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Transport plan before Easter

6th February 1976
Page 5
Page 5, 6th February 1976 — Transport plan before Easter
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A CONSULTATIVE document an the Government's plans for transport is to be published in the next few weeks.

This was promised by Transport Minister Dr John Gilbert to a special meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party Last week.

He assured MI's that it would not be "a piece of paper produced by civil servants in an ivory tower," but failed to 1isclose whether it would be a White Paper setting out firm proposals, or a Green Paper as a basis for further discussion and modification.

The Minister did, however, undertake that no snap decisions were in prospect: several months would be allowed for consultation.

The debate, which preceded the Minister's statement, had a strong pro-rail flavour. The opener, Mr Nigel Spearing (Newham South), whose favourite mode of personal transport is a bicycle, appealed from our Parliamentary correspondent for a co-ordinated public transport system, and an increase of 5p a gallon in the price of petrol, to be used as a public transport subsidy.

There were repeated demands for the preservation of the existing 11,300 miles of railways in Britain, and the Minister emphasised that there would be no reversal of the trend of recent years to switch spending from the roads programime to public transport.

This pattern is likely to be underlined by a bill now being prepared to relax licensing conditions for public bus services in four experimental areas.

A complaint that the National Freight Corporation encouraged "State-owned competition" came from Mr Leslie Huckfield (Nuneaton) who also thought inadequate study had been given to the implications of building the motorways.


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