November 15 is D-day on drivers' hours
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Minister admits turning her back on Beeching plan's logic FROM OUR POLITICAL CORRESPONDEA THE road freight and passenger interests, including the unions, have been given until November 15 to submit to the Minister of Transport their considered views on the question of lorry and p.s.v. drivers' hours.
When they have done so. the Minister is expected to convene a conference fairly quickly and propose a cut in the present maximum of 11 hours a day which was fixed way back in 1930.
The obvious move would be to cut the maximum by one hour, but there are hints that Mrs. Castle may be thinking of going further.
She has explained to the industry that the requirements were fixed in a different age so far as road usage is concerned.
Mrs. Castle told the Labour Party conference in Brighton last week that present competition between the State and private sectors of road haulage was not fair. The Government could no longer allow the private haulier "to cream off traffic by undercutting, based on conditions which would never be tolerated in publicly owned services."
She said it would be up to her to prove that "proper hours and conditions" could be enforced without renationalizing the private sector. But if she failed she would have to think again.
This threat to renationalize private road haulage if it merely failed to reduce lorry drivers' hours could hardly betaken seriously. In fact, the Minister had revealed quite openly the cause of Labour's vacillation for the past three years only a few sentences earlier when she said that there was a great deal to be said for not recreating a publicly-owned freight monopoly, but instead for showing that her new Freight Authority could more than hold its own with private hauliers.
Although she admitted that the future of the TEC was in the melting pot, she urged delegates to remember that since Mr. Tom Fraser released it from restrictions imposed by the Conservatives, the company had spent about £10m. on the voluntary acquisition of road haulage fleets.
"I would expect the new Freight Authority to follow a similar acquisitive expansionist policy. . . I tell conference quite frankly that one of the aims of my policy is to get more of the growing freight traffic of this country from road and on to rail, and this will still leave a growing road freight traffic," she said.
A cut from 11 to 10 hours in the present daily maximum for drivers was proposed by the Prices
and Incomes Board as one of a number productivity-boosting moves for road haula in their controversial report, last April. T Board pointed out that the present legal maximul imposed in the interests of safety, had tended become the standard working day. There wot be a substantial contribution to increased el ciency if the employers and the unions aim at a reduction to 10 hours, but accomplishi the same amount of work without loss of earning
Mrs. Castle. who seized upon the rep( when it was published, may eventually sacrifi the efficiency angle if it cannot be agreed this framework. She is obviously keen to rech hours at all costs and, presumably, to redt what she considers is unfair competition.
Other points from her speech included— The White Paper: detailed proposals are rc advanced and it is hoped that legislation N come in the next session of Parliament.
Railways: commercial viability is import: but secondary, "which is why I have turned 1 back on the logic of the Beeching policy."
The 1962 Transport Act will be amen( drastically.
Licensing: "We are seeing what refor are necessary to the road licensing syst( including C licences, on which I shall be report soon. We regret the simple free for all tea mended in the Geddes Report."