Give us a decision
Page 5
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NO" DECISION on the rier lorry would be preferato the present indecision, chairman and managing :tor Peter Foden told a servative Party fringe meetn Brighton last week.
3 was speaking at a meeting by the Freight Transport Asation on Thursday night last k, the night before Friday's 'erence debate on the Govnent's proposals, and said: s would like heavier lorries, above all we want a decision way or the other."
r Foden said that his corny has been struggling to surover the last two years of ission, and has gone on suf1g from indecision on lorry Rhts on top of the collapse of economy.
said that the Armitage Reon lorries, people, and the ironment was "the best reever prepared on the heavy ry in this country", and cised many anti-lorry lobbyof not having read the re he more conventional FTA view — that it is imperative for 'lorry weights to be increased at least to 38 tonnes — was given most weight by Sainsburys' distribution director Len Payne, who also is chairman of the Confederation of British Industry's transport policy committee.
He described the Armitage Report as "absolutely magnificent", and said that each of the 58 recommendations, including that to increase gross weights, would improve the environment and the society in which we live.
Mr Payne said that the recommendations would save industry between £150m and £500m a year "without any increase in Government expenditure", but this point was taken up by one of the four MPs present at the meeting, Faversham's Roger Moate, who said that £500m was a CBI figure, and was not from the Armitage Report.
Mr Moate also suggested that the FTA was not really accepting the Armitage Report in its entirety. "Armitage put forward a package with a considerable number of by-passes, but the bypass programme will take donkeys' years. It will be 10, 15, 20 years before we get the roads," he said.
Canterbury MP David Crouch, who shares Mr Moate's doubts about the weights increase plans, said the industry should be lobbying for roads and bypasses rather than for heavier lorries. He said that the Department of Transport (the "most disappointing department in Parliament" in his view) was to blame for the slow progress with road construction.