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Janus comments
Page 74
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Battery of learned clerks
SPECIAL authorizations are concerned with traffic and appeals should therefore go to the Transport Tribunal. The Minister of Transport is the proper person to hear appeals arising from applications for operators' licences because the point at issue is one of road safety.
This was the agument used to explain the different routes for appeals proposed in the original Transport Bill. It was difficult to understand let alone to justify and the Minister later abandoned it without much protest. The Tribunal is now to hear appeals over the whole field of licensing including the licensing of transport managers. The right remains of a further appeal to the Court of Appeal or to the Court of Session.
Visitors to Watergate House will still notice some changes apart from the fact that an entirely new piece of legislation will be presented to be measured for its case law. At present the road haulage appeals division of the Tribunal is made up of the president and two members, one experienced in "transport business" and the other in "commercial affairs". The president may also appoint members from a "special panel" nominated by the Lord Chancellor, the Secretary of State and the Minister.
Wider qualifications
Wider qualifications will now be required. The first member must have experience in either transport business or commercial affairs and the second in "financial matters or economics". In addition to members of the special panel the Tribunal may be assisted by an assessor drawn from yet another panel.
Presumably this battery of learned clerks will be required principally for appeals arising from requests for special authorizations. It would not be surprising if the legislators envisaged some difficulty in reaching sensible decisions on the subject. The appellant, particularly if the traffic in dispute happens to be his own, will need a good deal of convincing before he decides to accept defeat at that stage and not take the case to a higher court.
He will regard it as a self-evident truth that if he decides to send his goods by road, whether by a haulier or on his own vehicles, carriage by any other form of transport would be less advantageous to him. If pressed he would no doubt say that he had taken into account speed, reliability, cost and "such other matters relevant to" his needs.
Third panel
The suggestion that somebody else is a better judge of this can hardly find favour even if it were true, which seems on the face of it unlikely. Apparently the Government realizes that it may need more than a solitary Licensing Authority to satisfy the average trader on this point. There is to be a third panel, this time to be appointed only by the Minister, from which the Licensing Authority may draw an assessor to help him.
To complete the tale a fourth panel will conceal yet more assessors appointed by the Minister to guide a Licensing Authority in deciding whether the applicant for an oper ator's licence has sufficient financial resources. On other points concerned with operators' licences and presumably with transport managers' licences the Licensing Authority is on his own.
So many experts
With so many experts on the bench or waiting in the wings to see fair play on quantity licensing, it may seem strange that the railways themselves as well as the Minister make light of the gloomy forebodings among trade and industry. The Stateowned undertakings—for whose benefit after all the whole performance is being staged —may have no wish to offend good customers and spoil their own reputation for the sake of a few tons of traffic. But the machinery which the Act is to set in motion may prove stronger than the faint heart • objectors.
In the meantime the present Licensing system continues to function as if no change were imminent. The Tribunal was kept busy until it paused for the customary summer recess and the indications are that it will start again at the same pace as soon as it returns.
One may well wonder at what stage the present system will cease as an efficient functioning machine. The intention is that it will run in parallel with quality licensing and that the remnants will remain in force until quantity licensing is iatroduced. As the Bill stands at present this will not happen until 1972 at the earliest but the expectation is that the House of Commons will reverse this decision of the Lords and once again leave it to the Minister to name the appointed day.
Extended hoNday
If events follow this course the Govern*ment might well suppose that the system of A-, Band C-licensing would merely tick over until the time that it was quietly laid to rest. The main if not the only activity in the traffic courts would be the periodical renewal of a licence if it expired before the appropriate stage of the new system had taken effect. The Tribunal would have an extended holiday.
Events may not work out in this way. There are sonic interesting hints in the White Paper on freight transport published in November last which as far as one can tell remain valid. "The past record of most existing operators," said the White Paper, "will be such that they can be granted a licence with the minimum of investigation." On the other hand "all new entrants to the industry will have to undergo close scrutiny."
The intention is plain and commendable. There must be no hiatus in the service given by the road transport industry. With few exceptions an operator already in business will be granted an operator's licence in terms at least wide enough to enable him to continue without a break. If the work requires a special authorization he will be entitled to continue until at the very worst his application is finally refused.
In the natural course of events he may wish to expand his fleet before the new system comes into effect. There will also be newcomers with customers to support their claim for an Aor B-licence. It is possible to imagine also that many operators or prospective operators who would normally be in no hurry for a variation or a new licence would see the value of applying immediately. Success will give them an intangible but important privilege under the new dispensation.
From the opposite point of view the same considerations may prompt other operators including the railways to lodge objections. It could happen that the traffic courts for a brief period had more applications to cope with than at any time in their history and this last flare-up of a dying system would equally involve the Tribunal.
Sudden rush
A sudden rush of appeals might produce a backlog of work for the Tribunal. It is intriguing to imagine that it would still be dealing with cases arising from the old licensing system long after it had settled down to the more permanent business of administering the new system and long after most members of the public had forgotten that A-, B-and C-licences had ever existed.
Examiners at testing stations have been hungry for experience and have invited operators to submit vehicles for a free test in advance of the official scheme. Perhaps the numerous panels now to be set up under the Bill could be fleshed in the same way on the loose ends of the licensing system that soon will be no more.
With so formidable a battery of experts to judge cases under the new system it may be thought that only appellants with important points of principle to settle would dare to put in an appearance. This might be a welcome change. Over the last few months a large proportion of the appeals which the Tribunal has been called upon to decide have seemed of very small moment.
In its judgments the Tribunal has in no way departed from its normal courteous and unruffled style. It has been the triumph of the legal mind over the lack of legal matter. The patient care with which the Tribunal has analysed the issues has only served to show up more clearly than ever that the issues themselves are trivial.