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Even 1 1-hour day may be cut, warns Minister
Page 52
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• An eventual reduction in the 11-hour working day for drivers envisaged in the Transport Bill has been forecast by Mr. Richard Marsh.
Explaining the expected Government rethinking on the cuts in working hours, the Minister told MPs: "I propose to take powers to reduce the 11-hour basic requirement, so that at a later date it will be possible to reduce the 11-hour working day itself."
Mr. Marsh told the Standing Committee on the Bill that the Government wanted to get to the nine-hour limit on driving—the general limit proposed on the Continent—as quickly as possible.
But as a first stage, and to ensure an early reduction, it was intended that the driving limit should be 10 hours, with a further reduction to nine hours later.
Similarly, reducing the working day for lorry drivers from the present limit of 14 hours to 11 in one step would take somewhat longer if the industry was able to absorb the change. It was intended as a first stage, as an interim measure, to allow the working day for these drivers to spread over 12+ hours instead of 14 hours, so long as they were not actually on duty for more than 11 hours during that time.
An exact date for the later reductions could not be fixed, explained Mr. Marsh, because it was dependent on the progress of productivity deals and negotiations for the first stage.
One then wanted to move further in properly controlled phases. It would depend on how rapidly the parties could be joined together in producing agreements which would enable these first stages to be implemented. His Ministry would be delighted to give any assistance it could to the two parties.
Mr. Marsh pointed out that the Bill already provided for the working day of stage bus drivers to spread over 12+ hours, so long as they were not on duty for more than 11 hours, and said the Government would be prepared to extend this temporarily to other p.s.v. drivers as well.
At the second stage, these 12+ hours arrangements would cease except in the special case of stage bus operations, where there was the particular problem of carrying peak traffic at both ends of the day.
Bus operators had told of the difficulties which the statutory rest-day once a week would cause, went on the Minister—and there seemed to be some justification for this and doubts among the men themselves—in keeping essential bus services going all through the week.
Because of staff shortages, many stage bus drivers habitually forewent their rest days—in his point of view that state of affairs could not be tolerated. It had to be corrected. One also had to recognize the choice either of waiting a long time before doing anything or of trying to get something done as quickly as possible.
Therefore the Government accepted that it should be dealt with in two stages in order to avoid unacceptable cuts in these essential services. The proposal was that from next spring one day's rest a week would be required except in the case of drivers who worked on stage services. For a limited period they would be required to rest for one day in a fortnight.
Mr. Marsh said that where all these proposals could not be covered by the existing powers in the Bill amendments would be tabled on Report —the next stage of the measure, when it goes back to the whole Commons.
In a general review of Government thinking on this topic, Mr. Marsh said they were faced with having to do things which should have been done a long time ago. It was impossible to justify the present regulations relating to drivers' hours, and the Government intended to implement this part of the Bill as rapidly as possible. He had no doubt that the provisions could be implemented much more quickly than January 197I—a tentative date put forward by the Tories purely as a basis for discussion of this section of the Bill.
Welcoming the announcement on behalf of the Tories, Mr. David Webster warned that there would have to be a complete rescheduling of nearly all the C vehicles.
He would urge less haste and more efficient speed where the two-stage period was concerned. When there was full implementation of these regulations and if the Minister was going to keep„ to the complete letter of the law, it would be very dangerous to the whole of the industry to rush things through too quickly.
Mr. Leslie Huckfield (Labour, Nuneaton) said something had to be done very quickly. He could quote experiences of drivers who, at the appropriate time of year, thought nothing of driving for five days non-stop. He could quote industries where the normal accepted practice was to drive for 120 hours a week. To keep awake when they pulled into another town the drivers went to the local baths and walked around in the water as a form of refreshment, exercise and method of keeping awake.
If Members had seen some of the men queueing up by Tower Hill and at docks all over the country, trying to keep awake, with alarm clocks in their vehicles to wake them up when the dock gates opened, he was sure they would agree with him that something had to be done quickly.
Mr. Huckfield questioned the time-tabling of the introduction of new hours for drivers. No matter what system was chosen, it would be a great problem to enforce them.
Earlier, the Shadow Transport Minister, Mr. Peter Walker spoke of drivers disturbed at the considerable financial problems they saw themselves faced with. A number of action groups, which he fully supported in their many activities against the Bill, were endeavouring to organize industrial action against it, and were urging a one-day strike in protest.
No matter how strongly they felt, he urged them to reconsider the position. It would be wrong to have industrial action against this legislation.
The discussion on drivers' hours came after the Committee had agreed the clauses dealing with the regulation of the carriage of goods by road—and had thrown out those dealing with
special charges, a step the Chancellor had forecast in his Budget speech.
One change successfully introduced by the Government did away with the £100 fine and four months' imprisonment for the falsification of consignment notes and records. Instead a maximum fine of £200 was inserted in the Bill.
Explaining why the change was wanted, Mr. Neil Carmichael, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry, said that a heavier monetary penalty was a stronger deterrent than four months' imprisonment. In any case, short sentences not exceeding six months in many cases might be suspended for up to two years.
All this applied to summary conviction—with conviction on indictment the two years' imprisonment was retained.
Mr. Stephen Swingler, the Minister of State, introduced a new clause in place of the section enabling holding companies to hold licences and special authorizations on behalf of their subsidiaries.
The change allows the Minister to deal with this problem by regulation and by getting agreement with the interests concerned, said Mr. Swingler. He gave an assurance that the Department was determined to hammer this out with the interests concerned, to produce regulations which would deal with all the points, some of which were extremely complex. This would include the proper definition of the holding company.
Waiting time will have to be included within the hours limits as it was now under the 1960 Act, Mr. Swingler emphasized this week. But Mr. Marsh later explained that waiting and loading time was excluded from driving time.
The Minister's announcement last week about the gradual reduction in hours did not satisfy Mr. Bessell who said that the proposals in the Bill would, in the long run, be detrimental to many aspects of industry. He moved an amendment to increase the permitted driving hours from 9 to 10, and quoted many organizations which had, he said, expressed alarm about the Bill's proposals.
One fear was that in many cases drivers would be tempted to ignore speed limits, in order to make their journeys within the prescribed 10 hours under the temporary adjustment and later the 9 hours.
Resisting the amendment—which was rejected by 16 votes to 13—Mr. Marsh said that within the Bill there should be power to make regulations for a further reduction—which had to be made in the light of the experience gained on the first stage.
• *
The sitting on the Transport Bill on Thursday of last week broke all Parliamentary records when the Committee sat for the 37th time. The previous record for a number of sittings of a Standing Committee was 36 sittings on the 1947 Gas Bill and the 194849 Iron and Steel Bill.
The record as far as the number of columns of Hansard taken up by the Committee stage of the Bill had previously been held by the 1966 Iron and Steel Bill with 2,590 columns. Already more than 2,800 columns of Hansard have been taken up by the Committee stage of the Transport Bill.
More than 2,400 amendments have been moved to the Bill.
Fuel tax plea
• Among amendments to the Finance Bill tabled this week by the Conservatives is a proposal to exempt all goods vehicles from the additional fuel duty imposed by the Budget when the tax rose by 4d a gallon. The suggestion is that pre-Budgetprice vouchers, stamped with the registration number of the vehicle and endorsed by a magistrate or local authority official, should be made available at Post Offices.