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Hours deal ...
Page 7
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.. but busmen denounce 'fiasco'
MORE RELAXED EEC drivers' hours rules will take effect from September 29 next year, transport ministers from the 10 member states agreed in Brussels last week.
Their endorsement of a package, which was agreed in outline in June, is expected to be followed by moves to amend the domestic hours rules covered now by the 1968 '1 ransport Act.
And in the first stage of a compaign to sweep away the duty limits imposed by the 1968 Act, the Freight Transport Association was meeting Department of Transport civil servants this week to discuss the implications of the agreement in Brussels.
British Transport Secretary Nicholas Ridley has already pledged that he will "sweep up" domestic legislation as the necessary. law changes are made to ensure that the new EEC rules apply in Britain.
That, and a Government aim to remove unnecessary restraints to free trade, has been taken as Government sympathy for the FTA case.
The DTp is also planning to bring the Post Office's commercial transport activi ties — like its parcels service — into line with the private sector by binding it to EEC hours and insisting that drivers use tachographs.
Last week's agreement offers no significant concessions over the June package. Although it will be several weeks before EEC lawyers have settled the precise detail of the new regulation.
In outline, daily driving time goes up from eight to nine hours, with the possibility of 10 hours twice a week,
the continuous driving limit goes .up from four to four
and-a-half hours, and the maximum weekly driving limit goes down from 48 to 45 hours, calculated over a two-week period.
The rolling week is swept away, hut the need to take weekly rest of 45 hours (previously 4(1 hours) after six consecutive days remains. For coach drivers — whose prob lems provoked strong objections from Europe's bus industries — 12 consecutive days' driving is to be permitted.
Each member state will also be permitted to apply these rules to domestic tourist services to protect them from foreign competition.
While the FTA and the Road Haulage Association have accepted the deal as bet ter than now, even if it fills short of their ideal. Bus and Coach Council director-gen eral Denis Quin denounced the decision as a "fiasco". He accused mainland European transport ministers of playing with figures they did not understand, and said that such a "bad law" would not be enforced.