Road Pricing

 

The government is not thinking this through.

The congestion charge works well in London, even if many don't like it, but as someone who visits my city of birth and the best place in the world regularly, there is no doubt that it has made London a lot better.

The technology could be easily applied to other cities in the UK. In fact the more cities that used such a system, the cheaper and better collection would become.

So I'm all for congestion charging, as you know that if you pass a certain point, you have to pay a fixed charge for the day. I would modify it slightly, by allowing perhaps one free trip per car per year, so that occasional users would use it for expensive shopping and special trips, which is just want a city needs to be vibrant.

But I'm totally against a box in my car, that calculates how much I would pay at the end of the month.

The reason is that many people live marginally and just inside a tight budget. How can you budget on something that you don't know what it will cost? So the outcome will be large costs in collecting money from non-payers.

Now what happens if your mother is seriously ill, in a hospital say fifty miles away and your monthly charge goes from say £50 a month to £400. Can anybody say that is fair?

I would create a proper carbon tax, so that all road fuel, gas and electricity was taxed at a higher rate. This would then come off the lower rates of Income Tax and also be given as grants to insulate our homes and use low-energy light bulbs.