Freight Integration Council: the end
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from our parliamentary correspondent THE DAYS of the National Freight Integration Council— which has met only twice in the past five and a half years —are numbered.
Mr Neil Carmichael, UnderSecretary DoE, pronounced sentence of death in the Commons last week.
He told Mr Richard Buchanan (Labour, Springburn) that the council had submitted no proposals for freight integration to his Department.
The MP asked Mr Carmichael if he was not exceedingly concerned that this high-level and independent council should be so moribund at a time when freight transport should be planned, inte grated and streamlined in the best interests of the nation.
Mr Buchanan said that the council should be dismissed and another body set up which was much more keenly attuned to the necessity and urgency of freight integration.
Mr Carmichael agreed, and recalled that the Select Committee which examined the nationalised industries had recommended the abolition of the council.
That would require legislation, said Mr Carmichael, and the Department was now considering the functions of the NFIC and how the Select Committee's recommendations could most effectively be fulfilled.