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20:20 hindsight
Page 3
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Hindsight's a wonderful, thing, not least when it comes from former transport ministers. Thus CM notes the latest conversation with ex-transport minister Dr Stephen Ladyman MP, who has joined the long list of former occupants of Marsham Street, home of the Department for Transport. Or as the cynics have it: "The Departure Lounge".1
In particutar, we're struck by his belief that road pricing is inevitable. It's a view we share. Not withstanding the current recession and the impact it's had on traffic volumes, how else can you control demand on an already overcrowded road network? Indeed, road pricing isn't just one option to manage usage, particularly during peak periods, it's the only option. However, if Ladyman, and his former boss Alistair Darling, felt so strongly about road pricing, why didn't they introduce it? They had the opportunity to dip their toe in the water with the Lorry Road User Charge (LRUC), the perfect stalking horse for universal road pricing 'some time in the future'. The Great British PubLic wouldn't have given a hoot if trucks were charged to use British roads. The only real fly in the ointment was persuading the industry it was a good idea, even though it tackled the perennial problem of foreign trucks using our roads for free. By all accounts, the LRUC was a done deal even if no one (least of all Darling) could say exactly how 'tax-neutral. it would be to domestic operators. Then it was ditched. Now for Ladyman to suggest that hauliers "...weren't Looking at the opportunity it gave for improving competition with foreign companies..." rather ignores the fact it was this government's rolling programme of fuel duty and VED hikes that was causing the problem in the first place. And since the LRUC was dropped without any plan B, the problem hasn't gone away. You'd have thought that with hindsight, 'cmeonp might have seen that...