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The Road Haulage Association (RHA) has hit out at pressure group Transaction 2007 and its increasingly vitriolic e-mail campaign against fuel duty rises which has recently attacked the association. Transaction 2007 has accused the RHA of having "ulterior motives" for not asking its membership whether it should conduct direct protest action. The email from Mike Presneill, one of the two men behind Transaction 2007, reads: "The view of both RHA members and Trasaction 2007 members is that Mr Roger  King and Mr Jack Semple have an ulterior motive for not wanting to ballot its members as to whether there is the need for protest action.

"They are not taking into account the views of the majority of operators whose businesses are suffering." But Jack Semple, the RHA's director of policy, says feedback from its regional councils and area managers is that there is no support for a protest. He also questions who Transaction 2007 claims to speak for: "We are not hearing from members other than Mike Presneill and [fellow Transaction leader] Peter Knight.  Two hayuliers, to me, does not a groundswell of opinion make."

Presneill insists there is sufficient appetite for a legal protest: "I have had one of the biggest haulage companies in the country on to me this morning telling me to push this harder. "[Transaction] represents the views of 100% of small to medium-sized haulage contractors in this country." He says RHA members should write to the association and tell it if they  want it to head up legal protest action "to show the government we can't keep taking this".