Mr. Fraser under pressure on Transport Policy
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NOT MUCH COMFORT FOR HIM FROM LORD HINTON
FROM OUR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
THE Transport Minister is being faced with a mounting demand to produce Labour's transport policy. The call from the Opposition parties is becoming strident. Even ex-Transport Minister Mr. Ernest Marples has joinedin the general criticism that Mr. Fraser appears to be twiddling his thumbs.
The spotlight has turned upon the Ministry because, in the space of about seven days. first the Geddes Committee and then the Prices and Incomes Board showed that reforms in road haulage are overdue.
But Mr. Fraser is hamstrung by his Ministerial colleagues' indecision over the issues involved. In the run-up to the General Election it became clear that Mr. Wilson realized the old re-nationalization policies were not going to work. But since then the Cabinet has gambled heavily on Lord Hinton and his committee On transport integration, who are due to report later this year—and the gamble inay not pay off.
Already ominous rumblings are being heard—and gleefully repeated by the Tories.--to the effect that Lord Hinton thinks that " integration " in terms of forcing goods from road to rail is just not going to work.
If anything, say the Conservatives, he is even more convinced than Lord Geddes. And, they add. the Government will not want to publish his verdict when it arrives.
Leading elements in the Conservative
Party are now considering a "publish Hinton" campaign in a major effort to forestall any attempt to sweep the report under the carpet. To add to the mystery, Mr. Fraser's cryptic remarks that the State sector of road haulage is quietly spreading its wings finds no supporting evidence in the annual report of the Transport Holding Company.
In 1964, the Company bought up three firms -Furness and Parker Ltd., together with their subsidiary Car Transport (Coventry) Ltd.; Westfield Transport Ltd.; and Gruff Fender (Swansea) Ltd. The first is in the car-carrying field, the second deals with the transport of hosiery manufacturing machines and the third is a removal business taken over he Pick fords. Now Pick fords have bought another firm—sec page 29.
Granted, this activity took place mostly during Conservative rule, and there is also reason to believe that the THC may have been more active during 1965. But 'obviously something stronger than the 1964 operations will be needed if Labour's hint of muscling-in on the lucrative private side is to be realized.
One idea which Mr. Marples was carefully nursing has still to germinate in the road haulage sector. The former Minister had already begun talks with the industry. to make sure that firms. With defe.etive lorries lost the services of those lorries for six months.
This would have been done bY restricting the carriers' licence so that a firm entitled to run, say, six lorries would only be able to run five for a period of six months if one were found defective. Mr. Marples would have enforced the system by stringent spot checks, thus confronting carriers with the continuous uncertainty of when their turn would come.
The ex-Minister is not very impressed with the annual testing scheme, maintaining that lorries belonging to the "floggers" will be spruced up for their fixed tests, then be allowed to go downhill again.
While the Tories are working up their private "Fraser Must Go" campaign, and the Liberals are becoming equally unhappy, Mr. Wilson is under no major pressures from his own party on the public-ownership-in-transport issue. and while this is so, it will be kept (with an occasional embarrassed kick) in the background.
But if the early forecasts of the Hinton report are true, the Prime. Minister may find a particularly unpleasant baby squalling in his lap next winter, and transsteel---will require some new political thinking if a State doctrine is to be imposed