MORE PROTESTS AT SEVERN TOLLS BILL
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FROM OUR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
PROTESTS against the Severn Bridge Tolls Bill already made by the Road Haulage Association and Traders Road Transport Association (The Commercial Motor, January 15) have been reinforced by the road passenger transport organizations. The Public Transport Association and the Passenger Vehicle Operators' Association have joined With the goods operators in laying petitions against the Bill at Westminster.
This could lead to extreme difficulties as, although the Government has presented it, the Bill is a hybrid—that is, it contains elements affecting private interests. In this case, petitions must be considered and M.P.s could delay the progress of the Bill if the objections are not removed.
The passenger transport interests have three main objections to the Bill. They say it should set out what part of the £13 m. cost is to be set against tolls; it should define the considerations needed to fix the tolls; and it should say at what stage t011s would be abolished.
Other petitions have been laid by the standing joint committee of the R.A.C., A.A. and Royal Scottish Automobile Club and also by the Old Passage Severn Ferry Company Ltd.
The Bill is expected to be considered by a Select Committee of Parliament and later go through its stages with a form of procedure that will allow the petitioners to argue their case. Every time the Bill goes before the House of Commons (and this occurs several times) M.P.s who support the petitioners can object to it, and on some occasions force debates.
This could have an important delaying effect, and it is more than possible that the Minister of Transport will be inclined to consider amendments to meet the objections being made.
Tolls are not charged on motorways as a matter of policy, but it has been A32 decided to charge them on major new river crossings. The Minister would be given wide powers under the Severn Bill to set differential rates of toll as well as exemptions.
It is claimed that the new works, when completed, will be of particular benefit to traffic between South Wales and South-West England, saving a 40-mile detour through Gloucester, or the need to use a ferry.
The two bus operators' organizations contend that, if there are objections from bodies using,. or interested in the motorway, they also should be taken to inquiry as of right and not left to the Minister to decide. Further, they say that interested bodies should have the statutory right to be able to approach the Minister in the future to argue the case for the revisions of tolls,