Private Bill to Pro tect Rail Freight
Page 29
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A BIG railway complaint about freight traffic
has just broken surface in Parliament. It is that road operators are winning freight from rail because of measures in the 1962 Transport Act designed to protect coastal shipping.
Now the railways are complaining that they have been penalized unduly—and that instead of a balance being held, they are losing freight traffic, especially to road transport. Mr. James Scott-Hopkins, Conservative MP for North Cornwall, has prepared a Bill seeking to correct this by amending Section 53 of the Act, and he was to have introduced this under the tenminute rule on Wednesday. But at the last minute he ran up against the same shipping interests which got the provision inserted in the Act, and he has postponed his bid to introduce his amending Bill until next month, so that he can have talks with them, and with the Railways Board,