Written question asked by Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Conservative) on Wednesday, 12 January 2005, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Wednesday, 19 January 2005. It was answered by John Healey (Labour) on Wednesday, 19 January 2005 on behalf of the Treasury.

Treasury

Question: To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what the implications are of cross-border roads in Northern Ireland in relation to implementing the proposed lorry road user charge. - Inc ref to discussion paper, copy in Library.

Answer: Miss McIntosh: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what the implications are of cross-border roads in Northern Ireland in relation to implementing the proposed lorry road-user charge. [209260] John Healey: The Government are committed to introducing a distance-based lorry road-user charge, with offsetting tax cuts for those who buy their fuel in the UK. We have been developing proposals in consultation with the haulage industry and, as announced in the pre-Budget report (Cm 6408), we have today issued a discussion paper, which considers various details of how the charge might operate in practice. The discussion paper is available in the Library of the House. Land borders always provide challenges for distance- based road charging systems, both in determining UK distances travelled to which any charge should be applied, and in ensuring that vehicles crossing the boundary are complying with the charging requirements. The UK land boundary in Northern Ireland presents particular challenges, with over 300 open crossing points between the UK and the Republic of Ireland. A number of cross-border routes also include roads which pass into and out of the UK a number of times, in some cases without visibly identifiable crossing points. HM Customs and Excise, who are developing LRUC on behalf of the Government, are including these requirements in their specification for a modern, automated system for the UK.

Secondary information