Champion claims road tolls victory
Thursday 25th June 2009, 11:30AM BST.
A national motorists’ champion from Telford today claimed victory after plans to impose pay-as-you-drive charges on all motorists were killed off by Lord Adonis, the new Transport Secretary.
Peter Roberts, founder of the Drivers’ Alliance, won the support of 1.8 million people who signed a Downing Street petition against road pricing. And he was celebrating today after the announcement that Labour would not include road pricing in its next manifesto.
“It was clearly one of the most unpopular proposals any Government had ever come up with,” he said.
Ministers had been considering using the electoral roll to set charges for drivers, which could be as much as £1.30 a mile, with those in affluent areas paying more than those in poorer communities.
But Lord Adonis said yesterday: “We definitely are not proceeding with nation-al road user charging in the next Parliament. I don’t believe as Britain comes out of recession and motorists are feeling under pressure, that it is the time to put road charging on the agenda.”
Mr Roberts, of Dawley Bank, said today: “My petition was the catalyst and I’m definitely claiming the credit for this. The Drivers’ Alliance has been campaigning against road pricing for the past 18 months and I’m delighted that Labour has now seen sense.
“The Tories have already said, if they come into power, they will scrap any of Labour’s plans for road pricing but will support local schemes put forward by local people. So the only main political party still advocating road pricing is the Liberal Democrats.”
He added: “Two referenda – in Manchester and Edinburgh – illustrated how deeply unpopular road pricing is with private motorists and business people.”
However, the spectre of road pricing has still not gone completely away.
Advantage West Midlands chief executive Mick Laverty yesterday told the Commons Transport Select Committee that a pay-as-you-drive scheme could help tackle congestion hotspots.
“It is one of a number of things you would want in your tool kit,” he said.
He added: “There is a lot of evidence that congestion on the network is a major drag on the UK economy.”
By Peter Johnson
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We have to stop relying on petrol to run our motors. The solution is to have hydrogen powered cars. The problem is the western world is SO dependent on fuel to raise its taxes they will have to find a another way of raising these taxes.
It has been possible to run cars on hydrogen (water) for a while now but ”global warming” doesn’t come into the equation when it comes to raising taxes.
You have know doubt read that parts of London are trialing computers in cars to charge by the mile and that will be the norm when some brave government, or the fuel runs out, takes the plunge and introduces hydrogen powered vehicles.
So pay as you drive WILL become the norm some time in the future. It’s just a case of when.
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Drop the Identity Card barmy idea too and fight the next election on weathering world recession so much better (no huge interest rates and high inflation as the tories would have given us).
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Well done, Mr Roberts. People seem to conveniently forget that we ALREADY have a pay as you drive tax (on fuel), and outrageously high it is too, and has VAT on top. If it got spent on transport instead of MP’s expenses and pensions, we’d have the best network in the world. This road charging is just the first step in monitoring where you go, and how you get there. All for your own safety of course. A dream for our nannys who know best.
As for hydrogen cars, their time may come, but oil isn’t running out any time soon. There is no need to distort the economic energy balance with even more taxes, they (and no doubt other solutions) will become economically viable when the time is right.
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