MI COMMENT KEPT IN THE DARK
Page 3
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
• Ministerial speeches at party conferences are widely seen as giving hints of what is coming up in the next parliamentary session. judging from what the Secretary of State for Transport had to say at Brighton this week, there is not going to be much going on in transport in the next session.
Toll roads, we were told, would be something the minister would discuss — a new way of paying for the road which the country so desperately needs. No mention of toll roads.
It would be too much to ask to expect any hint of a timetable on the inevitable change to 40 tonnes, because that will be unpopular with the mass electorate and party faithful (largely because it will not be presented correctly by a reluctant government).
There might, however, have been a hint on the sort of price which the Government will expect the haulage industry to pay for European harmonisation. After all, if operators are going to have to be able to meet new restrictions and new design rules in 1992, manufacturers are going to have to design their solutions within the term of the next parliament.
The country might reasonably have expected some hint of the Government's views on other matters: does it intend to resolve the dispute between the DTp and the police over drivers' hours rules? Paul Channon says that he does not intend to tarmac over Britain with new roads — but does he intend to provide any new roads at all, after this summer's moratorium on roads spending? What about the policing of existing and future weights legislation: is the Government going to move on the check-weighing of goods vehicles entering the country? Is it going to move on tighter safety rules for RO-RO ferries, perhaps even with transverse bulkheads? What is it going to do about the increased concentration of freight traffic through the South-East with the arrival of the Channel Tunnel? Is the Government worried about unfair prosecutions of hauliers as the result of reliance on inadequate or unreliable weighbridges?
The Conservative Party conference presented a golden opportunity for the Transport Secretary to set out his stall, to let both the country and his Government colleagues know that he and his department have designs for improving the transport infrastructure of Britain. The setting up of an "exciting" new trolley-bus experiment in Bradford — however worthy it may be — is hardly an adequate substitute. . .