ePolitix.com speaks to Jack Semple, director of policy at the Road Haulage Association (RHA), about the work of the RHA in the haulage sector, the forthcoming fuel duty increase and the issue of congestion.

Question: What does the Road Haulage Association provide for it's members?

Jack Semple: The Road Haulage Association works in representation, advice, campaigning, lobbying, the increasingly important area of training sources and specialist units and groups for things such as the agricultural and international sector.

We look after members interests in what is a diverse and regulated sector. We also provide services through our partners who are banks, insurance companies and communications companies.

We are also responsible for RHA Conditions of Carriage, a long-established industry standard document covering the relationship between hauliers and their customers.

Finally we are involved in employment law, with the majority of our members using Lawplan, our legal services insurance.
 
Question: What are your concerns over the forthcoming increase in fuel duty?

Jack Semple: Fuel remains our number one issue. Our members are almost unanimous in their opposition and are understandably very concerned.

We have a situation where we pay on average 25p a litre more in fuel duty than the rest of Europe.

That will increase to 27p in October, after it already increased 1.25p last November.

The additional cost for a lorry doing 100,000 miles in a year, at eight-and-a-half miles a gallon, is at least £12,000 pounds more a year in fuel duty than anyone else in Europe.

That will increase to £13,000 in October. It must be remembered that fuel represents around 35 per cent of a haulier’s operating costs.

Gordon Brown said on the floor of the Commons in his pre-budget statement in 2001 that this issue needs to be addressed and that we should "level the playing field". He set up the lorry road user charging project in order to do that.

But for reasons of practicality and cost that was abandoned after four years and with £40m spent on consultancy fees.
 
We understand the difficulties he has had in levelling the playing field, but he should not now marching the haulage industry in the opposite direction, making the playing field even more unlevel and difficult for UK firms.

At any one time we estimate that there are around 15,000 foreign lorries in England, particularly in the southern half of the country.

They buy cheap fuel on the continent and in Ireland and when they come over here they are undermining sectors of the UK haulage industry.

We need stability without adding inflation to fuel increases. Our members tell us there are many hauliers that don’t negotiate the fuel element of haulage rates between contract renewals. 

But we are pricing ourselves out of markets. The trade and industry select committee earlier this year specifically mentioned fuel costs as one of the factors driving automotive sector companies to Eastern Europe.

In addition, we have a substantial sector of our membership which is not able in the short-term to claw back the increase in fuel duty.

Depending on the size and market sector of our member company, they may have slightly different reasons for opposing the increase in duty, but they are all vehemently opposed to it at a time when the haulage industry is under severe pressure.

Question: What could or should the government do to battle the issue of congestion?

Jack Semple: What we should not be doing is waiting for the government to come up with local road pricing schemes, the impact of which it admits is completely unknown.

There is no sector of the road using public as concerned about congestion as professional road hauliers and they want to see action now.

We need an increase in infrastructure capacity, to meet what is a very clear demand. Airport and rail capacity has been increased for anticipated future demand, but road capacity needs improving now.

We need spending on a proliferation of relatively minor schemes, such as junction improvements, funded by central government and carried out by local authorities.

Money is being withheld for schemes which are identified as reducing congestion in certain spots.

So what we are getting is central government holding back money from cities such as Manchester and Birmingham, which they would use for schemes to reduce congestion, in order to twist their arm into developing road pricing schemes.

Road pricing should not be so closely linked to spending money to relieve congestion.

We would also like to look at the broader issues of congestion, with a more fundamental review of the start and finish times of the working population, an increase in home working and the expansion of cities rather than the creation of new towns.

Improving the road network and also the broader social and economic factors need to be looked at. We need to be debating congestion, and not simply looking for ways to overcome opposition to road pricing.

Question: What are your concerns over road pricing?

Jack Semple: In the local road pricing schemes that are being worked up under the transport infrastructure fund, we are very keen to ensure lorries are excluded.

Road pricing is a demand management scheme to get motorists to vary the time they go to and from work or to take the bus or train.

Lorries are at work, there are no alternatives. You cannot deliver by canal or train to the high street.

If you include trucks in road pricing you are simply adding a new administrative burden to road hauliers and an increase in charges on business.

It becomes a journey tax on business, not demand management. We can understand the political attractiveness in trying to make lorries pay the same as cars, but there's no logic to that.

Question: Do you feel the expansion of the aviation sector is unfairly favoured in comparison to road transportation?

Jack Semple: Roads are overwhelmingly the mode of transport in this country, and we need to take account of that in our spending and in our infrastructure development.

We do not oppose airport development but roads require constant development to meet demand.

Roads are more important and should be a higher priority.

Question: How dependent is the UK economy on road haulage?

Jack Semple: Road haulage provides a fundamental and irreplaceable service to commerce, business, industry and people. We have a saying in the RHA, "without trucks, you get nothing".

Everything that you have in business industry and shops, including food, comes by truck.

The UK professional road haulage sector is admired for its efficiency, its flexibility, its responsiveness to the needs of businesses and people.

It is also recognised as the safest and highest quality in terms of operating standards in Europe. The role of the RHA is to ensure the British haulage industry continues to be efficient, responsible and safe, and to do that regulators must accept the role trucks play in society.

People talk about improving green credentials. The haulage sector, which has fuel accounting for 35 per cent of its costs, has a huge incentive to be green in the way it operates.

Hauliers work as much as possible to share loads and to try and get as many customers goods on a lorry if one customer doesn’t fill it up first time.

Even if as rail and waterborne freight expands, road freight will remain the dominant method of transport in the UK.

Question: Do you have any final messages for ePolitix.com readers?

Jack Semple: We need to preserve the diversity, confidence and health of the haulage sector. We are extremely concerned about the lack of secure lorry parking in the UK, rising costs and congestion, and continuing increases in the burden of regulation.

Finally, we're very concerned that some buyers of transport, for example major supermarkets, make unreasonable demands on the haulage sector in their application of 'just in time' delivery principles.

They are too restrictive and onerous; and in reducing operating efficiency they increase the environmental impact of haulage.

I have two extra points.

We are concerned about the London low emission zone, which we consider to be political grandstanding on a huge scale.

It will cost ratepayers £90m in the first four years, is causing severe problems for trucks operators, some of which will be put out of business, and will deliver only the most marginal of air quality improvements.

The implementation has been a fiasco, causing widespread confusion and the electoral need to introduce the scheme from February 4, 2008, means that haulage companies are unable to acquire new low emission trucks in time.

Also, we are concerned at what appears to be a downgrading of freight logistics within the Department for Transport. Until the latest re-shuffle, we dealt with the Department for Transport minister of state, Dr Stephen Ladyman, who had clearly identified responsibility for roads and for our industry.

Freight logistics is now the responsibility of Jim Fitzpatrick, who as under-secretary is in a more junior role. Our concern has been deepened by the draft Local Transport Bill, which makes virtually no mention of goods.