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Road Pricing

I am always very flattered to listen to your kind compliments, Sir Nicholas, which are all to the manner born. This afternoon's sitting deals, importantly, with the Transport Committee's careful consideration of road pricing. It seems to members of the Committee that this country has a simple and uncomplicated attitude to traffic. We all want to be able to drive wherever we want, park outside our own front door and, if necessary, drive into the centre of cities and drive out again. There are, however, one or two things that we do not want. We do not want other people to park outside our front door, we do not want to hear the noise of any traffic and we prefer to get exactly where we want to go in exactly the time we have planned, with no other cars on the road. That presents traffic planners—even those with enormous intellectual ability, such as the ones in the Department for Transport—with a slight problem. Our Committee therefore believes that we might be able to assist. I shall begin, however, with something that is not sufficiently discussed. The Committee made it very clear at the beginning of its report that its one vital caveat was that if road pricing was to be introduced, or even if it was decided that it was the most effective way of reducing congestion, it must be conditional on the risks of diversion, dispersal, road danger, pollution and, above all, social exclusion being fully addressed. The Secretary of State for Transport is not only exceedingly civilised but very straightforward when it comes to dealing with the Committee—most of the time. He has been kind enough to make it very clear to us in his reply that he is generally in favour of our suggestions. Nevertheless, several questions should be addressed. We said that any strong arguments for road pricing should take its direct effects into account. If the Government want to meet their carbon emission and congestion targets, they had better seriously consider whether road charging should be revenue-neutral or revenue-raising. The Department for Transport should consider why, when it has control over the urban motorways and appears to be telling local authorities that they should adopt congestion schemes, it is not prepared to declare very openly its intentions and its time scale. There is no timetable, which is an extraordinary omission from the Government's plans. We need to be told whether the Government accept the objectives that we have set out, particularly the objective of social inclusion, before road pricing can be introduced. We use fashionable phrases such as social inclusion, but then create a system in which some people can use the motorways because the prices that are considered acceptable are absorbed by their customers, their industries or those for whom they work, while others might find it more difficult. That produces a real dilemma for a Government committed to equal treatment. Let us consider the issues from the point of view of my Committee. We asked where the timetable was and said that if the Government were going to introduce road pricing, it would be no use their saying in the next 18 months to two years that they would decide on an area or a region of the country in which to pilot it. The decision should be taken and stated openly, and if the Government want to implement the scheme, they should get on with it. We said that diversion of traffic on to unsuitable roads where the charges would be lower must be avoided. We are talking about varying charges to persuade people to travel on different routes and at different times. Is not the danger of traffic being diverted on to minor roads an implicit part of the scheme? It would be much better to vary the charges only according to the time of day to avoid causing the diversion of traffic and dispersed land use.