'Hauliers won't stand a chance'

10th November 1967, Page 86

10th November 1967

Page 86

Page 86, 10th November 1967 — 'Hauliers won't stand a chance'

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FIVE hours after the White Paper was issued—with many Tory complaints about its lateness—the Commons began debating transport. The discussion ended with the rejection, by 325 votes to 239, of an Opposition condemnation of further nationalization of the transport industry.

Mr. Peter Walker, criticizing the Government's plans for freight, said that £150mworth of assets belonging to private road hauliers were in jeopardy without any form of compensation.

Making his first Commons speech as chairman of the Conservative party, Mr. Anthony Barber said that the Government meant to nationalize whole sections of the freight industry now operated by private operators. Mrs. Castle, he said, talked euphemistically about "voluntary acquisi

tions": the private enterprise haulier had better understand here and now that if this legislation went through he would not stand a chance.

Replying for the Government, Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Beim, Minister of Technology, said transport research had been weighted much too heavily in favour of air matters and not enough had been spent on surface transport. The Ministry of Transport and his department had set up a joint research organization to begin to right this wrong balance.

And he revealed that from his own research establishments he now had about 90 qualified scientists and engineers and a budget of £750,000 worth of projects concerning transport—in terms of vehicles, roads, bridges, air pollution and noise.