Limber up for Foster
Page 68
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
THE FOSTER Committee, set up last December, has to consider the effectiveness of operators' licensing and recommend any needed changes while bearing in mind the transport policy White Paper. A daunting task by any standard, admitted
Joe Peeler, UnderSecretary of State for Transport.
Mr Peeler's paper, "Foster in the future", is not intended, he said, to draw conclusions but rather to point to the relevant issues. Mr Peeler said he regards the present discussion as a "limbering up" exercise.
He said that this is the third time that road transport has been subjected to an examination of this kind, the previous two occasions being the Salter Conference of 1932, which led to the establishment of the original licensing system and the Geddes Committee of 1 965 which led to the abolition in the Transport Act 1968 of carriers' licensing and the establishment of the 0-licensing system in broadly its current form.
One thing the Foster Committee has not lacked is material to work on, he said; almost 200 submissions have been received plus a further series of contributions from the Department of Transport.
One of the fundamental tasks of the Foster Committee will be to decide what the objectives of the licensing system really ought to be, he said. For at present the system is geared almost exclusively towards safety with environmental considerations included in a very limited way, and economic consideratons totally excluded.
"So the first issue is whether Geddes, and the successive governments since 1968 were right: whether the present liberal system can or should be preserved, or whether some form of capacity control should be restored. Views on this continue to be divided, but the divisions now seem to take a rather different form from that of previous decades," he said.
"In earlier discussions it was assumed that one of the main services of a licensing system for road transport was to regulate competition with the railways — which in practice usually meant the protection of railways from road transport which was in any particular set of circumstances considered to be unfair or wasteful or otherwise undesirable. "This aspect of quantity licensing does not have to be considered by the Foster Committee, as the transport White Paper makes it clear that the choice of mode of transport is to lie with the consignor, and not therefore to be restricted by the licensing system. So whatever social or other advantages there may be in promoting the transfer of traffic in certain circumstances from road to rail, the Government does not intend to pursue them by means of the licensing system ."
So the diverse views now expressed within the Foster Committee's remit therefore stem from problems within the road transport industry itself, he said. On the one hand there are those who claim that the liberality of the 0-licence system permits a virtually unrestricted influx of small operators, who add to the fragmentation of the industrry and tend to charge unrealistic short-term marginal prices, leading to destructive competition, to the debasement of standards, both to customers and for the public at large, to instability, and even to an actual shortage of freight services.
This school of thought, he said, would seek to restore some form of capacity control, particularly for new entries into the industry and also possibly to expansion of existing fleets. Such control would be exercised particularly in times of slack demand, in order to ensure that supply did not get too much out of line with demand at any given period.
The opposite school of thought, he said, holds that current difficulties of the industry are not due to the excessive liberality of the licensing system but to the state of the national economy as a whole and that it is unrealistic to expect bureau cratic controls to work sufficiently quickly and with sufficient flexibility to enable a supply of transport to be adjusted to fluctuating demands of the economy.
He said that it is also claimed that the market is likely to be a more efficient regulator than even the most efficient bureaucracy; and that even its market forces are not fully effective in eliminating surplus operators without cost, the alternative of bureaucratic controls and the accompanying paperwork and administrative expense constitute a higher and less acceptable price to pay.
'This is not the place to judge between those opposing schools of thought,' he added. "I would only comment that the adoption of any realistic form of capacity control would be likely to have more far-reaching implications than the return, say, of the comparatively loose form of quantity licensing embodied in the pre-Geddes system of A, B and C licensing; it would imply a very much closer relationship between government and industry than at present, based on much more detailed statistical and other information."
The Foster Committee also had to decide whether their recommendations, either deliberately or incidentally, will strengthen, maintain, or ignore the traditional distinction between hire or reward and ownaccount operation — a distinction becoming increasingly blurred.
"If, however, it should be decided that safety rather than structure of economic considerations, is to remain the main purpose of the licensing system, this is very far from being the end of the problems which the Foster Committee is expected to tackle. A licensing system designed exclusively, or almost exclusively, for the promotion of safety must inevitably raise the questions: is it really worth while? Do we really need a licensing system just for that purpose? Could not safety standards be promoted equally effectively by more stringent enforcement of the law and by stiffer penalties imposed in the magistrates' courts?''
Whether or not safety is sufficient justification by itself for
the licensing system, it does not follow that safety need be its only objective, he said. It has long been thought that environmental considerations should also be taken into account in administering the system. T Geddes Committee observed 1965 that lorries can offend t ears, the nose and the eyes, a it was not exuctly a startli revelation even then, he said.
The view one takes of t purpose or purposes of t licensing system may also aff( one's view of its scope, he sa The present threshold for t 0-licence and hgv testing (3 tonnes gross plated weigl leaves more goods vehicles eluded than included. Is this t right place to draw the lin Some say there should greater concentration on heav or longer-distance vehicli others, that more of the ligh vehicles should be included.
"The available statisti suggest that the exclud lighter vehicles have mc accidents per vehicle m (though less serious ones on 1 whole) than the heavier licens vehicles, and the results roadside checks suggest tt lighter goods vehicles are general less well maintain than heavier vehicles. On I other hand, the correlation I tween vehicle defects a accidents rate for ligh. vehicles may well be attrib able to their different pattern operation, in more high trafficked areas.
"Environmentally, on t other hand, the heavier lorr have, rightly or wrongly, aim been considered the source danger. However, this may I the Foster Committee will doubt look again at the tonnes limit, in combinati with the other problems which it closely relates.
There is also, he said, 1 question of the unkno, number of illegal operators sr, go for long periods with having an 0-licence at all. It a raises the question of the rolE the Licensing Authorities: right that they should be, ii sense, both judge and prose tor simultaneously, and sho they take their local knowlec into account in deciding the f of an operator's licence, and livelihood?
For that matter, he said, i right that operators should subjected to a "dou penalty": a fine in the ordin couits for a traffic offence, lowed by the loss or restrict of his licence at the hands of LA?
A report of discussions the conference plus pictu will appear in next wee CM.