Missing out on Armitage
Page 25

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OME MPs seem completely to ave missed the point of the rmitage recommendations on eavier lorries and insist, desite proposals clearly to the conary, that axle weights and lerefore road damage would be icreased.
Perhaps they have become so unch-drunk by political inghting that they can't take in traightforward industrial in)rmation.
In that case they are hardly kely to observe, and still less to are about, the conflict between le Armitage Committee's asertion that "taxation is not a atisfactory way of reducing the nvironmental effects of lorries" nd its proposals to soak the orry owner on every conceiveIle or inconceivable pretext.
If, as the RHA asserts, "many lauliers have not been able to ecover the additional costs vhich arose in the first half of 980" an increase of £800 a ,ear in the excise duty on a 32.5onne four-axled artic, for instince, would be the last straw.