Spotlight on Injustice
Page 30
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
A LTHOUGH the Speaker's casting vote dend hauliers a well-deserved victory over the Government, the debate on road haulage in the House of Commons, last week, provided the road transport industry with the finest possible publicity. The grim catalogue of injustices suffered by hauliers under the system which gives their principal competitor overwhelming power over their activities, was a complete indictment of the Transport Act and its administration. it unfolded to the public an epic in which the vanquished were the heroes, and it did much to excite sympathy for the cause of fair play. Mr. Peter Thorneycroft, who charged the Government with having failed to carry out promises given by Ministers during the passage of the Transport Bill, anticipated the Minister of Transport's reliance on statistics of permits granted and refused, to support a case for the Road Haulage Executive. He pointed out in advance that a mere recital of figures, unqualified by information on the degrees of restriction ...inposed on permits granted, would be valueless. Thus warned, Members were able to appraise at their true worth the statistics which, inevitably, the Minister produced. They were precisely the misleading figures that Mr. Thorneycroft had awaited.
To claim that the existence of 129,460 Aand B-licence vehicles, against a total of 36,312 owned by the R.H.E., was a vindication of the Executive's policy on permits, was a complete evasion. Hauliers have few opportunities of increasing their fleets, whereas the R.H.E. has unlimited power to do so ancl..jf it wished, could make conditions untenable for the independent operator. Moreover, the use of 672,301 C-licence vehicles is as much a threat to the free haulier as to the State transport organization. To quote that figure in an argument to rebut charges of unfair competition by the R.H.E. was an insult to the intelligence of the Mother of Parliaments.