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140 
WESTM NSTER` HAUL
Page 7
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NOT for the first time, a 'matter which has been causing concern to a great many people was raised in the House of Lords.
While the elected representatives in the Lower House were getting into a lather over housing and what the Chancellor had or had not said, it was left to Lord Underhill to draw attention to the missing legislation about private testing of lorries and buses.
Echoing the puzzlement of many operators, Labour's Upper House spokesman on transport was far from clear about Government intentions.
Anyway, Lord Underhill understood that a suitable measure was to be brought forward, and the prospect did not please him one little bit. A point of view shared by many transport organisations, some of which he listed.
His Lordship knew what he wanted to happen if the Government was shortsighted enough to bring forward the proposal — he hoped that his colleagues would "deal with it accordingly".
A suggestion which was probably received with certain sympathy on both sides of the House, though Lord Underhill must have put up the backs of a few of his more militant colleagues on the Left when he said that, on the grounds of defence alone, this country needed an efficient up-to-date transport system.
But for all his trenchant arguments, Lord Underhill apparently just did not register with Lord Belstead, who replied to the wideranging debate on behalf of the Government. He dealt with practically every other topic, but transport did not feature on his agenda.
Nor, indeed, was it a point which Lord Hailsham, the Lord Chancellor, thought worth mentioning, when he opened the debate with what a later speaker described as "a tour d'horizon of history, philosophy and constitutional considerations".
But there was perhaps a word of encouragement for Lord Underhill and those who share his opinion about private testing. For, in an attack on those who wanted to do away with the Upper House, Lord Hailsham recalled words he had said "about a million years ago", that there was nothing more conservative than an independent Peer, and nothing more independent than a Conservative Peer.
So, you members of the Road Haulage Association, the National Freight Association and other organisations opposed to private testing, take the hint, if, indeed, that is what it was. Start lobbying the Peers of the Realm. They might surprise you, the Government and themselves.