Does Ownership Matter.?
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pROMINENT among the fashionable cliches of transport experts is the firm disclaimer of any interest in the prolonged brawl over the merits of nationalization and private enterprise. . The question of ownership, that once held the centre of the stage, is coming to be regarded as of comparatively minor importance. It is considered unworthy of serious attention by people who, one supposes, really know about transport. They make deprecatory noises at the unnecessary dust, and pass by on the other side.
"The much debated issue of State or private ownership is in my view quite immaterial," said Mr. Peter Masefield in his presidential address to the institute of Transport. He added a number of conditions. The individual operating companies should be of the right size for efficiency. Adequate capital should be available. 1 here must be freedom for enlightened, skilful management. The object should be to offer the best possible service at the' cheapest economic price. Enthusiasm and happy staff relations are needed.
Mr. Masefield evidently believes these virtues can he practised equally well whatever form of ownership prevails. A Similar attitude has been adopted by Mr. T. G. Gibb, of British Road Services, and by other speakers from within the British Transport Commission. So far the politicians have refrained from washing their hands of transport, but Mr. Ernest Davies, M.P., has come very near to it once or twice, and one suspects that the Minister of Transport is liable to do it at any time now. •
Possibly in the past the .dispute over ownership has been fanned too vigorously by political animosities. This does not mean there is no substance in the dispute. In some parts of the transport field it has been settled. Not many people would wish very strongly to return the railways to private enterprise. Their nationalization, however, was not contested with nearly the same vigour as the case for independent road transport. It is true in more than the physical sense that British Railways are run on the same lines as the former railway companies. and in practice the question of who owns them has made little difference.
It Matters to Hauliers Ownership matters in the road haulage industry. The Transport Act, 1947, did not merely transfer 40,000 or so vehicles from private owners to the State. It enabled the Commission to establish a monopoly in long-distance goods transporf. Such a consummation would have been extremely unlikely under free enterprise. Whatever the customers may prefer, they are clearly aware that the change of ownership was fundamental. They are equally well aware of the importance of the change back.
The Government seem not to have grasped the point properly. They say with truth that they have freed independent hauliers from the abhorred 25-mile limit. and that the licensing system now embraces all operator's alike. As I have suggested, one can almost imagine the Government going on to utter the heresy—from any political quarter—that Ownership does not.matter. What apparently they would prefer to maintain is that the State monopoly has been broken, so that if B.R.S. are in any case allowed to retain 3,500 vehicles, there is no principle involved in increasing the number to perhaps 10,000. , The memorandum from the Road Haulage Association to Government supporters in the. House of Commons contradicts this comforting assertion. It maintains that the retention by B.R.S. of a fleet of 7,750 vehicles for the purpose of• a trunk service network "removes from private enterprise road haulage almost entirely the possibility of effective competition on longdistance trunk services." Accerding to the R.H.A., independent hauliers will have less than 2.000 vehicles on these services, as compared with about 5,000 that B.R.S. can still put into the field.
If the precise figures are anything like these estimates, the R.H.A. have some reason for saying that the Government have not completed the task they set out to do. Between the lines of the memorandum to M.P.s is an indictment of some master-mind, presumably in B.R.S., who has hoodwinked the Disposal Board and the Government into allowing the machinery set up by the Transport Act, 1953, to achieve in some respects the opposite effect to what was intended.
Clear Purpose The purpose of the Act has always been clear. It was to restore long-distance road haulage to free enterprise, allowing B.R.S. to retain an interest slightly greater than that of the companies owned or controlled by the railways before nationalization'. As a by-product of the liquidation of their main activity, B.R.S. were also to dispose of a large number of vehicles, suitable for local and specialized work, that they had acquired incidentally in the process of taking over several thousand mixed undertakings.
What in fact has happened, the R.H.A. allege, is that B.R.S. have been willing, and perhaps secretly pleased, to get rid of the bits and pieces, but have done their best to hinder operators from buying the six-wheeled and eight-wheeled vehicles really suitable for long-distance runs.
As a result, B.R.S. still hold an effective monopoly, and will do so for a long time if they are allowed to keep their present fleet, as the Government now propose. This may suit B.R.S., for they have never been greatly attached to the miscellaneous assortment of vehicles they were forced to acquire, and would in many ways prefer to concentrate on keeping rivals out of their chosen field. Although, without doubt, independent operators will gradually establish themselves on the trunking routes, and will build up at least a few powerful long-distance businesses, they will find the task made much more difficult by the rivalry of an immense B.R.S. fleet, with established business connections and wellplaced depots all over the country.
If this is a correct reading of the situation, hauliers who have bought transport units have sine cause for regarding the Government's change of policy as a breach of contract. They have paid good prices in the expectation of finding a market left open by the retreat of B.R.S. They have parted with their money under false pretences if the market is closed. They at least have no illusions about whether or not ownership matters.