politicians did not have the necessary knowledge, and the hauliers had refused to help.

Far less skill went into the Transport Act, .1953. It was admittedly put together in something of a hurry. The machinery was crude; several times it nearly broke down and eventually came to a full stop. For the partial failure several reasons are possible. Hauliers naturall% claim that the plan for disposal was clumsy and left too much responsibility in the hands of British Road Services. The tendency is once again to make a scapegoat of the civil servant, who is accused of making something that he knew could not possibly work. For the second time the politicians are partly absolved because of the frequency with which Ministers of Transport were changing round about 1953.. If indeed the Act of that year was badly drafted, the hauliers at least cannot be blamed. They protested bitterly at every stage, and at practically every clause of a piece of legislation supposedly introduced for their benefit. When Mr. Alan Lennox-Boyd travelled to Blackpool to address the national council of the Road Haulage Association, hauliers had to concede that, if nothing else, he was a very brave man.

Whether or not Mr. Lennox-Boyd, with no previous specialized knowledge of transport, .played any part in making the detailed arrangements for disposal, it is reasonably certain that he had nothing to do with the licensing provisions in the 1953 Act. The haulier think6 himself safe in blaming the civil service entirely for these. The amendment that puts the onus of proof on the objector to a licence application may seem in general to be helping the road-haulage industry, but has made little difference in practice. It is balanced by another change, also comparatively ineffective, but not obviously informed with affection for the provider of transport facilities. He is now plainly told that he must take second place to the person requiring the facilities.

False Statements

The most troublesome Section is 9(4), which provides that an A or B licence may be revoked or suspended as a penalty for false statements of fact or of intention made at the time of the application, even if they were made in good faith. In view of the difficulties caused by this provision, perhaps it is as well that nobody knows who thought it up. It would at least be interesting to find out whether the licensing changes introduced in 1953 had been brought forward in 1947, and if so why they were not accepted.

Sir Gilmour provides no clue to the answer to this sort of question. He does not forget for one moment that he is writing official history, with the seamy side always carefully hidden. It is only for this reason that readers do not find odd the two " broad principles" that Sir Gilmour selects as dominating the work of the Ministry. They are that transport should be financially self-supporting; and that the Ministry should avoid becoming involved in direct operation of transport, except in war-time.


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