HC Deb 09 June 1937 vol 324 cc1879-89

9.16 p.m.

Colonel Sandeman Allen

I beg to move, in page 6, line 26, to leave out from "description," to the end of the Sub-section, and to insert: unless goods or burden are ordinarily carried on or in the vehicle without such receptacle being placed on or in the vehicle As I understand it, this Clause has been inserted in order to reverse a judgment given by the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh. The position appears to be that, if what is known as a container is put on a lorry, under this Clause the amount paid in licence will be considerably increased. I have taken at random for the purpose of illustration the case of a lorry weighing, say, 4 tons 5 cwts., which would pay a £70 tax. If a container weighing 1 ton 19 cwt. were put on to the lorry bringing the total weight up to 6 tons 4 cwt., the tax would be £110 instead of £70. If that lorry did the same journey on two consecutive days one might easily get this position, that on the first day, if the container was lowered on to the lorry already loaded, the tax liability of the lorry would not exceed £70. The next day, doing precisely the same journey, if an empty container was lowered on to the lorry and then loaded, the tax liability would be £110 What is going to be the position of a haulier who never uses a container himself but hires his vehicle out to someone who owns his own container?

As this Clause stands, it is going to make an enormous difference to the hauliers in ports, particularly on Merseyside. The use of these containers has grown and has facilitated the movement of various commodities in Liverpool in the last few years. Very often a container is put on to cart meat or fruit from a ship to stores or shops or to a railhead, or from the railhead to stores or shops. Another type that is used with the same lorry is a tank type of container to carry oils or other liquids. It is only occasionally used, possibly once a month, sometimes less frequently than that. I can give particulars of the work of one lorry in the Liverpool district, owned by a haulier who worked during the fortnight from 18th May to 1st June—six days without a container with loads of rice, cotton, soap and barrels of oil, fours days with a container with loads of meat, one day partly with a container with a load of meat and partly without a container with a load of cotton, and on two days the lorry was not in use at all.

I should like to ask what would be the position of the Traffic Commissioners with regard to the registered unladen weight. It is surely going to make a considerable difference if the weight for taxation purposes is one and for the Traffic Commissioners another. I hope my hon. Friend will be able to accept the Amendment but, if he cannot, will he receive a deputation of those who really know the difficulties of this business and learn something about it before Report? If he does not like the wording of the Amendment, there are others on the Paper. I am very accommodating. If he will give me the jam I will not quarrel about the pot, or shall I say the container? But I trust he will be able to give some assurance to this very valuable trade.

9.23 p.m.

Mr. White

This Clause is arousing very considerable apprehension in the minds of users of vehicles of this kind, and it is clear that many administrative difficulties, which on the face of it appear to be almost insoluble, will be raised. I understand from reading the Clause that containers, such as bakers' trays and things of that kind, will not be included in its operation, but for the life of me I cannot see why, if it includes some other type of container, every other form of article used for the transport of goods should not be included. I have received a number of communications on the point. If my hon. Friend cannot accept the Amendment in this form, I hope he will do something to remove the anxiety in the minds of many people who have to deal with this difficulty every day of their lives.

9.24 p.m.

Sir J. Lamb

My hon. and gallant Friend dealt very largely with the question as it affects port and dock traffic, but it is not confined to that by any means. It affects a very large amount of traffic in other directions, particularly rural traffic. On market days these lorries are used for the purpose of carrying stock for farmers. I have particulars of a case of a 2½ ton lorry. The present tax is £30 and a speed of 30 miles an hour is permitted. But if this lorry is fitted with a rack for loading it may bring it up to about 3¼ tons and then the tax would be £60 a year and the speed would be reduced to 20 miles an hour. These are considerations which would mean that a man who has previously been carrying stock one day or two days in a fortnight would say, "It does not pay me to cater for that class of traffic now." Agriculturists will be deprived of the service of these lorries, because many agriculturists are not in a position to pay for a lorry of their own and have to hire one. The Minister, as a motorist, will have on the roads livestock, which all of us say must be removed from the roads because it is a danger to the motorist. But if the agriculturist cannot obtain the service of the lorries he will be forced to put his stock on the roads again. That is a point which the Minister should take into consideration.

But in addition to agricultural traffic there is a large inland industrial traffic which will be affected very much. I have particulars of another man in my neighbourhood who has six vehicles, all of which are under 2½ tons in weight, and there is one particular engineering firm for whose traffic this man caters. A portion of that hire work is for material which is put into a container, and for 300 miles, the average journey, the goods are carried in a container, which is filled at the works and loaded on the lorry at the works. You may say that under this he will not be liable because it is a container which is loaded at the works, but if he calls on his way and distributes part of the load from the container or if he gets to the other end and unloads the container without taking it off the lorry, he will be liable. The Bill says: If any goods or burdens are loaded into, carried in and unloaded from the receptacle without the receptacle being removed from the vehicle, then he becomes liable. Here again is the case of a man who is doing for this firm a large amount of haulage. He does altogether an average of 12,000 miles a fortnight. Three hundred miles is done in the container. Is he to say that he must not continue to take this container traffic, because of the increased expenditure it will place on him? This work is done for the same firm and he will probably say, "I must not refuse to carry this particular class of goods, because if I do, I shall probably lose all the other traffic also." There are implications which will be very hard on many of the hauliers, both in rural areas and in industrial districts, and I hope that my hon. Friend will see that this matter is so important that he will give us this Amendment.

9.30 p.m.

Sir Murdoch Macdonald

May I also ask the Chancellor to consider the terms of the Amendment. I do so to reinforce the arguments which have already been put before him. I do so more particularly on account of the sheep stock owners in Scotland. The small owners of these lorries who convert them to carry sheep stock are made liable to a very considerable extra tax. It so happens that sheep stock has been going through very difficult times, and one of the reasons was the difficulty of transport from the hill regions to the lowland farms in the autumn and winter seasons and back again in the spring. Railway transport particularly in Scotland, became very heavy owing to increased rates, and sheep were very unremunerative. The advent of the motor-car and these floats and containers made it possible to transport sheep in reasonable condition without making them travel over vast lengths of roads, where, indeed, they are a nuisance to everybody concerned. It is a great difficulty in motoring along the public roads when one meets livestock, and particularly sheep. By this Clause as it is at present the Minister will be doing an injustice to a trade which requires all the help which it can possibly get at the present moment, and I hope that he will favourably consider what has been suggested.

9. 33 P.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Captain Austin Hudson)

The taxation of motor vehicles is always a difficult matter and also somewhat complicated I think that there is scarcely ever a Finance Bill before this House in which at least one of the Clauses does not deal with this subject. I can say that we certainly do not wish to be in any way unfair to anybody, but I want to explain to the Committee what is the object of this Clause. It is to clear up a very ambiguous position. The position at present is that these vehicles with removable bodies are taxed in some parts of the country in one way and in other parts in another way. My hon. Friend who moved the Amendment mentioned a case in Scotland, but there have been other cases in England in which a completely different decision has been given. It must be obvious to the Committee that we must endeavour to clear up a position of that kind. If you have a position like that you may have an unfair position in which you-get someone running a vehicle with: a removable body and being taxed at a low rate, never removing that body, and you get somebody in competition with him with a fixed body, doing exactly the same work and taxed on a different and a higher scale. The whole Committee will agree with me that you must endeavour to get a proper, fair and uniform scale.

The trouble about this Amendment is that it leaves the position just as doubtful as it is now. For instance, who is to decide whether goods are ordinarily carried with the container or not? The Clause says that if the removable body is always removed, the Clause does not apply and the weight of the vehicle for taxation purposes is calculated under the Road Traffic Act, 1930, Section 26, on the lower rate. If the removable body is never removed, the Clause applies and the unladen weight includes the container. If it is sometimes removed and sometimes not removed, the Clause also applies, and I think that that is the case with which most of the hon. Members who have spoken have dealt. That container is included in the unladen weight of the vehicle. The intentions of Parliament in this matter are, I think, comparatively clear. If we look at the Road Traffic Act, 1930, Section 26, which is the relevant Section dealing with this matter of unladen weight, we find these words: … the weight unladen of any vehicle shall be taken to be the weight of the vehicle inclusive of the body and all parts (the heavier being taken where alternative bodies or parts are used) which are necessary to or ordinarily used with the vehicle when working on a road. Again, if we turn to Section 14 of the Finance Act, 1922, which is applicable to it, we find in Sub-section (1)—this is a little longer than the last quotation but it is important as showing what Parliament intended in this matter: Where a licence has been taken out for a mechanically-propelled vehicle at any rate under the Second Schedule to the Finance Act, 1920, and the vehicle is at any time, while such licence is in force, used in an altered condition or in a manner or for a purpose which brings it within, or which if it was used solely in that condition or in that manner or for that purpose would bring it within, a class or description of vehicle to which a higher rate of duty is applicable under the said schedule, duty at such higher rate shall become chargeable in respect of the licence for the vehicle. Therefore, it must be apparent to the Committee that it was the intention Of.the Parliament that, where alternative bodies are concerned, the heavier body shall be the one under which the vehicle itself shall be charged. My hon. and gallant Friend who moved the Amendment, and I think my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir J. Lamb), dealt with the question of the speed limit. They seemed to think that because of this Clause there should be an alteration as regards the speed limit at which the vehicle should go. I can reassure them on that point. This Clause has been specially worded so that it applies only for the purposes of taxation, and the passage of the Clause will have no effect whatsoever on the question of what speed limit provision the vehicle comes under. Another hon. Member raised the question as to whether it would be necessary to make application to the Traffic Commissioners for extra tonnage and I think that I can allay his apprehension on that matter. There is no obligation on any licensee either to apply for increased tonnage or even to notify the licensing authority if the unladen weight of the authorised vehicle is increased during the currency of the licence.

For these reasons the Amendment would defeat the whole object of the Clause, and therefore I am afraid that I could not accept it to-night. On the other hand the hon. and gallant Member who moved the Amendment has asked me to look further into this matter and also to receive a deputation to see whether the points that hon. Members have raised can be met. I am perfectly prepared to meet a deputation and consider what has been said. I think that the Committee will see that we are endeavouring to clear up an unsatisfactory state of affairs, to carry out what has clearly in the past been what Parliament has laid down. For these reasons, while I cannot accept the Amendment I am prepared to look further into the matter and to talk with my hon. Friends on this matter, in an effort to make it perfectly certain that there is no unfairness to any particular class of vehicle or owner.

9.41 p.m.

Captain Strickland

I am sure that the goods hauliers of the country will hear with great satisfaction that the Ministry of Transport are prepared to receive a deputation on this very important point. I could not help but think, when the Parliamentary Secretary was speaking just now and making out his case, how very like the whole history of transport the decision of the Government is on this particular point. They want to clear up an ambiguous position. The only way to clear up the ambiguous position is by putting a further weight on to road transport. It never seems to strike them that the great help that they can give in clearing up these ambiguous points might sometimes be settled on the side of road transport itself. Let us see what this ambiguous point actually is. All Members of the Committee know exactly what a container is. A container is no necessary part of a haulage vehicle. It is the container or package which' holds the contents for a journey. These contents may be in loose form, in cases, or packages or they may be inside a container. They may take the form of a certain number of sheep or cattle driven in between wooden slats fixed on the side of a wagon, or it may be a complete float put on top of the haulier's wagon.

The point we emphasise, and the one which my hon. and gallant Friend has emphasised so well, is the position of the small haulier who does not ordinarily use a cover for the goods that he carries. His is the ordinary light 2½-ton platform lorry, and very often when he has to carry a container, the container does not belong to him at all. He goes for a load to some merchant who packs his goods inside his own container. The container is loaded on to the lorry and the haulier takes the load. When he once takes that load the 2½-ton lorry becomes a heavier vehicle in consequence, and he has to pay the higher tax although he may never again use the lorry for taking a container. He may lose the particular job. But as far as the currency of the period of the licence is concerned, the small haulier has to pay for the full licence as though he had the heavier vehicle with the container.

Let me take the case in point of the haulier who has containers for the specialised jobs for which they are necessary. He has to have four or five lorries, perhaps more. Any one of these lorries may be used to take the container at any time. He may only use one, but in order to be covered, should the one that was licensed be away from the depot at the time, he has to pay the additional tax on the whole of his fleet because any one. of the vehicles might be called upon to take the container. The Clause says that provided the container is lifted from the vehicle during the course of the journey —I want the Committee to note this carefully—he need not pay the tax. That is a most extraordinary point of view. It means that if the haulier wants to evade the tax he can run his lorry into his yard, get the crane going, lift off the container, go on his journey and he would not have to pay the extra licence for his vehicle in use. The road haulier does not want that sort of thing. He wants to know the job that is ahead of him, what his liabilities are, and does not want to have to go in for tax evasion or anything of that sort.

The point that arises is this, that if a job of furniture removing has to be done and it is a small man's job, the removal of a workman's furniture which does not require a big furniture van, the haulier is called in, he fixes his container on to his lorry, loads the furniture, takes it to the new home, and unloads it. Then he has to pay the additional tax for the job, which may have entailed a journey of one or two miles. What happens in the case of a railway? Suppose it is a railway company that does the job. In that case the railway company has not to pay the additional tax. It is only the road haulier who has to pay the tax. The railway company can send their container wagon on exactly the same conditions to the same job. They can send the wagon with its container five miles out into the country, load up the furniture, take it to the station, crane the container off the wagon on to a railway truck, and complete the journey by rail. At the other end they can load it on to another lorry and take it 20 or 30 miles, and they have not to pay anything extra in the way of tax for the job, because they have taken the container off the lorry. I submit that such a thing is going beyond the endurance of a decent man engaged in earning a decent living, and the time has come when we must ask the Government to take more vigorous steps to recognise this great and growing industry of road haulage, and the injustices under which it has to work.

I said that when the Parliamentary Secretary was making out his case he was anxious that we should get rid of ambiguity. May I remind the Committee of what the late Minister of Transport said when this very subject of containers was being discussed before Standing Committee C? On more than one occasion I have called attention to the definite promises which have been made in the past to this industry—promises which have been broken time after time. An Amendment was moved by my hon. Frien dthe Member for Lewisham, West (Sir P. Dawson), so that the weight of the container should not be included in the unladen weight of the vehicle. The then Minister of Transport used these words: I can assure hon. Members who believe, and rightly believe, in the increased use of containers in the future, instead of a large number of separate packing cases, that that type of case is met by the wording of the 1930 Act, and that that type of container would not be counted in the unladen weight of the vehicle."—[OFFICIAL REPORT (Standing Committee C), l1th July, 1933; col. 674.] If we want to get rid of ambiguity, surely here is an opportunity to revert to what was in the Minister's mind, namely, that the container was not an essential part. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Birkenhead, West (Colonel Sandeman Allen) mentioned a case in Scotland, which is known as the test case, in which seven judges, including the Lord President, came to the conclusion and laid it down definitely that you could not regard a container as an alternative body because you could not use the container without a lorry platform. They held that it was an adjunct of the lorry, that it was not an alternative body and could not be regarded as such. Therefore, the case went against the taxing authority. That case was followed up by a similar test case in Scotland, and there again the decision went against those who would tax the container.

To-night we ask why the road haulier should have to pay this extra tax. The Minister ought to go very carefully into these things and their bearing on the industry and be particularly careful that he is not led up the garden path in order to impose another burden on the road industry, and thereby benefit its rivals the railways, who will in no case be called upon to pay the tax which the road industry is called upon to pay. I thank the Minister on behalf of the road Industry for his offer to meet a deputation, and I hope that it is not just a nice little pat on the back with a kind word: "Come and see me and tell me all about it," and then on the Report stage no advance will be made. The time is rapidly approaching when the road industry will not be able to stand much more the treatment that they have had to bear, and when there must be some very plain speaking in order to let the Government know that unless they are extraordinarily careful they will find the whole motoring community, the private owner, the passenger car owner, and the road haulier up against them on the ground that they never seem to have the slightest sympathy with this industry.

Colonel Sandeman Allen

In view of the Minister's undertaking to consider the matter, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.