The immediate agenda - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 387

would cost more than the current fuel tax rate of approximately 4p per km. In return
most would benefit from improvements in travel times and reliability. However these
would be valued most by business users (and high-income private motorists) whilst the
burden of increased payments would fall most heavily on car commuters travelling at
peak times. This of course includes a large proportion of the voting public! The DfT
analysis envisages such people 'changing their behaviour' but of course involuntary
change is not an attractive proposition to those affected. Many would say they have
no realistic alternative anyway (16.2). More generally research indicates that many
people feel they already do everything they can to avoid congestion and believe that
improving public transport would be a more effective solution to congestion than road
pricing (IPPR 2006).
When the 2004 White Paper was published Alistair Darling had the good fortune
of support for the principle of charging from the transport spokesmen of the opposition
parties (LTT 397). This appeared to signal a context in which constructive debate on
development of the idea could proceed. It is especially regrettable therefore that the
Government's handling of the issue since has proved an almost unmitigated disaster.
The first error on such an obviously controversial issue was to publish the results of
the Road Pricing Feasibility Study concurrently with the White Paper, thus bringing
to public attention an exercise which at that stage should have remained within the
confines of technical debate (DfT 2004b). The maximum charge of £1.34 a mile
quoted in the study was seized upon to provide headline copy in the popular press,
even though only 0.5% of traffic might be charged such a rate (LTT 397). From the
very start therefore the Government found itself playing off the back foot.
A second error was not immediately to counter the entirely predictable response
that road pricing represented an additional tax on motorists. In fact there is a variety
of arguments on either side as to whether the scale and pattern of charges should be
devised to be 'revenue neutral', i.e. result in no overall increase in motoring taxation.
The main alternative, of the kind considered by Eddington, is to aim for an outcome
which is optimal in economic terms, which would imply additional payments, although
these could be recycled in the form of investment in transport improvements.
Technically the economic argument is superior in that the present level of
motoring taxation is essentially the product of historical accident. However in terms
of practical policy-making such a purist approach risks 'the best being the enemy of
the good'. The strength of this point is underlined by evidence from the Feasibility
Study which showed that almost as much could be achieved in the way of congestion
reduction with a revenue neutral scheme as an economically optimal one. The
Government could have found a form of words to nullify potential criticism by saying
that it had no intention to raise overall taxation on motorists unless subsequent
consultation demonstrated that there was support for the additional benefits that it
could bring.
The Government's initiative also lost momentum because it did not respond to the
recommendation to develop a concrete proposition on which to focus debate. Nor did
it set out an indicative timetable for implementing a national scheme as recommended
by the Transport Select Committee (House of Commons 2005). This apparent lack of
commitment created a vacuum in which crude opposition to the principle of a scheme
could flourish culminating in an e-petition from 1.8 million objectors on the Prime
Minister's website in early 2006. His reply talked of 'beginning the debate' but this
rang very hollow since the political initiative had clearly been lost and DfT statements
then and since have all implied a distancing from the concept of a national scheme.