INTERNATIONAL PERMITS
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• Thank you for publishing the article on the subject of permits in your issue of February 7.
We applied in November for an issue of permits for France and Spain (Spain being our main market) but we only got French permits, which leaves us at the mercy of our subcontractors — and even they got only a limited number of permits.
Another firm offered to transfer its permits for Spain to us as they have pulled out of the Spanish market. But we then learned that (unlike other foreign permits) Spanish permits are non-transferrable! This simply means that the permits issued to the other firm are wasted, which effectively limits further the amount of work to be done by British hauliers in Spain in 1987.
We read in the trade press about the continuing fall in the share of international work being performed by British hauliers year-by-year. The inference is that it is all to do with the British disease and that we are a nation in decline.
I am assured by the RHA (though I still find it incredible) that Margaret Thatcher's government goes naked to the conference table, offering unlimited permits to the Spaniards — then having to beg and plead for whatever miserable quota they feel disposed to allow the British.
The government seems heedless of the effect this must be having on the balance of payments (with the knockon effect which bad trade figures have on British interest rates).
And yet in the same issue you praise John Moore, Secretary of State for Transport as an "astute politician" and report him as saying "we have had a very big battle" over international journey permits.
It makes little sense to report him as saying that he is "behind the concept of free
trade throughout the EEC", since the EEC is merely committed to the concept of reciprocal free trade and all the major battles within the EEC revolve around questions of reciprocity!
If the above is correct, we've been mugged.
Name and address supplied.