News

The RHA and FTA insist they will not lead next Tuesday's Park Lane fuel protest despite overwhelming support for such a move in last week's MT poll. Although we only received 70 responses, 68 of those were in favour of the trade associations leading the protest, which has been organised by pressure group TransAction. However, a substantially lower percentage (45%) said they would be taking part themselves, citing distance or commercial pressures as reasons for non-attendance.

Despite this,  there were a large number of sizeable hauliers within the list of respondents, including Richard Fry from Framptons Transport who is an RHA board member, promising to send vehicles to the protest. But Roger King, RHA chief executive, insists that another Park Lane protest does not fit in with the association's strategy. Instead it is focusing on a mass lobby of parliament "on a date yet to be announced". This is in response to an amendment to the Finance Bill proposed by the SNP, which would introduce a fuel duty regulator.

King stresses that next week's protest is too soon after the last one on 29 April and adds: "We don't believe that the majority of our board and regional councils think it's necessarily right to engage in another protest with trucks four weeks after the previous one, without knowing where this is going." For its part, the FTA also stresses that it has not seen any appetite for protest among its membership. Policy director James Hookham says: "Most of [our  members] don't feel [a protest] is the best way of getting their voice heard.

"Look at the kinds of names within our membership and taking those sort of brand names to the streets is not something they would want to do." He says the association will continue its policy of lobbying MPs. Mike Presneill, co-organiser of TransAction, says that he has been promised support by a large number of major haulage firms. He adds: "People are telling us that they are ashamed of the RHA because it is not heading the protest." Presneill has now written, as an RHA member, to each of the RHA's 12 board members in a bid to win the association's official backing for the protest. He says that two board members have already given positive responses to his request.