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Exemption for express men?
Page 5
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THE DEPARTMENT of Transport is considering new exemptions in the drivers' hours regulations to allow express carriers to compete with the Post Office in the vital Christmas parcels trade.
Requests for the alterations in the regulations — to cover only the December Christmas period — have been made by both the Road Haulage Association and the Transport and General Workers Union.
Both see the Post Office as having a monopoly for the trade to the exclusion of members of the RHA express carriers group.
The problems lie in EEC regulation 543/69 which has no exemptions for the seasonal mail business for other than the national mail services of member states of the EEC.
A Department of Transport • spokesman told CM that the DTp saw no virtue in trying to solve the situation by hanging "further millstones around the neck of the Post Office" by bringing it within the scope of the regulation.
At present all national pos tal services get the same kind of exemption applied to the police and other services under Article Four of the regulation 543/69.
The Post Office gets the right to carry parcels under the Post Office Act, which classes them as mails, and the DTp feels that to include express carriers in the exempt group would be to lay themselves open to the need for new legislation.
And the only way of ending any unfair competition as the DTp sees the situation would be to bring the Post office within the scope of the rules for the full 12 months instead of 11 as at present.
Transport Minister William Rodgers is unlikely to want to allow any more exemptions to 543/69 than is absolutely. necessary. He already faces. having to report to the EEC in November on Britain's progress towards the implementation of the hours regulations.