;port Minister Lord Macdonald argues that the Labour government has
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done a lot milers since 1997, so it deserves their votes in the coming election.
fou want to sound off about a road transport issue write to features editor c Cunnane or fax your views (up to 800 words) to Micky Clarke on 020 8852 8912.
The government has changed its relationship with the road haulage industry radically in the past four years.
O With all previous governments, contact was sporadic.
o Not any more. The key achievement has been to establish an open, regular and productive dialogue. Issues that affect all sides of the
E industry—companies, owner-drivers, and trade unions—can now be discussed in an informed and constructive fashion. This active sponsorship of the industry is delivered through the Road Haulage Forum, set up in March 1999. It has been 5 instrumental in building relationships and also in enabling the 0government to achieve real change on behalf of hauliers. The Forum has given hauliers' representatives unprecedented access to ministers from three departments—Treasury, Department of Trade and Industry and my own Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions. We have also set up a
number of Forum subgroups including one on training, as we had been urged to do by trade unions and industry alike. And we also set up a special subgroup, chaired by Lord Whitty, to look at the issue of working time.
All credit to Commercial Motor for its campaign to highlight the importance of recruiting a new generation of drivers and training them well—the government will now invest alongside the industry to achieve these goals.
Let me set out some of the other things we have achieved, in many oases after thorough consideration beforehand in the Forum.
We listened carefully to industry pleas and scrapped the fuel duty escalator introduced by the Conservatives.
We allowed 44-tonne lorries on UK roads from February 2001. This was a long-standing recommendation first made in 1980; we have put it into practice. This measure gives extra payload to British lorries operating in our domestic market.
We have cut vehicle excise duty by half and already given over £200m in rebates to hauliers in the past six months. This is real money, with hauliers benefiting directly from cheques in pockets. We have also announced substantial long-term reform of vehicle excise duty to make it cheaper and simpler. Nearly 130 categories of vehicle excise duty are replaced by just seven broad tax bands; this is a welcome reduction of red tape.
We have announced a £100m Modernisation Fund for road haulage. A £30m scheme paid for by the fund for retrofitting and fuel economy programmes was announced this month. Expert advice will be available from the Energy Savings Trust on the most appropriate new technologies for operators. We also strongly support, and are about to take forward with the industry, its ideas for a self-help scheme to improve business performance. That work has temporarily been put on one side because of the effort needed from key staff both in my department and from the industry at large to help with the national fight against the footand-mouth epidemic. When that destructive disease is beaten we can refocus our efforts.
We have kept a sharp watch on the competitive position of the British haulier and have put in hand active consideration of a vignette, or Brit Disc scheme, so foreign drivers can be charged for using our roads.
We constantly emphasise the need for a modern, progressive and sustainable haulage industry, To give practical effect to this emphasis we published Sustainable Distnbution: a Strategy in 1999. By earmarking substantial sums from the £100m fund to boost retrofitting, fuel economy measures and to promote industry self-help schemes we strengthened that commitment.
All in all, our relationship with the road haulage industry is a record of dialogue and practical assistance of which I believe this government can be proud.