MPs want TIR weight checks
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• The Government is under pressure to tighten controls on overloaded lorries coming into Britain following the Zeebrugge ferry disaster.
Transport Secretary Paul Channon has announced that greater use is to be made of weighbridges to advise the ferry masters about the weights of vehicles being loaded on to their ships — but he stopped short of saying what would be done about lorries that were found to be overloaded when entering or leaving the country.
Talks on this and other recommendations in the report into the sinking of the Townsend Thoresen ferry are being held this week between Channon, the port authorities and ferry operators.
The court of enquiry found that the Herald of Free Enterprise was "significantly" overloaded when it sank on 6 March, although the overloading was not the cause of the tragedy.
The report, by Mr Justice Sheen, highlighted the difficulty of measuring the weight of vehicles on ferries, and in particular identifying the effect of the distribution of that load on the draught and trim of a particular ferry.
Channon says he will pursue the report's suggestion that greater use should be made of weighbridges, and his department will conduct a survey of the weight of longdistance coaches.
Labour spokesman Peter Snape says the Herald of Free Enterprise was "a latter day Titanic, wrecked on an iceberg of Department of Transport indifference, managerial incompetence and working methods that were apparently designed only to shorten turnaround times — regardless of risks to passengers and crew."
Some lorries had been overloaded and others had been carrying illegal chemicals including cyanide, he says, and the Government should act unilaterally in relation to ferries using British ports and not wait for EEC action.
Calling for proper vehicle weight checks at all ports, he declared computerised weighbridges would not only enable ferry captains and operators to assess ships' loads properly, " but would it not have the spin-off benefit of eradicating the dangerous menace of overloaded lorries on Britain's roads?"
Poole's Tory MP John Ward also pressed Channon on the subject of weighing lorries. He said his constituency had sophisticated weighing machines for-lorries using the local RO-RO ferry, but they were only used on a voluntary basis. There was evidence to suggest that drivers of overloaded vehicles used other ports that did not have such sophisticated devices.
Sealink is showing its Channel passengers a 20minute video which questions the safety precautions planned for the Channel Tunnel.