Lone Tory scuppers the impounding bill
Page 8
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
• Hopes for legislation that would empower the authorities to confiscate trucks run by unlicensed hauliers have been dashed after a Conservative MP vetoed a crucial private members' bill.
The bill had completed two readings and its final committee stage in the Lords, but last Friday Tory MP Eric Forth effectively killed it off for the current parliamentary session.
The news has annoyed Lord Attlee, who proposed the bill. 'I know that Forth has a policy of putting down private members' bills,' he says, "but we would rather not see this bill killed. The haulage industry is horrendously competitive, and a lot of
people sail close to the wind— and at the moment there is no effective sanction against them. The industry desperately needs this legislation.'
FIHA national chairman John Bridge says: 'Everyone in our industry knows that impounding is the only way to deal with the worst offenders in our busi
ness—those irresponsible hauliers who take work from legitimate, law-abiding operators and in the process give the whole industry a bad name.'
Lord Attlee says he plans to introduce another private members' bill for impounding in the next parliamentary session, which begins in November. 'I will be pursuing this," he adds.