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Page 64
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Opting out of the Bill
ALTHOUGH the Transport Bill has aroused so many protests from so many quarters there are many parts of it which have been accepted with little demur and even generally welcomed. This was only to be expected with such a large and wideranging piece of legislation. What is surprising is that the seal of tacit approval has been put on some proposals which it might have been supposed would provoke strong opposition at least from certain interests.
The present licensing system will disappear when quality licensing is introduced. There will no longer be proof of need nor any distinction between hauliers and traders on own-account. When certain famous cases are remembered and particularly that of Merchandise Transport, it may seem an abrupt and inexplicable change of mind which has led to hauliers to abandon the positions they so passionately and expensively defended only a few years ago.
In fact their commitment to the old order was wearing thin even before the Bill was introduced. For a long time the policy of the Road Haulage Association had been moving towards the principle of proof of fitness rather than proof of need.
Bland suggestion
The Geddes report with its bland suggestion that licensing had been a snare and a delusion from the very beginning was naturally not welcomed in the industry but operators soon realized that it had the broad support of all the political parties.
Little support would have been forthcoming for a campaign against quality licensing. Hauliers as a body wisely accepted the inevitable although individuals have complained, sometimes fiercely, at the legerdemain by which the whole apparatus of A, B and C licensing has vanished through a trapdoor while the attention of the audience was diverted. The points in favour of the present system—and there certainly are some—will now largely be left unsaid in the House of Lords and elsewhere.
A concomitant of quality licensing is the proposal for transport managers' licences. If the Bill is passed in its present form most operators will be required to designate a transport manager for each depot. The Licensing Authority will have some say including the important last word—subject to an appeal to the Transport Tribunal—in deciding who is to hold the position. Objections can also be made by various organizations including trade unions and local authorities.
Owing to the limited time available most of the debate in the House of Commons was concentrated on other matters. Comparatively few amendments were made to what is now section 65 and schedule 9, those parts of the Bill setting out the main provisions for transport managers' licensing. The one significant change, certainly an improvement, will allow the operator three months in which to find a replacement. The original proposal to limit the period of grace to one month would have been impracticable.
What one would have thought the fundamental objections have scarcely been expressed. The stated intention is beyond reproach. The person who in the words of the Bill "is to be responsible for the operation and maintenance of the authorized vehicles" ought to have at least the minimum qualifications for the job and should share the responsibility and the penalty if he does not do it properly.
In due course it should be possible to make qualification more precise by an examination or test. Even at present there is a diploma for which the ambitious man can study. Through the Road Transport Industry Training Board with the co-operation of the trade associations and unions the scope for education already shows signs of improving. Encouragement and pressure from the Government will help still further.
Only the employer should have the right to hire or fire. He should not be told that he must employ only transport managers with certain paper qualifications or that the man he wishes to appoint is not acceptable to a Licensing Authority or non persona grata to a trade union.
In road transport more than in many other industries the job creates the man. The range stretches from the ex-driver or ex-fitter who has learned the hard way how to run a few vehicles successfully up to the transport proconsul in charge of a great C-licence fleet. By a stroke of irony this man who bears a greater burden of responsibility than anybody else apparently need not -himself hold a licence. The Bill requires in general a transport manager for each operating centre and the key man in overall charge is not necessarily included.
Grateful
For this he will be grateful. If the operation and maintenance of his fleet attracts massive penalties he will expect loss of status or more probably dismissal. It would be an added humiliation if he were also stripped in public of his transport manager's licence and possibly denied the right even to beg for another to enable him to take a more lowly position for which he might in fact be admirably suited.
If the great men in transport are thankful to decline the honour of a licence it would not be surprising if the same reluctance were found at other levels. The White Paper on freight transport on which the Bill is based suggests that there is not a great deal wrong with road transport apart from a small minority of bad operators. "The past record in the industry of most existing operators," it says, "will be such that they can be granted a licence with the minimum of investigation."
From this it may be inferred that most people now doing the work of transport manager as specified in the Bill will be able to get their personal licences with equal ease. This does not mean that they will all be queueing at the early doors.
In many a business the operator and his manager have provided an efficient service and maintained high standards consistently over the years. The operator will naturally be willing to trade in his current licence for one of the new-fangled type. He has no option and he may even hope for certain benefits from the greater freedom which the Bill promises.
The transport manager •has no such inducement. If he allows his name to go forward on his employer's application he runs the risk, slight though it may be, that somebody or other may object and even that the Licensing Authority may decide that he is not a fit and proper person to be a transport manager.
'Sir'
What is most likely is that his nomination will be accepted and he will be inscribed on the roll as the transport manager of his company by Parliamentary decree. This brings no tangible rewards. There is nothing in the Bill to say that he is automatically entitled to an increase in salary—and even if it were offered to him the Prices and Incomes Board might have something to say—or that in future he is to be addressed as "Sir" instead of by the rude names to which he is accustomed.
On the other hand, he puts himself in line for a number of new penalties. If offences are committed for which the operator's licence is revoked or suspended the manager may also be held responsible and lose his own licence. He is not only out of a job, presumably with very doubtful rights to redundancy pay, but is debarred for a period or indefinitely from taking similar employment. If he so much as applies for another transport manager's licence he may be liable to a fine of up to £50.
If there were a union of transport managers one can imagine it advising members in no circumstances to apply for licences or alternatively to demand substantial financial concessions from their employers. Massive abstentions would make it difficult to administer the regulations.
Naturally the operator would not wish to lose the services of the man who has been so valuable to him in the past. There would be no point in the circumstances in nominating a dummy transport manager. The Licensing Authority must satisfy himself on the man's qualifications, experience and knowledge and would probably not grant the licence unless the applicant had the appropriate status in the firm.
Faced with this kind of problem the Governmant may come to understand th feelings of Frankenstein when he found himself unable to control the android o clockwork man he had created.