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defender of agricultural interests.

19th March 1983, Page 38
19th March 1983
Page 38
Page 38, 19th March 1983 — defender of agricultural interests.
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

Moreover, he has managed to put across to a wider audience the message that, in defending farmers, he is also looking after the interests of the general public. Even those hauliers most grateful to David Howell for his success in getting higher weights can hardly claim that the general public had been convinced that this move will benefit them. Still less do they realise that many hauliers, looking at the details of the new weights package, are beginning to wish that Mr Howell had not bothered.

When Britain lost its case before the European Court over its ban on milk imports, Mr Walker did not appear on television in sackcloth and ashes saying contritely that of course Britain was a law-abiding country and would instantly and completely observe what the Court had laid down as the law.

On the contrary, he made it clear that, although the Court ruling would be accepted in principle, other means would be found to keep out the product of foreign cows. For good measure, that product was described in terms which must have made viewers wonder why anyone should want to import the stuff in the first place.

Almost at the same time it was revealed that last year Britain's farmers' average income increased by an incredible 45 per cent. This bonanza did not prevent them from receiving £972m in handouts from Whitehall and Brussels. The haulier can only assume that this happened at a time when the Chancellor of the Exchequer's attention was focused on teaching children to manage their pocket money properly.

No one can doubt that British agriculture is among our most efficient industries. As such, it is (sadly} a rare success story in post-War Britain. No one would want to damage that record.

But the haulier is surely entitled to ask whether the Government has got its priorities right. The hundreds of millions of subsidy to the farmers contrast starkly with the similar-sized sums of money that road transport pays to the Exchequer over and above the most generous assessment of track and other costs attributable to lorries.

Yet despite the events since 1979, public expenditure is still such an unco-ordinated mess that it is the farmers who receive subsidies in the transport sphere, not the hauliers. No wonder that the RHA has complained to Mr Howell at this state of affairs. As Kipling remarked "Everyone is more or less mad on one point." It seems difficult to see how Mr Howell would be able to resist the RHA's request without making it clear that this is his particular mad point.

The RHA calculates that farmers legally enjoy fuel and vehicle tax concessions worth about felm per year. That alone would bear investigation, given the relative state of economic health of the two industries.

But the RHA also contends that the concessions are widely abused, and that this abuse is growing. The low rate of tax — the "F" licence — severely restricts the use which the owner is supposed to make of his vehicle.

Even if he confines it to carrying produce from or articles for his own land he is to some extent competing with the professional haulier on unequal terms. But the vague easing of this restriction enabling the carriage of goods for another farmer widens this loophole considerably, as well as being almost unenforceable.

Yet the National Farmers Union will not support the idea of a high-visibility plate distinguishing F-licensed vehicles so that enforcement officers may pay them special attention. Can it be that the NF fears that too many of its members abuse this concessii to make support for the idea acceptable?

Similarly, even the legal us( rebated fuel — within a 15-mil radius of the farm boundary can give the farmer a competitive edge over the haulier. But the abuse of this concession extends not only t farmers exceeding the radius. Such fuel also "leaks" into th( tanks of other vehicles. Althot Excise men do take part from time to time in roadside check this is rare, and likely to becor more so as Civil Service manpower is cut back still further.

The RHA submission on farmers' tax concessions — Ilk its recent approach about the Post Office hours concessions deserves Mr Howell's support But hauliers might be forgiver for wishing that Mr Walker would be participating in the battle on their side, leaving th farmers' interests in Mr Howe hands.


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