Rifkind slams EC limit
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• Transport Secretary Malcolm Rifkind has slammed EC plans to lower the coach speed limit to 62.5mph (100km/h) as an unnecessary step".
He says that lower speed limits in the UK will be applied with the flexibility that is permitted" under the EC directive, which Britain accepted at last December's Council of Ministers meeting.
Operators will have to fit 62.5mph limiters on new coaches from 1 January 1994. Older vehicles on international journeys will have to have them by 1995, and coaches on domestic work will need them a year later.
Rifkind has not explained how his department can be flexible in implementing the directive — the BCC doubts that the directive can be watered down, but it is confident that any early implementation of speed limiter legislation for coaches in the UK has been ruled out.
The Transport Secretary has also criticised the EC for delaying legislation to liberalise international coach services.
"It is nothing short of a scandal that for 30 or 40 years after the Community has come into existence it is still necessary for any international through service to acquire the approval of every single government of the countries through which it might pass," he says.