Probing Labour's Transport Plans
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CONSERVATIVE M.P.s challenged the k•-• Labour Party to reveal its nationalization plans in a three-hour debate in Parliament yesterday, writes our Political Correspondent, The subject—one of vital importance to the General Election campaign—arose in a debate on a private member's motion from Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine (Tory, Rye).
The isrf.P.s have_not been slow to perceive that Mr. Wilson and his colleagues have been exceptionally reticent about transport in the past 12 months: A number of them were hoping to nail the Socialists on this issue in yesterday's debate.
On Saturday Mr. Wilson fired a sighting shot in what is obviously going to be a bitter campaign, when he outlined the candidates for nationalization in a speech at Derby.
Once more, he chose to lift transport out of the specific context, and (in support of what The Commercial Motor has been forecasting) said:
"We propose to end the costly transport muddle . by having an integrated service, road and rail, and 'Signposts' (the Labour policy document) makes clear that we intend to achieve this more by taking artificial restrictions off the existing unprofitable B.R.S. and allowing it to expand and compete than by mass statutory transfers of private undertakings to public ownership."
Also on Saturday, Mr. Bob Mellish, a labour Front Bench spokesMan on transport, said at Small Heath that the, party did not wish to harm the "genuine" C licence holders operating within a 30-mile radius, such as shopkeepers and milk and bakery roundsmen, but the present system was being abused. Many transport firms were operating on C licences when they should be on A or B, he said.
Mr. Mellish said greater transport co-ordination must follow the General Election whichever party was returned to power. It was an indication of the present lack of co-ordination that the Government's two latest transport reports C Rochdale and Buchanan) contradicted the first (Beeching).