From the BBC:
The Association for Consultancy and Engineering (ACE), which represents companies involved in designing the UK's infrastructure, admitted some people were suspicious of road pricing.
However, in its report "Funding Roads for the Future" it said charges for road usage should be introduced which took into account:
- whether a driver's journey was on motorways or country lanes
- the time of day
- how much congestion was on the network
- drivers' financial circumstances - for example, whether they were students, pensioners or unemployed
ACE said relying on money raised through fuel duty, Vehicle Excise Duty and the HGV levy was outdated. "The growing uptake of zero-emission vehicles means revenue from Vehicle Excise Duty and Fuel Duty will continue to decline as a percentage of the UK's GDP in the future," it said.
That's the beauty of fuel duty, it acts like a rough and ready road pricing (which is a good thing, in principle, it's rent for road space). If you drive during the rush hour, you cause more inconvenience, use more fuel for a given distance and pay more per mile. Lorries cause more wear and tear, accidents and pollution, but use a lot more fuel and pay a lot more per mile. Whizz round in a small car at the weekend, you're not getting in anybody's way, using less fuel and paying less per mile. It all sorts itself out nicely.
Fuel "costs" average 15p/mile, two-thirds of that is VAT and fuel duty, so petrol/diesel drivers are already paying 10p/mile road-user charge. The actual fuel cost is more like 5p/mile.
Cost of electricity/mile, at residential tariff is in the region of 2p - 4p/mile, i.e. not a huge difference in absolute terms. The real saving is not because electricity is "cheaper" than petrol or diesel, but because the former is lightly taxed (5% VAT) and the latter is heavily taxed. Depending on how the electricity is generated, the amount of C02 emitted (to the extent that we worry about this) is pretty much the same either way.
So by all means, level the playing field by having road pricing of 10p per mile, or whatever, but as a quid pro quo, ditch VAT and duties on fuel completely. This is the problem with electric and hybrid cars and all that nonsense - the end result is we will need road user charges to reduce congestion.
The notion of having means-tested road user charges should be consigned to the dustbin of shit ideas, obviously.
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From City AM (comment appeared as reader's letter today):
Why should we pay the EU for access to the EU market on services, financial or otherwise, if they will not be paying us for access to our domestic market on goods?
Let's be consistent about this, if the EU really believes in payment of fees for market access then they could start with an offer of the fees they are prepared to pay us for access to our wine market, our car market etc etc. Then we could add up all the market access fees payable in each direction, and given that they enjoy a chronic massive trade surplus with us they could pay us the net annual fee.
Or, if they prefer, let's go back to tariffs and they can pay us through that mechanism.
Denis Cooper
Debate Magazine
