Minister's 'up to you' message to industry

22nd September 1972, Page 345

22nd September 1972

Page 345

Page 345, 22nd September 1972 — Minister's 'up to you' message to industry

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• "The road transport industry's best assurance that it will not be hobbled by a complex of expensive but unenforceable regulations will lie in its willing adoption of high standards."

This "over-to-you" challenge came from Transport Industries Minister John Peyton when he officially opened the Commercial Motor Show at Earls Court last Friday.

Earlier he had said that the industry was currently the target for a good deal of comment. The attention of the public was caught, not by the speed and flexibility of the service offered, but by such matters as size, loads, vibration, noise, fumes and congestion.

"People," he said, "are concerned that in the unthinking rush of modern life homes are made uninhabitable and the streets mere arenas in which the human being struggles in vain against a swelling tide of traffic. They are concerned that ugliness should not be accepted as the price which must be paid for efficiency.

"The modern road system is designed to accommodate modern traffic. The narrow streets of towns and villages, winding country lanes were never built to stand up to such a battering and must be relieved of it.'

There was nothing in all this, he said which industry need fear and he expressed his thanks to manufacturers for the efforts they were making to produce vehicles which were safer, cleaner and less noisy, and to operators for the part which they were currently playing with the Government in evolving a road haulage policy acceptable to the public and tolerable for themselves.

Congratulating all those whose skill and enterprise had made possible the construction of the vehicles and assemblies on display, Mr Peyton said: "It is right that we should welcome overseas exhibitors,. particularly having in mind that by the time the next Show comes round some of them will be our partners in Europe".