Socialists Press for Inspectors Power to Stop
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FROM OUR PARLIAMENTARY CORRESPONDENT
THE Labour Party has not given up the fight to allow weights and measures inspectors to retain the power to stop coal lorries, which is taken away from them by the Weights and Measures Bill.
Frustrated in its aims in the Commons, the Opposition intends to make a further effort now that the measure is before the Lords. Lord Stonharri gave notice of this last week, and said that the amendments the Opposition would press would be designed for the protection of honest traders as much as for the protection of trusting customers.
It was, he said, indeed astonishing that in a Bill expressly designed to protect the consumer the Government should wish to sweep away valuable legislation which had been built up painfully and expensively by local authorities.
Baroness Burton of Coventry, chairman of the domestic coal consumers' council, said that in this council nobody was in, favour of the course of action that the Government had said they intended to pursue, though one qualification felt was that it was certainly desirable that an inspector authorized to stop coal lorries should have some means of identifying himself readily to the driver of a lorry travelling at normal speed.
Earl Ferrers pointed out that powers to stop vehicles were carefully circumscribed by road traffic legislation for reasons of road safety.