Labour 'incompetence' threatens switch to rail freight

The Government's plans to shift freight from road to rail could be seriously undermined by new employment rules, rail operators warn.

The companies believe that the draft Working Time Regulations, which set out minimum standards on working hours, breaks and holidays, are skewed in favour of the road haulage industry.

On Friday the operators wrote to the Department of Trade and Industry warning that the proposals could thwart government plans to achieve an 80 per cent increase in rail freight by 2010.

Under the proposals, large road hauliers have until 2005 to implement the regulations. Smaller operators get an extra four years. But rail freight operators have only until 1 August to introduce the regulations.

As the proposals stand, rail workers will be allowed to work a maximum eight-hour night shift. But road hauliers will be able to work 10 hours.

"This will knock the rail freight industry for six," said Lord Berkeley, chairman of the Rail Freight Group, which represents the operators. "This could create a serious dearth of rail freight workers in the industry, which will be challenging as we are competing with a very efficient road freight industry."

But Lord Berkeley said these anomalies might be attributable to government "ignorance and incompetence", rather than a deliberate plan to disadvantage rail. He said the regulations had been jointly drafted by the DTI and the Department for Transport, possibly creating confusion.

A spokesman for EWS, Britain's largest rail freight operator, said the Working Time Regulations were anti-competitive. "Given the Government's encouragement of rail freight, we would expect it to support any move to level the playing field between road and rail – not the reverse."

EWS believes the regulations would affect 80 per cent of its total workforce.

Earlier this month it emerged that the Strategic Rail Authority was considering withholding £50m of rail freight grants. Rail operators claimed this could result in five million extra lorry journeys a year.

EWS has also written to the Office of the Rail Regulator saying it is "extremely disturbed" by proposals for the regulation of Network Rail, the successor to Railtrack. EWS said the plans discriminated against rail freight in favour of passenger train operators.