Transport Wilhelmina
POLITICAL COMMENTARY AUBERON WAUGII
In a week when a team from the International Monetary Fund is visiting England to make sure that the Government does not mismanage the economy too grossly, Cabinet thoughts are bound to turn nervously to Barbara Castle's huge Transport Bill. By the time this article appears, the Bill will probably be stranded in committee somewhere around Clause 20 after fourteen sittings, with a further 149 clauses to come. The Conservatives, who are most anxious to avoid any suggestion of filibustering, have suggested a programme which would bring it out by the end of June. Recently Mr Wilson and Mr Silkin, who is still the Government Chief Whip, approached Mrs Castle and sug- gested that certain of the Bill's proposals should be dropped while others should be reintroduced in separate legislation. Apparently, she fell into a rage, and the two men retired with their tails between their legs. She is baying for the guillo- tine, but there are many excellent reasons why this present-day Madame Defarge should be denied her socialist thrills.
In the Cabinet, Mr Crosland, at the Board of Trade, is appalled by the certain consequences of adding to industrial costs and of dis- criminating against the development areas. Poor Mr Willie Ross receives the brunt of the complaints, since Scotland will be hardest hit of all; Mr Jenkins finds himself explaining to some hatchet-faced Swiss gnomes why his Govern- ment has decided that the best way for it to avoid any unfair advantage which might have accrued in export markets from devaluation is to increase all industrial costs wherever possible. And Mr Gunter finds at least three unions at his throat while government planning tries to throw men out of an efficient, well-paid in- dustry to protect one which is uncompetitive, overmanned and badly paid. Both Mr Callaghan and Mr Healey can be relied upon to join any campaign to squash Barbara, even if the merits of the case for doing it were not so obvious. They may recognise the need for a palliative over the budget period, but they see no reason why Mrs Castle's agony should not be pro- tracted. All in all, the Transport Bill is a boon to the junta, demonstrating for all the world to see how Mr Wilson's position is too weak for him to be able to avoid these expensive and dis- astrous sops to the left.
Far more than this, the Bill is a boon to the Tories. Since the last Companies Act made firms declare their political subscriptions Lord Car- rington has found his work cut out to raise his appeal target of £2 million. But no road haulier need feel shy of telling his shareholders that he has invested money in the campaign against the Transport Bill, which is designed to remove as much of his business as possible before national- ising it at a depressed price. One Scottish Tory NIP was handed last week a cheque for £500 towards party funds from a road haulier in his constituency who had never contributed a penny before. Even apart from increased con- tributions, the political advantages are obvious in such places as Scotland and other remote areas whose products will be priced off the roads.
To explain the full ramifications of this Bill, it would be necessary to write a book on the
subject. Its main purposes, however, are easily condensed: to get goods traffic off the roads, to provide business for the railways; to increase the powers of •the Minister of Transport, to advance the public sector of the economy, to improve road safety and finally (or so it is claimed) to raise revenue necessary for the acceptance of the roads programme. This last reason has been zealously advanced by Ministry of Transport apologists—as a minor factor, it is true—and I might as well register here and now that I don't believe a word of it. The main purpose of the Bill, which should never be lost from sight, is to promote the welfare of the railways.
The other proposals—those proposals which seem to be directed to other ends—can be dis- cussed briefly. One of them reduces the maxi- mum number of hours for which any one driver may drive a commercial vehicle to nine. Prima facie this seems reasonable enough, but Mr Walker estimates that it will cost the industry some £63 million, and argues that since the present regulations have remained in force for thirty years there can be no urgent need for change. To a socialist, of course, anything which has remained the same for thirty years is an affront to progress and requires emergency measures, but the Tory case against this Clause —Number 115—will rest upon its inopportune timing. The Confederation of British Industries puts the cost at £120 million.
The Government claims that the new taxes for lorries—through higher Road Fund licences and special charges on heavy loads, amounting in some cases to £15 a mile—will cost industry only f33 million, a figure the an accepts, although Mr Walker puts it at nearer £59 mil- lion; neither side can really know how much traffic, if any, will be diverted to the railways. or whether the railways will be able to deal with it if it is.
The basic problem confronting Mrs Castle was that the railways, even with a subsidy of £153 million in 1967, were not able to compete
in terms of cost, speed .or reliability with the roads. Her choice was between making the rail- ways more competitive or placing new burdens on road haulage to make it less so. She chose the second alternative out of a mixture of timidity and imponderable wrongheaded- ness. Perhaps aware of her own shortcomings, she has taken on some thirty young economists to advise at the Ministry. They follow her like ducklings behind the mother duck, holding up the traffic wherever she waddles and evoking gasps of admiration from sentimental old Englishmen who are still living in the world of 1964 when people pretended to take economists seriously. These economists are mostly of the glib, sub-marxist variety, familiar sights in any university and—until Barbara was appointed Minister of Transport—generally thought un- employable elsewhere. Between them, they pro- duced last Thursday one of the funniest docu- ments ever to emanate from an English ministry.
Since the railways, even with a £153 million subsidy, cannot compete with road transport, the argument runs, then somebody must be subsidising the roads. Plainly, it continues, heavy traffic causes worse wear and tear to the roads than private cars; is this distinction properly represented in the cost difference between road fund licences? Now, as we all know, road users pay in taxes something like three times the cost of maintaining and improving the roads—'never- theless it is of interest in eapfomic and financial terms to compare the total revenue contributed by road users with the total costs of providing the roads.' In order to prove that road trans- port does not pay its fair share—whereas, in fact, it subsidises not only the railways but old age pensions and everything else—the Ministry report on road track costs proceeds to cook figures blatantly under the very noses of its readers, inventing capital charges for public investment often made in Julius Caesar's time, and allowing unquantifiable considerations like loss of amenity from vehicle noise and fumes and loss inflicted on the community at large by accidents.'
The key to this extraordinary document lies in Mrs Castle's conviction that people are so fed up with congested, smelly roads that they will welcome anything which promises to relieve them, even if the sugar coating hides bitter socialist medicine inside. Mr Walker, who be- lieves that no amount of carefully reasoned argument in the intellectual weeklies will in- fluence the Government so much as a popular outcry, has devised a symbol to act as the people's hate-focus. Called 'Transport Bill,' it shows a figure in bowler hat and striped trousers with a handkerchief over its nose, spanner in hand, with the caption : 'It's your money he's after.' The clothes are thought to represent bureaucracy, although it looks suspiciously to me as if the Conservative party is trying to cash in on the people's traditional hatred of bosses.
Apart from this one lapse, Mr Walker has been conducting the campaign with a vigour and an ability which he no doubt hopes will be the making of him. One remembers Mr Heath's campaign against the Budget of 1965, rounded off with a party in Albany, ostensibly for those who had helped him fight against the proposed corporation tax and all the rest. Nearly everybody in the Conservative party was asked and many others besides— journalists, thinkers, poets—although there were a few interesting exceptions. I shall watch my postbag with interest in the weeks after the Transport Bill is enacted.
Previous page
