WESTM NSTER HAUL
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"THE BIGGEST series of reforms in road passenger transport for half a century," was the phrase which slipped proudly from the lips of Transport Minister Norman Fowler.
You could hardly expect Albert Booth, the fledgling Shadow Transport Minister, to see it quite the same way. Trundling in from his former ministerial role at employment, he grumbled: "This is a cowboys' charter."
Remember this exchange? It was way back in the dark days of last November, when MPs began the second reading of the Transport Bill.
Just in case you have forgotten, the Bill provides for the reform of bus licensing and the reconstitution of the National Freight Corporation as the first step towards the sale of shares to private investors, and for changes in British Rail and NFC pension funding arrangements.
Considerable acreage of the plush red leather benches were vacant last Friday morning as their Lordships plodded through amendments. Lord Bellwin. formerly Irwin Norman Bellow, leader of Leeds City Council, pushed the Bill on its way against the courteous and considered opposition of Labour's Lord Mishcon, There came a moment's drama when Lord Mishcon moved that the Government should retain a minimum of 26 per cent of shareholdings of a private company whose shares would be offloaded onto the market under the reform of the National Freight Corporation.
But their noble lordships threw this out, or rather in their own pedantic terms the amendment found only 18 peers voting "content" against 58 "not content".
In essence the Bill is likely to emerge through all its stages pretty well as it entered the fray last autumn. Certainly it has proceeded through the Lords with much the same unhurried progress as the pleasure boats on the nearby Thames.
Now and again it has looked like being blown slightly off course, In the Lords it has needed a reminder in Lord Bellwin's downto-earth Yorkshire tones — "The object is to transfer control of the NFC firmly into the private sector" — to keep their Lordships moving straight ahead.
In the event, he and Mr Fowler seem to be succeeding. Parliament may not be the most direct routes, but with only third readings to come once the Bill has left the Lords it should become law soon.
In Parliament, as elsewhere, it is better to arrive in safety and without undue haste than never to arrive at all.