Mow Peeler backs Foster's 'discipline'
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'REIGHT Directorate Under-Secretary Joe Peeler said that the ublic should be educated into accepting heavier lorries when he ddressed the Transport Association in I..ondon this week.
"The question of lorry veights is very much part of he public opinion in this .ountry," he said. "I don't wish o enter too much into this tighly controversial issue, but here is a major task of ducating the public's opinion ver this issue."
Mr Peeler devoted most of is address to the recently ublished Foster Committee sport on operators' licensing, nd said that as recommenda tions would lead to a more disciplined road haulage indust "T le most important reco endation is a negative one. I rejects any concept of a return to quantity licensing, neither for economic nor environmental reasons."
He assured the Association. that any legislation derived from the report would not require an enlarged bureaucracy. This answered TA members' concern that there would be a growth in the number of committees which monitor road haulage's activities.
Mr Peeler added that the present Government was one of the toughest in keeping down the number of civil servants.
One TA member suggested to Mr Peeler that the increase in road haulage regulation would be decreased if the industry was nationalised. But Mr Peeler replied: "Nationalisation of all of the road haulage would not be in the public's interest, and it doesn't follow that regulation of road haulage would be any less if the industry were nationalised."