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Page 49
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ONLY in transport, I imagine, are there so many complaints that people are violating monopolies and other privileges sanctioned by law. Last month the British Transport Commission, through the medium of its annual report, deplored the increasing extent to which hauliers ignored the 25-mile limit during 1952. "Although there were a number of successful prosecutions," the report continued, "the vast majority of these
abuses went unchecked." .
This rnonth, Sir Reginald Wilson, comptroller of the Commission, switched the accusation to the passenger side of the road transport industry. Operators for private hire, he alleged, did not always keep strictly to the regulations. The evasion reduced the average number of passengers on regular services, and, in Sir Reginald's opinion, the consequence must be a rise in fares.
If they exist, these contraventions of the law are to be deplored. For the most part, the allegations are more de.Uite than the evidence, but he mere fact that they have been made draws attention to matters on which legislators should at least be prepared to think again.
When the interests that are expected to benefit from a certain privilege grumble that the privilege has been usurped, they are indirectly criticizing its aptness.
For a brief period at the beginning of his address to the conference of the Institute of Transport, it looked as if Sir Reginald had grasped this point, and would go on to advocate the relaxation of many restraints irksome both to providers of transport and to their customers.
He started with three assumptions: that competition is preferable to monopoly, that small units are more efficient than big units, and that the distribution of incentive on the widest basis is vital.
Ironical Assumptions It soon became apparent that his purpose was ironical. He made the assumptions only so that he could show how little they could be applied to either goods or passenger transport. Most passenger services, he pointed out, were monopolies and were probably the better for it. Perhaps competition could be permitted in the shortdistance haulage of goods by road, but not for the better regular traffics over the longer distances.
Sir Reginald's massive survey provided a useful reminder that what is good for one section of transport is not necessarily good for the whole:. Surveying the whole field of transport, by road, rail, water and air, he distinguishes nine types. On the passenger side are urban networks, long-distance journeys, country services, and private-hire and touring vehicles. On the goods side are short-distance haulage, coal and heavy-mineral traffic, smalls, long-distance transport, and special loads. Each type, he implied, should be considered separately on its merits, to see how far the three assumptions with which he started could be made effective.
He does not completely overcome a tendency to think in terms of black and white, with no intermediate shades. Some of his categories, it is true, are more fitted than others for a monopoly. His inclination is to provide a monopoly for them, hedged around with prohibitions, and to allow the rest of the industry to operate under conditions of almost unrestricted competition.
This is an over-simplification. Transport may not present a uniform problem, but the separate facets of
the problem are joined together. The temptation of the repressed to steal an occasional meal from the lusher pastures next door should not be left out of-consideration or countered with further repression. Constant infringements of the law are likely to indicate a weak spot in the structure set up to control the industry.
Sir Reginald shows that a contentious point exists at the junction between the work of private-hire operators and that of stage carriage undertakings. He believes in full and free competition for the first type, but they would be severely dealt with if, instead of keeping to their proper function, they undermined regular services. On the other hand, he agrees that the second type should be permitted to do private hire work, as this could often be undertaken with great economy as a sideline.
The parallel on the goods side is the distinction between short-distance and long-distance traffic. Here again, Sir Reginald broadly approves the present system —that is to say, the system laid down in the Transport Act, 1947—whereby the long-distance operator is entitled to roam at will over the whole field, and the short-distance hauliers are kept within their appointed limits. He would, in fact, like to increase the competition among hauliers. It should be possible, in his view; to grant road service licences quite freely, and the licences need not confer monopoly.
Short or Long ?
When is a distance short or long? Instead of giving an arbitrary figure, Sir Reginald would prefer to analyse the work that an undertaking was doing. Short-distance work involved a large number of jobs for comparatively small receipts, so that costs were easily averaged. Discrimination among traffics was unlikely, and there were no 'poor lines" or "poor timings" to be supported by the remainder. Nor was there a large-scale network of facilities to be financed.
For these and other reasons, the short-distance operator is supposed to have little or no protection from his own kind. He must also face the competition of the long-distance monopoly, with no opportunity for retaliation. It is on this point, where complaints of lawbreaking have already come from the Commission, that second thoughts seem desirable, and it is, of course, for this purpose that the Transport Act, 1953, has been introduced.
If competition is to break into the long-distance field, Sir Reginald sees no alternative but to make it complete
—or " real " competition, as he describes it. Three changes would be necessary. One is to allow C-licence holders to carry for hire or reward; the second to allow unrestricted issue of A and B licences; the third to lift the disabilities which weigh upon the railways In such circumstances, Sir Reginald suggests, the hauliers would slaughter each other, and perhaps in the end bring the railways down with them.
Apparently, this is the fate from which the Commission has saved the hauliers, at the price of liquidating
them. Sir Reginald seems unduly anxious lest any transport operator be given privileges forbidden to other • people. Perhaps a State monopoly best satisfies the conception of abstract justice, for when the country's transport belongs to all of us, nobody has an unfair share. But the better criterion is the quality of service.