Crackdown onforeig overloaders
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• This year almost 9,000 foreign lorries will be checked for overloading — an increase of 50%.
Transport Secretary Paul Channon told MPs last week that the 11 ports with weighbridges will carry out about 8,800 checks. More weighbridges are planned at other ports to help tackle the problem, he said.
Poole Conservative MP John Ward protested that ports like Poole are at a disadvantage because hauliers with overloaded lorries deliberately avoid ports with weighbridges. Channon assured Ward that he accepts the need to move towards weighing more lorries and having better enforcement procedures: "We shall attempt to have more weighbridges than we do at the present time," he told MPs.
Junior transport minister Peter Bottomley later told MPs that almost 25% of foreign lorries coming into the UK have been found to be overloaded. The statistics do not distinguish between lorries checked at ports and those checked inland.
Earlier in the week Depart ment of Transport permanent secretary Sir Alan Bailey came under pressure from the powerful all-party public accounts committee for failing to crack down harder on overloaded lorries. Labour MP Dale Campbell-Savours said the first complaint he received talking to British drivers at Dover was the fact that foreign drivers are allowed in with overloaded lorries.
When Bailey told him that automatic ticketing machines were not yet reliable, the Labour MP retorted that reasonably accurate equipment could be used. Bailey replied: 1 "I accept that this is the right way forward and we are pursuing it. Provided we get the resources and the agreement with the relevant authorities, I hope we will achieve what you are proposing."
An unimpressed CampbellSavours said he did not think the DTp had ever "really put its back into this matter". The MPs were quizzing Bailey about a report by the National Audit Office on the DTp's regulation of heavy lorries (CM 17 October).
The Home Office told the National Audit Office that the effectiveness of lorry weight restrictions would be much improved if the DTp imposed compulsory weight checks on all lorries when they disembarked at British ports.
Pressed by MPs to give an assurance that the introduction of cabotage will not make the situation considerably worse, Channon said he is determined that the rules will be fair to British hauliers as well as to everyone else.
Bottomley says that the new weighbridge at M25 Junction 9 (the Leatherhead turn-off) check-weighed 61 lorries during its first fortnight's operation, of which 14 were found to be overweight.