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'The Ministry just doesn't understand the facts of life about transport' con,..,
Page 24
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prima facie case has been made. Given that the whole system is an abomination, this is quite an important concession.
Another slight gain is on drivers' hours. A part-time driver up to four hours a day will not rank as a driver at all under the drivers' hours and records provisions. We've been asking for this. The obvious need for it can be seen, at different ends of the scale, in the case of a retailer who wouldn't have been able to drive his van home at night just because he'd done more than an 11-hour day, which was a pack of nonsense: and the service engineer who spends a vast proportion of his day in doing work and not in driving.
HBC: I don't recall noticing any other changes in driving hours provisions.
HRF: Apart from this one, there is no change whatsoever. And I think this confirms one's view that, frankly, the Ministry of Transport just does not understand the facts of life so far as transport is concerned. We asked, basically, for flexibility. We said: "This is inflexible''. We wanted a 13-hour day—not because we wanted drivers to work a 13-hour day, but because, what with waiting time, loading and unloading and unforeseeable delays, this would provide the legal margin of error which is inherent in a transport operation. They've simply rejected that, or ignored it. They've equally rejected the request for the flexibility of one day a week for longer hours of driving and working; and they've done nothing about the request for the sixday rule to be modified occasionally to give seven-day working for particular industries like agriculture.
The tragedy of this is that, not only does it show that they don't understand transport. but they haven't even looked at Europe. Because the 11-hour working day is far more onerous than in Europe. The effect in Europe is to give a 13-hour working day, and there is flexibility because every rule has a modification—a reservation on once a week, twice a week and so on. So on drivers' hours, as far as I can see, our Ministry has gone strictly by the theoretical book and paid no attention to the facts of life.
HBC: As seems to have happened in so many of these things.
HRF: Yes. Which leads me to another horrible point. The wording in pare 61 is rather comic but I think the intention is clear. A road licence, granted for five years —as we once thought—will not in fact be granted for five years but will be subject to right of revocation on the part of the LA at the instance of the railways or the NFC at any time. The practical effects of this, added to everything else, will be absolutely catastrophic, because the risk factor will be such as to make investment in road transport simply not worthwhile. The straw that breaks the camel's back, in my view.
One understands that the logic behind it is that a road licence will be granted on certain assumptions, including the rail rate and the road rate, and that if one of these changes it is only fair and reasonable that the whole situation should come into question again. But, here again, this is theory. On the one hand, LAs are sufficiently knowledgeable not to grant a licence on a rate which they know to be totally uneconomic: and if one is then worried about an increase in the rate afterwards, then the Minister seems totally to have overlooked the fact that in road—as does not apply in rail— there is such a thing as the forces of competition. And competition will keep the rate down.
HBC: As you say, the risk factor is increased enormously. Do you think this means that far less own-account transport will be run: that it will not be worth the candle? And doesn't the system reduce the whole business of rates to a terribly narrow margin? You are going to be in risk of losing your quality licence if you cannot keep vehicles in good repair, and so on—which means high costs and therefore fairly solid rates. Yet unless you can quote a very competitive rate you are in risk lif operating over 100 miles) of losing your quantity licence on one of the three points at issue: cost, speed, reliability. And the railways, or NFC, will presumably be charging at per-container rates, and therefore don't care tuppence what's inside a container, whereas if you are carrying nominally highrated road traffic—something valuable— you are having to quote on the basis of higher insurance costs, better drivers and probably more costly vehicles, too. Hauliers will be squeezed between these two opposing pressures on rates.
HRF: If we're talking long-term, as opposed to a very, very difficult and a very worrying and costly transition stage, then I am not worried, because I am convinced that this will so patently be shown to be unworkable and contrary to the national interest within a comparatively short time that instructions will have to be given to the LAs and the railways to work it in some other way. And I don't believe that, eventually, you can hold back the tide—which is happening all over the world—of going from rail towards road.
But short-term. I'm sure you are absolutely right in your second point: for the professional haulier, the margin within which he is competing is a very much narrower one. On your first point, I'm not sure whether this is going to mean more
people relying on hauliers—because the question is whether the haulier is going to be there. A lot depends on how the whole system is being played—if it ever comes to pass. But what I think will happen if the attitude of both the railways and the Licensing Authorities is "bad-, is that we shall get a tremendous movement on to under-16-ton vehicles.
One of the most disturbing things is that there is no recognition of the fact that, carried out as the Ministry intends, quantity licensing will defeat the single most important asset that road transport has—flexibility. We have tackled the Minister, the Minister of State and the Ministry on this inflexibility—which, of course, arises from the difficulty and delay in getting a licence and the fact that, as far as I can see, all hauliers' traffic will have to be on a contract basis. I see no conceivable possibility on "over 100 miles" that an operator could come down to London, go to a clearing house and get a return load. It seems to me to be inherently impossible.
The chap who is going to carry the load has got to have a licence for that particular traffic. Whenever this point has been made, the Minister—or the Ministry—has said: "Oh, you don't need to worry: it will be applied flexibly and there will be lots of general licences." Now, frankly, I don't accept that. If there are lots of general licences, then you've driven a coach and horses right through the system which is designed to get traffic to the Freightliner. So, either the system succeeds in what it wants to do in this respect—with the result that you've got a completely inflexible haulage system: or you retain flexibility in haulage and thus defeat the purpose for which the plan is intended. I don't sense that many people have cottoned on to this point but I am certain that the system will lead to a completely contracted haulage industry, with no flexibility from day to day. HBC: So overboard goes the haulage practice of short-notice subcontracting of part loads so as to make up full—and economic —loads for specific destinations. Surely there must be a compromise between a "general goodslicence which would destroy the purpose of these proposals, and a strict listing of actual traffics—down to individual commodities — moving between specific points? Otherwise much of trade and industry's transport will simply grind to a halt.
HRF: But the more flexible it gets, the greater the loophole there is in relation to the Freightliner. An applicant is either going to get a quantity licence for traffic the railways are not interested in—say glass, with no limit on the area in which it is carried. Or he will get a licence which is limited in areas, but not, perhaps, in commodities. And, as I see it, in any area where you come into conflict with the Freig htliner system—even potentially— then the licence has got to be tied pretty tightly. I don't see how any haulier in, say, Manchester, who hasn't got a licence to carry specific types of traffic will be able to pick up the odd load.