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LEARN FROM WTD MISTAKES
Page 3
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The EC is finally baring its teeth to nip, harry and chase those countries not implementing and enforcing the Working Time Directive. This has to be a good thing, as it is blatantly unjust for the UK and maybe one or two others to follow the letter of the law, commercial costs and penalties notwithstanding, while everyone else gets away with ignoring anything inconvenient to their working practices.
There is a deeper question here, though, and it's one we should put to our Euro MPs. What has the Working Time Directive achieved? Someone, somewhere dreamt up the notion of a piece of legislation that would limit the working hours of truck drivers with even more stringency than our domestic hours regs. Whether this was intended as road safety legislation or social engineering was never clear but the truth is, the law was then effectively neutered and achieved precisely nothing.
"How much has this cost the UK's already hard-pressed road transport industry?"
Don't get us wrong. We were as glad as anyone that the VVTD was castrated before it adversely affected anyone's ability to deliver goods. It was unnecessary as road safety legislation, offensive as a piece of nanny state dictation, and could have incurred exorbitant commercial costs for all UK road transport firms.
But we still have to ask the question: why did our system of European law conceive a piece of legislation that is. firstly. unnecessary; secondly. neutered or ignored by so many EU states; and thirdly, only now being enforced across the board? How much has this debacle cost European taxpayers? More precisely, how much has it cost the UK's already hard-pressed road transport industry?
We aren't going to stray outside our remit by speculating about the role of the EU. But we should all be asking, as business people, how we could have prevented the colossal waste of time and money this limp and neglected Road Transport Directive has caused. If we don't. it's only a matter of time before we go through the entire fiasco again, with another bill equally well intentioned and equally futile.