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It ain't broke, so...
Page 3
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Is there nothing this Government won't tinker with when it comes to the law? We're all for changing things for the better, only the current incumbents in the Ministry of Justice [never mind the Department for Transport) can't seem to leave things well alone.
And although we're not devoted to outmoded legal structures, we see little reason to change the fundamental way the Transport Tribunal operates. Currently, if an operator has a grievance with a Traffic Commissioner's ruling they can take their case to the Transport Tribunal, safe in the knowledge that at least one, if not more, of the members of its three-person panel will, in the words of the tribunal's own website: "..,have experience in transport operations and its law and procedures." Or, in other words, it knows the difference between a camshaft and a mineshaft.
Will we be able to say the same about any new 'appropriate tribunal' as proposed by the Ministry of Justice? It brings to mind Hilaire Belloc's famous warning to: "Always keep tight hold of nurse.., for fear of finding something worse." The biggest worry would surely be that a new tribunal, through a fundamental lack of understanding of how road transport works, and what the TCs are trying to achieve, is seen as an "easy touch" by disgruntled hauliers who won't take no for an answer. And that could mean all sorts of vexatious 0-licence cases bouncing back and forth between IC and tribunal ad nauseum, not to say infinitum... In CM's experience, the TCs don't often get it wrong, despite what some transport lawyers might say. More importantly, the Transport Tribunal doesn't overturn many decisions either, and when it does, it's usually on procedural matters or
"proportionality". And the fact that so few people moan about the current system suggests to us that it ain't broke... so why does the Ministry of Justice want to fix it?
Brian Weatherley