T&G calls for united blitz on jams
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• A national advisory body must be set up to give direction to Britain's transport. So says Bill Morris, generalsecretary of the Transport & General Workers Union and chairman of the TUC's transport committee.
Transport specialists, business and consumer interests, trade unionists and local authority representatives would all have a place in the scheme, says Morris.
"We want an integrated transport plan drawn up by a national transport authority," Morris told the Commons Transport Select Committee last week. Some committee members questioned how much clout this body would have. Peter Fry MP said it would be no more than a non-elected, nonexecutive quango. "I am not convinced that quangos are bad," Morris responded. "Nothing could be worse than the chaos we now have."
United Road Transport Union general-secretary Frank Griffin backs the call for a national plan and the idea of a central planning body, but says it must have teeth to be effective. "It would rely on goodwill and consensus when the 1980s have seen the breakdown of consensus. If the advisory body has no real authority, then its directives become hopes rather than plans."
"The present system is demonstrably inadequate," said British Roads Federation director Peter Witt: "A new national strategic plan is required, hut no government has produced such a plan since 1971." Committee member Terry Dicks MP slammed the Government's planning record: "A small boy with a calculator could do a better job than the DTp in working out the cost of congestion," he said.
The Road Haulage Association has given the scheme a cool reception: It says: "A national body will make no difference. You only have to look at how the Government ignored the February 1981 paper Investment In Transport presented by the RHA, the Freight Transport Association, the British Road Federation the TGWU and the rail unions to know that national cooperation by the roads lobby is no guarantee of governmental action."
The FTA is also being cautious. "The more people there are making a noise, the more people pay attention to it. But you must be careful how and when you make the noise, and this government doesn't think much of quangos," says press and information manager Gerry Moore.
The TGWU and TUC concede that some private financing of roads might be preferable to no new roads at all. "We feel it is more important for investment in roads to go ahead with private sector involvement . . rather than insist that public funding be provided," says the TGWU to the all-party committee.