Budget of shame
Page 25
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I FEEL I MUST take issue with your editorial (March 21). You have criticised various organisations for not putting forward alternative methods by which the Chancellor might obtain the revenue he needs and you have said that the increased costs in the Budget are infinitesimal when broken down to the cost on goods sold.
I put it to you that there is no need to consider alternative methods of raising revenue because Sir Arthur Armitage has already set out, in great detail, the way in which the transport industry could afford to contribute more to revenue.
If heavier lorries are permitted, if the speed limit is raised, and if all the other possibilities of improving productivity are taken up, then the transport industry can afford to increase its contribution.
However, these actions have not yet been agreed and though you are correct in saying that the Budget cost increases are small when broken down into the additional costs on individual products, this is not the way in which they are looked. at.
The increased cost is not small when it is seen as a percentage increase on a manufacturing company's haulage bill and I would suggest that it will lead many companies to look, yet again, at desperate hauliers offering lower rates and, indeed, to Continental hauliers.
It may well be that we shall see a further crop of bankruptcies. The manufacturing companies are not necessarily in a position to increase their prices by the infinitesimal amounts called for because of international competition and so they, too, will be looking not at a few pence on product costs but half a million pounds or so on haulage costs, which have to be covered by dipping into profits which are already under pressure.
F. J. CHARLTON Birmingham