Disposals Board Debate Today T HE House of Commons will today
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debate the composition of the Road Haulage Disposals Board, the members of which were due to be announced yesterday. Mr. A. T. Lennox-Boyd, Minister of Transport, made this announcement at the annual luncheon of the Road Haulage Association in London on Tuesday.
He remarked how much he had profited by talks with officials of the R.1-LA. and was sure that the Association would use their opportunities with wisdom, and would prove how unjust were the charges that private enterprise could not go hand in hand with good industrial relations.
Mr. Bernard Winterbottom, national chairman, declared that the Association would try to make denationalization a success and restore the industry to maximum efficiency. The Transport Act, he said, to a great degree met the Association's wishes.
Nevertheless, he complained of the handicaps under Which hauliers had had to work. They had been excluded from provisions of the De-rating Act, although their garages stood empty for most of the day. They had been overtaxed, had been held in check in comparison with other operators of road transport and had been made to use out-of-date roads.
Mr. Winterbottom referred to the wasteful development of the C-hiring business. More traffic had been lost by the R.H.E. to C-hiring operators than to Aand B-licence operators. He thought that much of the increase in the number of C-licence vehicles was natural, but much of it was not.
He was greatly dissatisfied with the position concerning balancing charges on compensation for nationalization. He quoted the case of a business for which £26,000 compensation was paid and on which taxation of £7,000 was payable. When in Opposition, he said, the present Government had been sympathetic to the relief of balancing charges on compensation.