‘. the Geddes report can hardly fail to be an anticlimax'
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EXTRAVAGANT hopes seem to be pinned on the report of the Geddes Committee. According to Mr. George Brown the Labour Party is waiting for the report—just like the Conservative Party, again according to Mr. Brown—before deciding what to do with the hapless independent road haulage industry. A few days after the debate in the House of Commons in the course of which Mr. Brown made this observation, the railways published a summary of their evidence to the Committee, and made much play with an appendix designed to prove that in equity the road goods vehicle ought to be taxed out of
existence, in which case there would be no need for a licensing system. The Committee was asked to subscribe to this doctrine as well as making up the minds of the main political parties. After such a build-up the Geddes report can hardly fail to be an anticlimax.
Last week Mr. Brown had the opportunity to be more specific in a television debate with Mr. Edward Heath. This followed his complaint in Parliament that Mr. Heath had not left him enough time to tell the whole story of his party's policy on nationalization. Everyone who watched the discussion would at least agree that with all the time in the world Mr. Brown has no intention of adding anything to what he has already said on the subject of transport. Almost everyone who has read Hansard would find it difficult to avoid the conclusion either that Mr. Brown is evading the issue or that he does not know what he is talking about.
It is worth looking at his actual words:
" We shall extend the operations of the British Road Services, As to the private hauliers, we, like the present Administration, will await the outcome of the committee that has been set up on licensing--just as hon. Members opposite will—and then we shall consider what happens there in the light of the committee's report. But anybody on that side of the House who believes that we can have an integrated transport service without having a wider area of publicly owned road services to integrate with the railways is living in Cloud-Cuckoo Land."
Mr. Brown expresses himself badly. If be had the job of putting the case to the Transport Tribunal for increased tonnage for B.R.S., one suspects that his terminology would be the subject of acid comment in the president's summing-up. B.R.S. already operate long-distance vehicles to all parts of the country and do not need to "extend their operations" or to be given a "wider area ". Mr. Brown's meaning, one must assume, is that B.R.S. will be allowed or compelled either to acquire more vehicles and depots or to take over the businesses of an indefinite number of established independent hauliers.
In "Cloud-Cuckoo Land"
It is nonsense—or, as Mr. Brown would say, living in Cloud-Cuckoo Land—to suppose that the effects of this would be without relevance to the discussions of the Geddes Committee. They must have some frame of reference within which to fit their conclusions. Presumably they have taken as the starting point the existing transport system. In so far as they envisage changes they would be those likely to arise from earlier Government-sponsored reports, including the plan for re-shaping the railways, and from official statistics, notably those based on the Ministry surveys of road goods transport.
In this respect the Committee resemble a computer which can only masticate what is fed into it. They had not been asked to assume that B.R.S. will be given freedom and goaded into vepansion; nor that there is to be an integrated transport service in the accepted Socialist sense. If these assumptions were presented to them they might well present a completely different report. They might even find it necessary to offer two reports, one for Conservative and the other for Socialist consumption, with an appendix designed as a sop to the Liberals.
Complete Nationalization ?
Only a rash man would attempt to anticipate the Committee's findings. For all one knows they might recommend spontaneously the complete nationalization for which many Socialists no doubt still hanker. Mr. Brown would have no further difficulty if the Committee traced over the blueprint of his own party's policy. He would point out that he had promised to await the outcome" and now proposed to act upon it. This should mean that, if the Committee came down instead on the side of continued competition and of road-rail co-operation rather than integration, Mr. Brown should be equally prepared to accept the ruling. It is hardly likely that he would do so.
It hardly needs the Geddes Committee to tell what will happen to independent hauliers under a Labour Government, if Mr. Brown's words mean anything at all. The expansion of B.R.S. can take place only at the expense of other operators If H.R.& can also capture additional traffic, the hauliers who have lost it will go out of business or live in reduced circumstances. If, as seems equally probable, traders prefer not to transfer their traffic to nationalized vehicles, various methods of compulsion will be used. There will be restrictions on road haulage licences and on C licences.
The road haulage industry knows well enough where it stands, therefore, just as much as the steel industry and the water undertakings. The main difference is that, whereas the individual unit in these other two threatened industries can forecast its own fate and even map in the details, the individual haulier has no means of knowing whether he will lose his business, or lose part of it; whether he will have restrictions imposed upon him even if he is allowed to continue; or what compensation will be paid in either eventuality,
Mr. Brown cannot pretend that he has answered these questions or given the information from which a reasonable answer could be deduced. He may suppose that he can now remain in ignorance of the subject until after the Geddes Committee have reported. But surely the haulier is "entitled to know" a little more, even if the phrase happens to be the title of a Conservative Party pamphlet.