Stiffer penalties demanded under Road Safety Bill
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SURPRISE MOVE BY BOTH TORIES AND LABOUR
FROM OUR PARLIAMENTARY CORRESPONDENT
ROAD hauliers who use defective lorries may face tougher penalties. The Government is to re-examine the whole position after an unexpected demand from both Conservative and Labour MPs that the provisions in the Road Safety Bill should be made stiffer.
This promise was made last week by Mr. Stephen Swingler, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport. He said he had been "much impressed" by the demand for stiffer penalties, wider powers for immediate prohibition and directions by the Minister for wider revocations and suspensions.
He noted that the Minister wanted the power of suspension and revocation of licences to be more strictly used, and promised that when the Bill went back to the Commons as a whole a statement would be made about the action to be taken to ensure that, concurrently with the courts, appropriate action was taken by licensing authorities on the matter.
In view of Mr. Swingler's statement, Tory transport expert Mr. Thomas Galbraith withdrew an amendment to the Bill which would have enabled courts to suspend a vehicle's licence for up to 12 months.
"We must be ruthless with these owners or operators who run gimcrack and dangerous businesses", said Mr. Galbraith.
Mr. Stanley Orme (Labour, Salford West) believed that courts, having all the facts, might be able to operate the removal of a licence more quickly than the Licensing Authority.
Mr. Graham Page (Tory. Crosby) said that in practice the power to revoke a licence was very seldom used:
Mr. Onne returned to the discussion to observe that he was worried by the remoteness of the Licensing Authority from the case. If the courts had the authority automatically to remove a licence and then refer it to the Licensing Authority for further action if necessary, this would be a tremendous psychological factor.
"These people who run these lethal weapons about the country would then know that if they appeared in court they would run the danger of having that vehicle taken off the road."
Mr. Swingler said it was most important not to mix up the powers of the courts and the Licensing Authority. As long as we had licensing authorities the power of granting a licence or suspending or revoking it should remain in their hands.
The licensing authorities should exercise this power in the light of judgments given in the courts and in the light of the kind of penalties and prohibitions that had been approved by Parliament, went on Mr. Swingler. One amendment accepted by the Committee allows the Minister to authorize specific inspectors of weights and measures as well as police and vehicle examiners to prohibit a vehicle from proceeding if it is found to be so excessively overloaded as to be a danger.
By 10 votes to four the Committee rejected a proposal that when an authorized person found a vehicle's load to be overweight it should be mandatory and not merely discretionary upon him to order an unloading down to the prescribed limit.
Moving an amendment designed to bring about this change, Mr. Page said that if the authorized person did not insist on unloading then, as the law stood at the moment, he must be aiding and abetting the commission of an offence.
Practical difficulties
Asking the Committee to resist the amendment, Mr. Dick Taveme, Under Secretary at the Home Office, said it involved certain practical difficulties.
It might be that on a particular occasion a vehicle was found to be loaded slightly above its plated weight but it was not necessarily for that reason alone unsafe and a danger to the public.
Secondly there might be examples of vehicles carrying very urgent loads—medical necessities or exports on the way to the docks.
There might also be occasions on which the unloading of the excess was impossible because it was an indivisible load, or when the load had become excessive through factors not within the control of the persons who did the loading.
But perhaps the most serious practical difficulty was that the weighbridge site might be such as to make it inconvenient or even dangerous to immobilize several vehicles at or near the site, said Mr. Taverne.
Sir Harwood Harrison (Tory, Eye) moved an amendment which, he said, would ensure that men should have practical experience of driving goods vehicles before they tried to examine men who wanted to spend their life and their livelihood driving goods vehicles.
If it was found that the examiners were purely knowledgeable theorists and not practical men, that they had not been out on long distances on the road, that they had not driven heavy loaded lorries at night, one m i ght find a certain antagonism building up among lorry drivers against taking this test.
Mr. Swingler replied that though the Ministry did not wish to write this provision into the Bill, those who would have the job of examination would have to be substantially experienced as a prerequisite for qualification.
Mr. Galbraith moved an amendment allowing lorry tests to be carried out by the Ministry's examiners in the garages from which lorry fleets operated. He thought there were quite a number of garages equipped with the correct apparatus to do this.
Mr. Swingler said there was no bar to the use of private garages, and indeed it might well be necessary in geographically difficult and remote areas to have recourse to private garages.
Mr. Daniel Awdry (Tory, Chippenham) wanted to alter the Bill so that if a commercial operator committed—as a private driver—two offences which counted towards the "totting-up" procedure, a third offence committed by one of his commercial vehicles, for which he was not responsible, would not lead to his disqualification.
It was his experience that people who ran fleets were let down on occasions by their employees.
After some discussion when the committee resumed this week, the amendment was withdrawn.
TRAINING BOARD AT NEW Ha
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