Tories shadow Transport Forum
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• The Shadow Road Haulage Forum Report was unveiled last week by Conservative Shadow Transport Minister Bernard Jenkin MP after hauliers were invited to express their opinions at a meeting last September.
Jenkin says the meeting was set up after three meetings of the government's forum showed "no evidence that the government was any more aware of the problems facing real hauliers", He denies the report is a Conservative policy document, and stresses that it was edited and amended by the forum's committee members—Edward Stobart of Eddie Stobart; Jim Dodd of Dodd's Transport; Edward Roderick of Christian Salvesen; John Newton of NWT Transport; and Vaughan Woolfitt of the British International Freight Association.
Highlighting the cost pressures on UK operators, the report says a haulier operating 10 40-tonners averaging 70,000 miles each year will pay a total of £198,000 in fuel tax this year. It also claims that in the last two months of 1999 1,700 trucks were registered in Holland with a loss of £7m to the Exchequer.
Edward Stobart adds: "Unless something is done very quickly regarding the high level of fuel duty in the UK, then foreign vehicles will enter the country in increasing numbers, contributing nothing to the UK economy while placing UK haulaee drivers' iohs nti'isk."