State giant is not my idea
Page 5
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from our political correspondent THE Government's plans for a White Paper on transport policy are now nearing completion and it is expected in Parliamentary circles that it will be published at the end of the year.
Although no details have officially been released there are grounds for supposing that the ideas contained in Mr Leslie Huckfield's report on transport earlier this year have been given considerable weight.
Mr Huckfield's committee produced the most detailed look at transport ever mounted by the Labour party. Its most important conclusion was that the State-owned transport networks should report to a National Transport Authority which would be responsible for co-ordinating transport policy.
Mr Huckfield told CM that remarks made by Mr Sack Jones at the TUC conference last week (see page 22) on an idea for a national transport body were aimed at proposals put forward by the National Union of Railwaymen and not Mr Huckfield's plan. Mr Jones described suggestion's by the NUR president that transport should be controlled by a single authority as creating a "bureaucratic monstrosity." The NUR scheme, said Mr Huckfield, appeared to envisage something like the monolithic British Transport Commission. His own body would not be involved in operation, only planning.