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Road Users (Taxes and Charges)

I am grateful for that intervention, which underlines my point. I say to the Minister in passing that along with the differential in the price of fuel—which, to be fair, I must add has narrowed in recent times—there is a safety consideration as to whether it is sensible to have lorries crossing through the tunnel or on ferries carrying vast amounts of inflammable material. We should consider that from a safety point of view, and see whether we can impose a limit on the amount of fuel that is brought into this country. Another of the motoring taxes is vehicle excise duty. The Government have made changes to it this year, with the introduction of a first-year VED band—in other words, a showroom tax. They have also expanded VED from seven to 13 bands. I welcome that, because more sophistication of the bands is correct, but I think that VED as a concept ought to be time-limited. I say that because I firmly believe that we should tax elements of our activity as a society that are undesirable, rather than those that are neutral or desirable. In my view, owning a vehicle is not undesirable. Having been made, it causes no particular damage. There is a carbon implication in its manufacture, but there is no further carbon implication if it sits in the garage. The damage to the environment comes from the use, not the ownership, of the car. It therefore seems quite wrong that the ownership of the car should be taxed, rather than its usage. Indeed, the Select Committee refers obliquely in its report to the need to tax the use of a vehicle. I should like to see VED effectively removed at some stage. The enemy is not the car but the carbon, and the Government should bear that in mind. I am conscious that cars themselves are becoming much cleaner. A recent report by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, which I visited the other day with the hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr. Goodwill), demonstrated the significant progress that the industry has made in recent years in reducing carbon emissions. That is perhaps partly driven by EU targets, but it is also driven by significant innovation and good practice in the industry. From memory, I think that there has been a 21 per cent. reduction in emissions per car since 1997. The industry is doing its bit to make cars cleaner. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside mentioned the congestion charge in London. I agree with some of her comments and wish to associate myself with them. In particular, it is concerning that such a high level of the revenue received is spent on the administration of the scheme itself. That is not efficient or necessary, and it is a matter for Transport for London to sort out. Personally, I do not find TFL a terribly responsive organisation—it tends to be rather arrogant and self-satisfied on occasions. Another organisation might well have acted quicker to reduce administrative costs, and I hope that TFL will do so, spurred on by the Transport Committee's report. I now turn to road pricing, because the logic of the Select Committee's position is that it wants such a scheme. Pay-as-you-use—or pay-as-you-pollute, if we prefer to put it in those terms—seems entirely equitable. I want to ensure that there is no confusion in the public mind, as there sometimes is, between congestion charging and national road pricing. They are different things. A congestion charge is over a local area, takes money from the motorist and, typically, invests it in public transport schemes. As the name suggests, it is designed to reduce congestion in a tight urban area. I happen to think that the scheme in London has worked quite well by and large, even if the administration of it is not particularly brilliant. National road pricing seems to have a different objective, at least to my mind. It is intended first to be more equitable to the motorist—I will talk later about how that will work—and secondly to reduce carbon emissions from the transport sector. That is one of the key challenges that the DFT faces, and it has singularly failed to match up to it so far.