TRANSPORT IN THE DARK I T is some measure of the
confusion into which official transport policy has been allowed to fall that the Commons on Wednesday were less concerned with obtaining further details about the Government's de-nationalisation policy than with hearing from Mr. Herbert Morrison about the exact terms on which the Socialists would re-acquire the road haulage industry when they came to power again. Yet there was need enough for a fuller definition of Government trans- port policy. The White Paper which was supposed to be the subject of Wednesday's debate certainly did not answer all, or .even most, of the questions that can properly be asked. The crucial issue of the right relationship between road and rail was if anything rendered more confused by it. Neither this knot nor, any of the others that handicap transport was -untied by Mr. Herbert Morrison's glib insistence on an alleged need to resume what he referred to as " the policy of co-ordination and integration." If anyone knows exactly what that phrase means he certainly ought to have a chance of defining it. There is little evidence that anyone within the nationalised transport industry knows, or that Mr. Morrison himself knows. And there is no evidence that anyone any- where knows how to put such a theory into efficient practice.
The fact is that the politicians are milling about in the dark where transport questions are concerned. And that is one good reason for trying to wrest the question away from them, at least for a few months. There is a crying need for a new and objective enquiry into the British transport industry and its problems. Such an enquiry should have been held before the industry was nationalised. But the Socialists preferred to charge blindly ahead. Their interference, and the new prob- lems it set up, made an enquiry more necessary than ever. But the present Government have entangled themselves in the transport question, and given it priority among the denationali- sation measures, almost by accident and certainly for reasons which are more a matter of expediency than of rational policy. Consequently we are to have a de-nationalisation Bill before the end of July. With luck. it will do no harm. But with cool and unhurried judgement such a Bill, introduced perhaps a year or so from now, could be reasonably expected to do much good.
