Overloaded foreigns down to 15 pc claims Minister
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• The proportion of overloaded foreign lorries arriving in Britain has been reduced from about 80 per cent to some 15 per cent since the Foreign Vehicles Act came into force last year.
This has been claimed by Mr Keith Speed, Environment Under-Secretary, in a letter to Mr Ray Carter, Labour, Birmingham Northfield. Mr Carter had complained that the authorities were "virtually powerless" to proceed against visiting Continental lorry men.
The Minister agrees that the ability to prosecute foreign lorry drivers for road traffic offences is in practice very limited.
"I have already instigated with colleagues in the approprVte departments an examination of this and allied questions such as civil liability for damage when a foreign driver is involved in an accident," says Mr Speed.
But he does not agree that the problem exists in relation to overloading offences. The Act, he says, gave enforcement staff effective powers to prohibit incoming foreign lorries from moving on UK roads if they are overweight by UK standards, until such a time as the excess weight is off-loaded and they are cleared.
"The delay inherent in these prohibitions imposes a commercial penalty on the operators which is at least as effective as prosecution," says the Minister.
"Of course, the degree of enforcement is only as high as the resources of time and manpower put into it. It is not practical to have examiners in the ports to meet every ferry. But the enforcement effort has resulted in well over a thousand prohibitions since the Act came into force, and we estimate that the percentage of overloaded foreign vehicles, originally some 80 per cent or so, has been reduced by these means to nearer 15 pc."
Announcing that the enforcement staff is to be expanded by 25 per cent this autumn, the Minister adds: "1 can assure you that enforcement staff are not in the least inhibited by the reaction of Continental transport interests. In fact we gather any firm evidence of repeated overloading offences by particular firms to form the basis of a protest to the foreign government concerned."
A Conservative MP, Mr Keith Stainton (Sudbury and Woodbridge), has also entered the battle to close the legal loophole which the Minister admits exists.
This follows a complaint by a constituent that when his car was damaged by a Dutch lorry, the police told him there was nothing they could do — because the driver was Dutch.
Mr Stainton is to put down a Commons question about the incident and hopes to get time for a debate on this legal anomaly.
"A very worrying state of affairs," comments Mr Stainton. "If the Common Market means anything at all there should be some form of reciprocal agreement on this."