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inspection
The international outcry over the deaths of 58 stowaways at Dover in June brought many calls for governments to act. But will they? The FTA's meeting with Jack Straw should help tell us, as it approaches him directly about the costly issue of inspection facilities.
But while the conversation is to centre on inspection facilities abroad, these will not necessarily help UK hauliers whose vehicles are broken into on ferries and unwittingly arrive in the UK with an unplanned payload which costs £2,000 a head...
We do not rely on foreign authorities to ensure other illegal cargoes, like drugs, stay out of Britain; neither should we wholly depend on them for keeping stowaways out. If hauliers are to be properly protected, we need inspection facilities both abroad and at home, and far more immigration officials inspecting far more vehides.
Straw must do everything in his power to stamp out this trade. Any excuses about the cost will fall on deaf ears. We all know how much revenue is raised from the haulage sector; now it's time to put a little back in.
• Taking the UK government to court over high rates of fuel tax and vehicle excise duty could have been extremely time-consuming and expensive. So CM welcomes the RHA's latest initiative to bring our government to book in another way, via the European Union's commissioner for competition, Mario Monti. We look forward to his findings and hope they are more logical than those recently produced by the Transport Select Committee on this issue. Can they really be anything else?