The politics of parcels
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by John Darker
• The leakage of a confidential report to the Minister of Transport caused much fluttering in the dovecotes of State parcels carriers this week. Monty Meth, industrial correspondent of the Daily Mai4 said on Monday in a story headed "Parcels are the weapons in jungle war" that the report accused rival State industry chiefs of wasting taxpayers' money by fighting each other for business, instead of integrating their companies to improve the service.
"The disclosures and conclusions are so damning," he wrote, "that the next Government, Tory or Labour, is expected to streamline the State industry sector or denationalize part of it if a private buyer can be found."
Mr Meth claimed that the report was compiled for the Ministry of Transport by consultants from a London firm of accountants, McLintock, Mann and Whinney Murray. In fact, I understand, the report was commissioned by the Freight Integration Council to supplement its own investigations of the possibilities of further integration of parcels services and the rationalizing of rate structures.
The Ministry of Transport denies categorically that a separate copy of the consultants' report exists in the Ministry; the Minister, Mr Fred Malley, is studying the full report of the Freight Integration Council which makes reference to the consultants' inquiries.
The consultants' remit, I gather, included a review of business carried out by National Carriers Ltd, BRS Parcels Ltd, British Rail Express Parcels Service and the Post Office at Hull and Taunton. A working party of the Freight Integration Council would have considered the consultants' views in its drafting of points for the FIC's report to the Minister. The full document is of some 350 paragraphs and one well-informed source claims that the Daily Mail allegations offer a distorted picture. It is to be expected that over-simplified arguments would have been well qualified in the full report to the Minister. But I understand that the report does say clearly what should be done, and it would be surprising if the labour relations implications of drastic streamlining were not spelled out.
What is extraordinary is that the newspaper story should claim that Sir Reginald Wilson, chairman of the National Freight Corporation which controls BRS Parcels and National Carriers Ltd, Sir Henry Johnson, chairman of British Railways Board, and Lord Hall, the Post Office chief, are "under fire". It simply does not make sense that the men named would indict themselves in their collective report to the Minister.
Allegations that BRS Parcels and National Carriers managements "accuse each other of offering `unrealistically large discounts to get work'" and that BR "is alleged to have given as much as 40 per cent off the standard charge to secure contracts" may be based on old information. But if the full report does in fact claim, as the Daily Mail alleges, "There would be considerable advantages in reducing the number of nationalized carriers" the management of British Express Carriers Ltd—controlling NCL and BRS Parcels and a group of smaller parcels operators—face a man-sized problem. The drastic integration of State parcels services was ducked by the British Transport Commission 20 years ago in face of union opposition; short of the "buying out" of National Union of Railwaymen members (in NCL) by the Transport and General Workers' Union, it is difficult to foresee any rapid progress in merging NCL and BRS Parcels. Major staff redundancies would be involved and much recent investment in equipment and buildings would be questioned.
• The index to Commercial Motor volume 130, August 1969 to January 1970, is now in print. Copies are available price Is each post paid from Sales Dept, 1PC Business Press Ltd, 161-166 Fleet Street, London EC4.