Police plan theftline Express carriers
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hit back at VAT
• Police are planning to set up a stolen trucks hotline in a bid to combat soaring theft levels.
The move comes in the middle of a series of meetings being held by insurance companies worried about massive robbery payouts.
Sergeant Terry Pearce of Norfolk Police says: "One initiative we are looking at is a central freephone number truckers can ring if they see anything suspicious. Hopefully it would work in a similar way to Crimestoppers appeals." The insurers group, headed by Norwich Union, Eagle Star and loss adjuster Thomas Howell, appears confident that the police are finally taking the problem of truck theft seriously.
Loss adjuster Chris Brown says: I have visited every force in the South East...1 think they are at last beginning to understand the scale of the problem and beginning to do something."
0 Greenwich police have broken a ring allegedly responsible for a number of armed attacks on trucks in London and the South East.
Three people have been arrested and appeared in court last week charged in connection with a series of violent incidents, which Lillegedly included false imprisonment of truck drivers who were forcibly taken away. • Private carriers are fighting back against new VAT rules affecting their operations in a move which is expected to embarrass the Government.
A private carriers pressure group, which includes TNT, UPS, fl-IL, and Securicor, is gathering a file of evidence of the "considerable accounts" lost to the Post Office following January's VAT changes.
The carriers will then push the Government and the EC to drop the newly introduced VAT on private international express services— or to force the post offices to charge VAT too.
The Association of International Courier and Express Services believes its case is so strong that it could force a decision through the European Court of Justice.
The Government, already in difficulty in deciding the future ownership of Royal Mail and Parcelforce, will be embarrassed if it is forced to accept a 17.5% price increase on international letters and parcels.