Mulley alerts the '100 companies'
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The Minister for Transport, Mr Fred Mulley, will shortly be writing "at the highest level" to 100 of the largest British companies asking for their cooperation in an exercise designed to see how much of their traffic could be switched to rail. Announcing this at the Freight Transport Association annual dinner on Monday, Mr Mulley said he was taking up the FTA suggestion of such an exercise, and he hoped other companies would volunteer to take part. It was necessary to take all practicable measures to increase the volume of goods carried by rail rather than road.
The Government was committed to developing the system of national lorry routes and would soon be issuing a consultation paper and the Minister hoped that environmental groups would realize that some road expenditure was necessary if the lorry nuisance was to be minimized.
In his judgment there was no chance of getting the EEC vehicle size and weight proposals through the Commons and he was in any case a supporter of last year's Commons motion that "this house is against bigger and heavier lorries".
On Europe, Mr Mulley -said that while transport was not specifically part of the new Government's renegotiation of EEC terms, it was of considerable relevance to transport that, during th.e negotiations, the UK would continue to participate in the work of the Community "and act in accordance with Community procedures — subject only to not proceeding with further processes on integration if these seem likely to prejudge the
outcome of the negotiations".