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THE SHORTAGE of international road haulage permits has not caused any frustration of British exports. The House of Lords Select Committee on the European Communities was told this recently by Giles Hopkinson, the Department of Transport's Freight Under Secretary.
The committee, inquiring into international road haulage quotas, was hearing oral evidence from DTp witnesses just before Easter.
Mr Hopkinson told chairman Lord Kings Norton that the DTp agreed with the EEC Commission's recent description of road haulage capacity controls as' "costly, cumbersome and economically inefficient".
Last February Transport Secretary David Howell had once again urged his fellow EEC Transport Ministers to move towards a more liberal system, and pressure for this would continue.
But there was no evidence that exports were being frustrated by a shortage of permits for British hauliers, since foreign hauliers' vehicles took any surplus.
Mr Hopkinson agreed with Lord Kearton that this probably imposed additional costs, at least partly because quotas distorted decision-making.
However, he declined to try to estimate these extra costs. Because the thousands of decisions were taken by individual freight forwarders, no comprehensive information was available centrally, he said.
The committee also queried the legality of quota restrictions under the Treaty of Rome, supposed to allow freedom of movement for people and goods between EEC countries.
The DTp witnesses said that free movement was certainly the aim of the Treaty. There had been a number of steps towards that objective, though the Government did not think that progress had been fast enough. The most important step forward was the system of Community permits, which allow their holders to carry out international haulage anywhere in the EEC.
The UK would like to see the number of these permits expanded much more rapidly than had been the case in recent years.
The committee was also interested in the method by which permits are distributed between hauliers, and seemed surprised to learn that the DTp does not maintain a waiting list,