More Facts
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tical Commentary By JANUS
ERTAINLY, all is not as it should be in the report published by the Ministry of Transport of a sample survey of road goods transport; but the critics make iistake of dealing only with the specific faults they to find, and overlooking the surprising lack of mation in a White Paper running to 28 pages and wting to give the results of well over a year's work. oo much space is taken by mere speculation on the ing of the figures collected in respect of several and vehicles at a cost of £3,000. What one would r have are many more statistics than are to be found : handful of tables illustrating the report.
:ontains several curiosities, one of which the Socialist 3 have been quick to seize upon. Mr. Ernest Davies, has alleged that the main purpose in publishing the t is to give the C-licence holder a clean bill of )mic health. He has some justification for saying so. report sets out a number of figures particularly ng to C-licence operation, and comes to the concluthat this is neither inefficient nor wasteful, "as is times suggested." No similar opinion is expressed t operation under A or B licence.
unexpectedly, Mr. Davies is able to use the same :s and come to a conclusion exactly the opposite to in the Ministry report. He has pointed out that on verage vehicles used by traders for their own goods 'ewer miles and carry fewer goods than comparable les used for hire or reward. One scarcely needed a nal survey to arrive at this elementary conclusion, but tiblished figures, whatever their significance may be, ot, as the report claims, concerned with "comparative :ncies of operation." The haulier may reasonably say he volume of traffic he carries is a rough measure of ficiency, but the efficiency of C-licence operation has judged by other standards.
ilure to grasp this point may be the reason for a er odd feature in the report. Some play is made with eful choice of terms to distinguish the haulier and -ader. "Public transport " and "private transport," eport points out, have political overtones. It was ed, therefore, to use the internationally accepted "transport for hire" and "transport on own Sense to Semantics :re is no harm in this. The report, however, proceeds )ordinate sense to semantics. Because some B-licence is "on own account," an attempt—which the report sses is "subject to particularly wide margins of "—has to be made to decide what proportion of his
the B-licence holder carries as a haulier and what
■ rtion as a trader. Work on contract-A licence is -egarded arbitrarily as "on own account,",with the that this kind of traffic is said to account for 58 per of road ton-miles.
:e again, it is doubtful whether the comparison has significance except for the Ministry. The disappoint:ature of the report is that it ignores the comparison would have been most useful, namely that between :rs under free enterprise and British Road Services. itisfactory explanation is given of the failure to carry bat would have been an interesting exercise. There .eference to the fact that B.R.S. now have to hold es, which was not the case in 1952 when an earlier
survey was made. The change of status would still leave it possible for separate statistics to be shown in the 1958 report.
The most conspicuous change since 1952, according to the report, is the "large increase in the quantity of A-licence work," something between three-fifths and one-half. The figures are not set out, but reference to both reports shows that in 1952 the estimated weekly ton-mileages for vehicles on A licence, plus those of the British Transport Commission, were 116.2rn.; and that in 1958 the figure was 181.5m., an increase of 65.3m. What is remarkable about this last statistic is that the number of A-licensed vehicles, plus or including those of the B.T.C., has, if anything, fallen slightly between 1952-58. The contrast is clear between the volume of traffic carried in virtually the same number of vehicles under nationalization and under free enterprise. The contrast would have been complete had the Ministry's report for 1958 given separate figures for the B.T.C.
Shared His Opinion Mr. Davies, who has worked up a good deal of indignation about the report, has suggested that the facts and figures should have been presented for analysis to the Road Research Laboratory, a body with an international reputation for objective research. He may have hoped that the Laboratory would have shared his opinion about C-licence operation. It is more likely that they would have given closer attention than the Ministry officials to the work done before and after disposal by the 20,000 vehicles sold by B.R.S.
There is no point, except perhaps a .political one, in handing over the statistics to another set of experts. If they reached conclusions markedly different from those in the report already published, this would do no more than confirm the popular opinion that figures may be used to prove anything. The Minister of Transport, Mr. Harold Watkinson, very properly defended his statisticians against Mr. Davies. It is certain that the figures themselves have not been tampered with. Inevitably, the interpretations will be criticized, and this would happen however many were given. What is really wanted are more facts and figures.
There is justification for publishing these as an appendix to the report. The Ministry themselves do not appear to have appreciated the importance of their work. When the earlier survey was published as the result of an inquiry in 1952, comparatively few people at first took notice of it. Only slowly was the immense value realized of objective statistics showing the extent and nature of the work done by road transport operators. The significance of the second survey may also take some time to make itself felt. It adds many times over to the value of its predecessor because of the opportunity it provides for comparison.
The information painstakingly collected by the Ministry in 1952 and 1958 is an oasis in a singularly barren territory. The details that have been released in the two reports no more than whet the appetite. Each figure could profitably be broken down further, and it would not he out of place to publish all the replies to the Ministry's questionnaires, with the proviso that the names of operators are not disclosed apart from the B.T.C. At least there could then be no argument that the figures are somehow or other being manipulated for the benefit of one section of the community.