IS THERE ANYBODY THERE?
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Reg Dawson spent 12 years listening to the haulage industry's gripes and requests as one of the Department of Transport's most senior civil servants ... but did he pay attention?
• Consider these two quotations: "The roads lobby is the strongest political lobby, and it has enjoyed an unusually close working relationship with the Government". . . "The industry's political unpopularity means that it has absolutely no lobbying power."
They cannot both be right. The former is from Mick Hamer's 1974 polemic Wheels within wheels, the latter from the lips of a participant at this year's Commercial Motor Fleet Management Conference. In fact, I believe they are both wrong.
For 12 years, I headed the Department of Transport's road freight division and my responsibilities included 0-licensing, enforcement, drivers' hours, tachographs, and international journey permits. Overall, I have probably had as much contact with the RHA and ETA as anyone in Marsham Street.
Harrier is right on one thing — there is a close working relationship. A DTp official moving into a post affecting haulage will normally receive a welcoming letter or telephone call from both associations before he or she has started the new job. This will soon be followed by a meeting, to size up the new bureaucrat.
Naturally the same also applies to new ministers. They set the political tone of the department's activities. They take the major decisions and — in constitutional theory, if not always in practice these days — bear responsibility for those made in their name. The associations know that the buck stops at the ministerial desk. It does not start there, however.
BUREAUCRAT'S BRIEF
Ministers normally act on advice from civil servants. They may question that advice, or even reject it, but Ministerial action usually begins with a bureaucrat's brief.
So most association lobbying is aimed at officials: it was a rare day when my mail did not include contributions from both RHA and FTA, usually supplemented by telephone calls from association staff. Meetings are so frequent that many RHA and ETA staff have passes admitting them to Marsham Street, bypassing the usual security system.
This lobbying has two main aims. The most obvious is to convince the Department that what the association seeks is desirable. Less obvious, but in some ways even more important, is the need to ensure that the case is fully understood. They should educate as well as persuade.
The relationship between the industry and the DTp is undeniably close — and so it should be. Love it or loathe it, the former is greatly influenced by the latter. Again, this is as it should be, but the industry's representatives have a right to be consulted on the policies underlying that influence, and the consequent legislative and administrative measures.
The argument is about effectiveness. Are the industry's wishes allowed to override the public interest, however defined? Or do the politicians and civil servants just go through the motions, without taking on board what the industry is saying?
I wish I could come down on one side or the other. A vitriolic denunciation of the DTp's supposed ingrained hostility to the haulier would make an exciting article. So would one purporting to spill the beans on the industry's imagined domination of the department. Unhappily, neither would be accurate.
Even when the associations fail to block unwelcome changes, they often secure improvements. The RHA had serious doubts about dynamic axle weighers. They did not prevent their introduction — but they did obtain more generous tolerances than the DTp originally proposed. Almost every propoial is modified as a result of industry lobbying.
My impression is that, in simple numerical terms, the industry wins and draws more often than it loses; but that does not prove Hamer's charge. for there are also failures.
Some of these are deserved. Ten years were spent fighting tachographs on the ludicrous grounds that British drivers, unlike foreigners, wouldn't dream of fiddling their logbooks. Various schemes to make over-loading easier to get away with, including published tolerances and due diligence, are regularly trotted out — and equally regularly rejected. The industry's failure to come up with its own ideas on operating centre controls reduces sympathy for the current problems, and managers' failure to use tachographs to stamp out speeding will almost certainly lead to compulsory speed limiters.
Many people in the industry feel frustrated at leaving all the lobbying to the trade associations. They want to take part themselves and this can certainly be useful because by explaining how a proposal will affect them as individuals they can add a personal touch to the associations' case. Many people do not realise how best to do this, so here are a few hints.
Letters from members of the public to a minister are normally marked "please treat officially" and passed down to a civil servant for a reply. The same letter forwarded to the minister by an MP will follow the same route down the hierarchy for a reply from the same civil servant — but it will then go up again for the minister's signature, being vetted on the way. Letters to the Prime Minister will get a reply from 10 Downing Street, signed by one of the PM's secretaries, but drafted by that same DTp civil servant.
Of course, Ministers' (and Prime Ministers') constituents get replies signed personally, no doubt after careful reading, but drafted — you've guessed it — by that same DTp civil servant. So in the run up to the election hauliers in Finchley, Croydon Central or Eltham were especially well placed to lobby!
Individuals, however, can only supplement the work of the associations: they cannot achieve much on their own.
I criticise the RHA and ETA from time to time (who doesn't) because sometimes they defend the indefensible, or demand the impossible; but I know from personal experience that they achieve a very great deal for their members.
As RHA Chairman Glyn Samuel said recently: "Any haulier who faces the future without the backing of his association wants his brains tested".
111 by Reg Dawson