Without the Law
Page 50
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Political Commentary By JANUS
OFFICIAL. records seldom give the Devil his due. They are usually confined to transactions that take place on the right side of the law. Misdemeanours are relegated to a footnote, if they are mentioned at all. As a consequence, the historian finds it necessary to read between the official lines, and to supplement them with information from other sources.
The published reports of the Licensing Authorities for Goods Vehicles are described each year as a summary. To this extent, they warn the reader that he is not seeing the whole story. They give him very little guidance on where to look for the gaps.
One point on which the 30-odd tables in the reports give no help is the increase or otherwise in the number of vehicles that appear to be operating without the help of documents from a Licensing Authority. Occasionally, the text of a report will touch • on the problem. The summary for 1953-54 notes that convictions continue to increase for using goods vehicles without carriers' licences, and for using C-licensed vehicles for hire or reward.
The cases often involve extensive inquiries, the summary adds. The fines imposed were often so stnall as to administer only a nominal punishment to the wrongdoer, and have practically no deterrent effect.
No reference is made to the subject in the summary for 1954-55. The enforcement procedure during that year was concentrated on offences concerned with drivers' records and hours, on the reasonable grounds that these offences have a directly harmful effect on road safety. What the summary calls " less serious offences" were dealt with by warning first offenders, or by other means short of prosecution.
Balance of Enforcement
The change in the balance of enforcement is shown by the fact that in 1954-55 there were 1,000 more convictions each in respect of records and of hours than in the previous year. Convictions for the use of a goods vehicle without a licence declined from approximately 2,000 to approximately 1,750. The comment in the reports shows that this does not necessarily mean a decline in the number of offences of this type.
The grand total shown in the latest summary, of 1,119,894 vehicles with carriers' licences at the end of 1955, may not therefore represent the number of vehicles actually engaged in carrying goods.
It may not even represent what it claims. The summary complains that maintenance of accurate statistics is made difficult because many holders of C licences failed to notify disposal of vehicles without replacement, and that this applied also to persons holding current C licences whose businesses had been sold or ceased to exist.
In spite of this difficulty, the Ministry of Transport are most assiduous in keeping up to date their published figures of C-licensed vehicles. They have just announced the totals for June, 18 months ahead of the information for other types of licence, It was several years ago that the Ministry began to issue first monthly and then quarterly reports, Comparing the total number of C-licensed vehicles with the total for the year previously. The latest return shows that in June there were 1.047,138 vehicles, and that in June.
R16 1956, there were 971,065, almost exactly double the number at the end of 1947.
The Ministry further analyse the vehicles into eight categories of unladen weight. This enables us to see that, for example, the number of vehicles exceeding 3 tons has increased over the years much more rapidly than the number up to tons, whereas the number between 2 and 2+ tons is now no more than it was in November, 1949.
The original purpose in giving the figures was to help destroy the legend that the growth waS not a natural one, and that it was stimulated by the reluctance of trade and industry to Use nationalized transport. Expressed as a yearly percentage, the increase was seen to be roughly equivalent..to the rise in the index of production, so that the figures fulfilled at least part of the hopes placed in them. The remaining part was to some extent spoiled by the eagerness with which so many traders gave nationalization as the reason for buying vehicles.
Farther From the Truth
Excluding operations on the other side of the law, the figures up to 1950 may have been reasonably accurate because of the control exercised by fuel rationing for some little time after the war, and because of the changeover from the war-time licensing system. It is possible that, since 1950, the published statistics have been moving farther and farther away from the truth.
When Messrs. Glover and Miller carried out their survey of goods traffic in 1952, they sent questionnaires to a carefully selected sample of operators, and had a rate of response of slightly over 90 per cent. According to the survey, many of the forms not returned were in respect of vehicles which had been sold, or the oWner of which had gone out of business.
It was not the purpose of the survey to analyse this particular margin of error, but it may be that the margin would be considerably greater if the survey .were repeated shortly.
An inquiry to settle this doubt might be worth making before the reports of the Licensing Authorities are next published. At the same time, it would help put the figures in perspective if vehicles for which a hiring allowance is held were shown separately. A good many of the vehicles that go to swell the official total of those held under C licence may not even exist.
Some statistical light on the hiring allowance might help hauliers now struggling with the problem of opposing in the traffic courts what seems to be an increasing number of applications for A or B licences for vehicles that have previously been hired out. Appeal decisions on the whole favour the convert, even when it is strongly suspected, or even proved, that he has been carrying goods illegally for some time past.
Operators who, in these discouraging circumstances, are continuing to object in the traffic courts, would like to know how, many vehicles operated by hauliers are masquerading under a C licence, legally or otherwise; to what extent this is due to nationalization, and might be expected to decline; and whether the backdoor entry into 'haulage through the hiring allowance is likely to become a permanent feature of the licensing landscape. Statistics by themselves cannot answer these questions. but they would be useful as a beginning.