Shopping spree
Page 38
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IN accordance with the usual practice those items in the Transport Bill which provide for national or local Government taxation and expenditure are printed in italics. The intenfion is to warn the House of Lords that it has no power to propose changes in such provisions. The fight against them must be brought to a conclusion in the House of Commons.
This applies to the new taxes on heavy vehicles and on abnormal loads. The risk that they may be accepted without proper discussion lends further support to the argument that the guillotine ought not to be used on a measure containing so many questionable points.
There are between 30 and 40 italicized passages. The road operator who examines them will have no difficulty in identifying himself as the victim of the new taxation and other transport interests as the beneficiaries of the expenditure. He will find several financial items for which italics are not used. This is the case in particular with the heavy fines liberally sprinkled throughout those parts of the Bill dealing with road transport operation.
Not a hint
Not every item of expense is specific. For example, there are several references to the payment of fees and the operator is left to guess how much he will be charged. As may be expected there is no hint of the heavy and possibly crippling cost to operators, trade and industry, and the public of the plans for quantity licensing, drivers' hours and many points in the new system of operators' licences.
The imagination unkindly stimulated in this way is justified in responding vigorously and in painting as sombre a picture as possible. A good deal of work has already been done on the subject and the Minister of Transport may not find it easy to bring light into the prevailing financial gloom.
Naturally her own position is covered. Clause 166 (one of the shortest in the Bill and printed entirely in italics) assures her and any other Minister concerned that Parliament will pay all their expenses arising from the legislation and "any increase attributable to any of the provisions of this Act in the sums so payable under any other Act". There is food for reflection here for the haulier who may find himself put out of business by the Bill without compensation.
Armed with a blank cheque Mrs. Castle has certainly not stinted on her spending spree. Nor apparently has she been deterred by the large economy cuts in Government expenditure—including expenditure on the roads—and the plans for new taxes, some of which may directly affect road operators. There seems no chance at the moment that the bill will be withdrawn or even amended as a reaction to the situation following devaluation.
One common point
The Minister has filled her shopping basket with notions and nostrums gathered over a wide field. Some of the ideas may be her own, others come from her advisers, some from other countries. Her constant emphasis on a national, forward-looking plan may be an attempt to dispel the uneasy feeling that after all the various pieces in the jigsaw do not fit very well together. The one point each has in common with the others is that it will mean extra expense to one or more sections of the community.
Some of the financial provisions are reasonable. The Bill will write off 1,280m of capital debt incurred by the railways and the Waterways Board. The money has been spent in any case and there is no prospect of getting it back. To insist on interest payments would merely mean writing them off also in due course. Grants and subsidies may also be necessary for certain transport services which could not run without them.
Even at this early point the argument may begin. It will be said that if the public wants a service it should be prepared to pay the proper price for it and that efficiency and subsidy do not mix.
Even where a time limit is placed on a subsidy, as in the case of the freight sundries section of the Freight Corporation, operators suspect that the expected ultimate solvency will be at their expense and will be based on traffic which they will no longer be permitted to carry.
The costs with which they are more directly concerned might come to a staggering total if they could be computed precisely. The new "wear and tear" tax on vehicles weighing more than 3 tons unladen will bring in an annual amount variously estimated as between £35m and £40m.
The effect of the abnormal loads charge is more difficult to calculate. The Ministry of Transport may have most of the necessary information and Mrs. Castle has given her own estimate of £3m. The general opinion is that this is conservative and that by the time the Bill becomes law the two taxes in aggregate will be costing the industry something in excess of £50m a year.
On more debatable ground the Confedera tion of British Industry has attempted to cost the effect of the proposed changes in the maximum permitted drivers' hours. The figure of £100m is at least Mice as much as the revenue expected from the new taxes.
Evidently the CBI has little confidence that drivers will be able or willing to increase productivity so that the same amount of work as before can be done in the smaller period of time available or that operators will be able to resist the demand that the level of wages should remain the same.
, It is for the Minister after the Act has been passed to determine when the new drivers' hours should take effect. Her White Paper on the transport of freight states that "increased productivity will be the key factor and evidence of real progress towards this objective by both sides of the industry will be essential before the enabling powers are used to bring the new law into effect". The warning from the CBI is not likely to be forgotten.
Even more problematical is the attempt to assess the cost of such proposals as quantity licensing. The Minister has calculated that by the early 1970s some 4,500m ton-miles of traffic now moving by road could go by rail. This could mean a loss of perhaps £50m by the unfortunate operators: Unknown quantities include their success in obtaining special authorizations and alternatively the extent to which they avoid quantity licensing by switching to vehicles with a plated weight of 16 tons or less.
In the latter event the cost of operation would be likely to go up because the most suitable vehicle is not being used for the traffic. The unfortunate customer would have to pay more or transfer the traffic to rail. As he would not have chosen this means of transport in the first case it is reasonable to assume that he will be worse served than he is at present. Whether this is due to the rate or to the quality of service the net result must be a financial loss.
Other changes which the Bill will bring about can be shown to have a similar effect. The fact that precision is seldom or never possible should not be allowed to dampen down the opposition.
Janus