WESTM NSTER HAUL
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The one thing about the law which everyone knows is that ignorance is no excuse. So, full marks to the Department of Transport for setting about producing a booklet to tell transport people what rules and regulations they have to observe as they go about their daily business.
"We are trying to put it in readable layman's language, so that operators and drivers are able to understand and find their way about it," Baroness Stedman promised Peers.
Lucky lorrymen! How their Lordships -and Members of Another Place — must envy them. What would they not cr for an occasional child's guide to the legislation they are sometimes called upon to deal with.
The fact that laws do not always turn out in practice to be exactly what was intended is another matter.
But back to that handbook ...
It was Tory spokesman Lord O'Hagan who first mentioned it, after wading through the Regulations which bring this country into line with European laws and allow us to ignore a few.
"Certainly I have never seen a Statutory Instrument which required a supp lementary note to explain what it meant which went on for several pages,he complained, and then hastened to add that he was not complaining because he found it most helpful.
But even at the back of that supplementary note there was a list of 21 dif ferent items of legislation on drivers' hours and records — "a real barbed wire entanglement."
Lord Lucas of Chilworth, as was only to be expected, was also in favour of a publication in layman's language. Most of the people affected by this lining-up with Europe were not serviced by large office staffs.
"We are probably dealing with an owner-driver who must make his own interpretation, and in a busy working day he can make mistakes."
Lady Stedman, who never seems floored by any legislation, admitted that the issues were highly complex in detail, and that the total result of making the best of British and European rules was extremely complicated.
Nevertheless, she added soothingly, from the point of view of the individual driver or operator, the effect of the regulations would be relatively straightforward.
Maybe — but that handbook is sure to be a best-seller!