Feb 12 2007
1.1million people don’t want to pay more tax - so Labour carries on with the idea
I thought the Transport Secretary was one of the brighter Cabinet members, but he kept it well hidden this morning in his interview on road pricing.
Faced with the not very suprising strong opposition by motorists to having to pay more, he was left telling us that people also want congestion to be tackled so road pricing remains the only game in town.
He is underestimating the opposition to his plan, and misunderstanding its basis.
A large number of people object to the government knowing more and more about how they lead their lives. In spy city, London, Mayor Livingstone continues his progress to make us the most spied on citizenry since the communist USSR. He not only watches us on the streets through an ever bigger army of cameras, but he tracks our every movement on the tube through his discount Travelcard scheme. Now the national government wants to do the same elsewhere, in parallel with wanting a new ID card system which can be plugged into European systems of control. Livingstone got away with the Oyster card because it gives us cheaper travel. The government’s spy comes with extra cost!
Even more of us object to having to pay yet more money for using the totally inadequate road system in the UK. We have massive congestion now because this government has invited in hundreds of thousands of new people without making any additional road space available for all the additonal vehicles, or adding space for the extra vehicles families are buying in despair over the inadequacies of the public transport system.
Road pricing does not tackle the underlying problem of too few roads for all the traffic. All it can do is to drive the poor off the roads - a strange approach for Labour to adopt.
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John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
“If road pricing were to replace Vehicle Excise Duty and were to be limited to the cost of Vehicle Excise Duty ………as with the M6 toll road, people will accept it, as they have a choice of whether to use the facility or not. ”
What happens when a motorist has driven the equivalent of the excise duty? Disable the car for the remainder of the year?
Come and take a look at the M6 toll road. People queue on the M6 rather than pay the charges.
Successive governments have taxed us - drivers, smokers, drinkers, home owners, etc. - without giving good services, or even good government, in exchange.
It is getting beyond a joke.
If the government chooses to collect the same amount of tax, based on the amount of road use, but by different or fairer means. Then I believe the government’s proposals would be listened to. What is getting to the public is that there seems to be no clear policy except to tax.
When will this government tell us all what is actually going to happen? Keeping people in the dark about road pricing is the most effective point that is being made by their communications strategy.
No wonder the amount of people signing the petition is clocking up nearly as fast as some labour supporters I talk too, can distance themselves from it. I have found even the most ardent labour voter I know is complaining about this one.
A couple of points. Firstly, even if this tax was revenue neutral we would still have to pay the billions of pounds to set it up and administer it. Secondly, as nobody trusts politicians anymmore, we would never believe it if revenue neutrality was promised.
Excuse, and what you think concerning forthcoming elections?
cool blog!