Fake permits: DoE hits back
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SUGGESTIONS that DoE attempts to stamp out forged international permits (Letters, CM last week) are against British operators' interests have been vigorously denied by Mr Reg Dawson, head of the Department's road freight division. In a written reply to Mr M. E. Haines, managing director of Chepstow Marine Services Ltd, who made the suggestion, Mr Dawson says that the situation is the reverse.
"The French and West derman quotas have more than doubled over the past five years; this would not have happened if my French and West German opposite num• bers were not convinced of our sincerity," writes Mr Dawson.
Mr Dawson describes suggestions by Mr Haines that some operators still had more permits than they knew what to do with as being "rather like the Indian rope trick." If any operator could provide hard evidence of this it would be followed up.
Mr Dawson also calls for evidence on Mr Haines' belief that traffic going abroad on forged permits might exceed 50 per cent. It is possible that such a situation might once have existed as far as Middle East traffic was concerned, admitted Mr Dawson, but it was no longer true and had never been true of traffic to other destinations.