Minister against transport
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LET US jump back from the mid-1980s to the early 1970s for a "compare and contrast" exercise.
Fourteen years ago inland transport was in a state of mild shock. For the first time in over 50 years there was no Ministry of Transport. Past complaints at the antics of the vanished Ministry were forgotten when the industry saw the company it was now keeping in the new Department of the Environment. Not just housing, public works and local government, but ancient monuments, sport, royal palaces, sewage — even transport people discovered in the dry summer of 1976, drought.
Not only had they lost the Ministry of Transport; there was no longer a Minister of Transport. Instead, buried in the DoE, there was a Minister for Transport Industries. The last word was necessary because, incredibly, his responsibilities did not include roads!
The new ministerial title gave one trade association chairman a good line in an after-dinner speech. He suggested that many previous Ministers should have been called Ministers against Transport Industries!
The Minister concerned was John (now Lord) Peyton, who remained in office during the whole of Edward Heath's 197074 Government. He is probably best remembered for his flat refusal to accept the directive on lorry weights and dimensions which the original EEC Six had painfully hammered out over the 10 years before Britain joined.
But on the whole John Peyton's actions lived up to the title of the post he held. He was instinctively against Government intervention. Almost his first act was to announce the abandonment of Barbara Castle's quantity licensing plans to direct more freight on to rail.
Thomas Cook was privatised (though in those days it was called de-nationalised). Drivers' hours rules were relaxed, especially for bus and coach drivers. Mr Peyton fought hard for a long transitional period before Britain had to apply the EEC hours and tachograph rules. And he constantly sought greater freedom of movement for British international hauliers.
However, he emphatically did not see it as his job to shield the industry from harsh reality. He was the first Minister to make the industry face up to the need to reduce the environmental impact of lorries. Inevitably, he was not loved for this at the time. But today most people accept that this was necessary.
In today's ugly political terminology he was a "dry'', who certainly did not favour featherbedding transport operators. Their needs were subordinate to those of the consumer. But he realised that consumers are not well served by an operating industry in a poor state of health. So he tried to be even-handed between the two groups.
Today, for the first time in almost a quarter of a century, we have a real Transport Department covering all modes. A Secretary of State in the Cabinet is assisted by a Minister of State and two junior Ministers. All branches of transport should be well-satisfied.
Yet the reality is just the opposite. All are seething with discontent at their treatment by the Government. Before turning to road transport let us look at two other modes.
The General Council of British Shipping protests that the Government does nothing to match the protection given by almost every other country to its merchant navy. So the British fleet has shrunk almost to vanishing point.
Mr Ridley seems not to care. If all Britain's external trade were carried on foreign bottoms this would demonstrate to his complete satisfaction, that those bottoms were more competitive. The fact that the competition is rigged against British shipowners is not disputed. It is simply ignored.
A Government inquiry into British merchant shipping has been set up — but not by Mr Ridley. The Ministry of Defence is understandably worried, in the wake of the South Atlantic campaign, about our defence capability being crippled by a shortage of merchant ships. So it is looking into a problem which has been dismissed by the industry's sponsoring Minister.
Civil aviation policy is also in a mess, distorted by the privatisation of British Airways next month. Its enormous market share might enable a privatelyowned BA to crowd out other British airlines and thus reduce competition. The Civil Aviation Authority therefore recommended that some BA routes be transferred to British Caledonian and other independent airlines.
But this would reduce BA's profits and thus its selling price. So wider consumer choice through more competition went out of the window. BA is very pleased; the rest of the civil aviation is disgusted.
Even the normally docile Government watchdog committee appointed to look after airline passengers' interests has snarled at the decision. To infuriate both providers and users of transport requires a perverse form of genius. Mr Ridley clearly has this quality in abundance.
If this treatment is how the "glamorous" transport modes are treated, what hope is there for workaday road transport? The idea that competition is the solution to the problems of local road passenger transport is clearly absurd. At the same time as he demonstrates courage in defending his plans on public platforms Mr Ridley also demonstrates his ignorance of the real problems.
The passenger sector has one advantage over haulage. Most people — Mr Ridley clearly excepted — use buses from time to time; more than half the population has no choice. The public's dependence on hauliers is even greater, but because it is usually indirect it is less apparent.
So hauliers can expect little help from "their" Minister. It is hard to imagine Mr Ridley arguing with the Chancellor if Mr Lawson wants to double this year's £160 million environmental surcharge. Mr Ridley will probably imagine that this would make hauliers look at ways to become more efficient. He knows that he will be safe from the "student grant" type backbench revolt which humiliated Sir Keith Joseph just before Christmas.
Mr Ridley is said by those who work with him to be personally charming, but unwilling to listen to advice that he doe5 not want to hear. And he emphatically does not want tc hear about the real problems ol hauliers and busmen. Thi: deafness makes it likely that hE will be remembered as thE Minister against Transport In dustries. Sadly, he probabl won't care.