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Planning fact or fiction?

11th February 1966
Page 33
Page 33, 11th February 1966 — Planning fact or fiction?
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

"DISCUSSIONS on transport have become riddled with clichés, and integration is one of them." Nobody will disagree with Mr. Stephen Swingler, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport, for saying this at the Traders Road Transport Association dinner in London on Monday. He then went on to explain what he—and therefore also the Labour Government—meant by integration.

The word did not mean simply getting the right balance between different forms of transport, getting them to fit together, buses to meet trains, and so on, said Mr. Swingler. This in itself is a statement worth a moment's pause before digestion. One begins to wonder whether Mr. Swingler and the Government are in fact talking about integration or planning.

This remark seems logical when you consider what he then went on to say. Integration must mean much more; transport was a service and must offer a service and not be seen in isolation but as part of something else. "I believe we must consciously plan and develop our overall transport system to play its proper part and its right relationship both with economic planning on the national level and with more detailed economic and physical planning in the regions, cities and towns."

Here again, a pause for digestion is necessary. Nobody these days would disagree with the overall need for a planned transport system. But implicit in this must be acceptance by everybody concerned of all the facts, which are elicited from unbiased sources.

Would either Mr. Swingler or Mrs. Castle (the Minister) or indeed Mr. Wilson himself honestly get up and say that this acceptance formed part of the present Government's mentality? There is at least an element of doubt whether the previous Minister, Mr. Fraser, did not lose his job to some extent because he could not bring himself to push forward dogmatic policies which were so patently opposed to the facts abaft road transport's importance brought forward from many sources, and in particular those put before him by the Hinton Report.

Why will the Minister of Transport not publish the findings of this inquiry which, when set up, was said to be specifically for the purpose of assisting a planned transport system for the British economy? The obvious implication is that it was unpalatable to the Government.

In the absence of assurance to the contrary, operators can hardly do else than assume that Mr. Swingler was saying one thing and meaning another. In short, was he thinking fact and talking fiction?


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