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' BY ANUS
Page 134
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TOPIC
Confidence trick
'While the Government is receiving three times as much in road tax as it disburses, the exact division of the burden does not seem important'
LIKE any other game, the discussion about vehicle taxation has to be conducted strictly according to the rules. The most important is the acknowledgment that each class, or even sub-class, of vehicle should be taxed sufficiently to cover its proper proportion of the expenditure on roads. Anyone who dares to think otherwise is disqualified.
Except as a device for getting more money out of the road operator, there is no convincing reason for the doctrine. The cost of a public service is not usually allocated so meticulously, not to say obsessively, among the people who are supposed to benefit.
dir
Although the Government is bound to subscribe to such a convenient principle, it does not play the game too seriously. In its role as tax collector, it may call in a succession of experts and committees to find out who is not paying enough.
Once the money is collected, however, it becomes part of the general revenue. The game is over. Fiscal policy decides how much — or more frequently how little — should be spent on the roads.
Either this confidence trick baffles operators, or they have reasons of their own for • appearing to stick to the rules. In its recent detailed analysis of lorry taxation, the Freight alTransport Association emphasises several times its agreement that each category of vehicle should pay its full and proper road costs.
The very emphasis, as the psychologists would say, indicates a lingering doubt. It would be hard to argue that road users as a whole should not pay for the roads they use, or that heavy lorries should not be charged Oconsiderably more than the private car. But, while the Government is receiving three times as much as it disburses, the exact division of the burden does not seem important. What makes the game more one of chance than of skill is the lack of agreement among the experts, and the certainty that whatever agreement they did reach would still be fair to some operators and unfair to others.
The FTA survey of the subject is a reminder of the wide range of opinion. It calls into question many of the assumptions of previous inquiries. If there is a bias, it is likely to be in favour of the road transport industry, but the points made are sufficiently strong to survive any such suspicion.
Nothing is taken for granted. It might be supposed that there could be no disagreement on how much the Government spends on road maintenance and capital projects. Not so, says the FTA. The official figures are based on "a mixture of historical expenditure, predicted expenditure and inflation rates,from which a three-year average is distilled.
Ingenuously, or perhaps slyly, ignoring the fact that the Government is more interested in what it gets in than in what it pays out, the FTA asks why actual expenditure should not be used for the comparison. The explanation, as one might expect, is that the actual budget figure is consistently less than the -theoreticalfigures used in
the Department of Transport's calculations.
Having thus cast doubts on the assessment of expenditure, the main FTA effort is directed towards its own method of determining how road costs should be allocated. In the process, it gives several examples of errors in the official allocation.
No allowance is made, the FTA points out, for the fact that parts of the motorway system, and even of some all-purpose roads, are unavailable to general lorry traffic. Vehicles over three tons unladen weight may not use the third lane on motorways nor the outside lane on long hills on some two-lane sections.
Off the motorway system, the FTA continues, local authorities are banning through lorry traffic from increasingly large areas, and there are bus lanes on key routes in major conurbations. These various restrictions improve the level of service for one form of road user or another at the expense of what is available to goods vehicles.
The chief beneficiary is the motorist. The FTA points out also that his interests affect the design and layout (and therefore the cost) of many roads. For example, visibility and the extent of curves on all-purpose dual-carriageways must allow for the permitted maximt, speed of 70mph.
The next candidate for F scrutiny is described, a lit sombrely, as the -statutc undertaker,or public utili with the free wayleave for kinds of plant and equipment all public highways exce motorways. It is suggested tt the community costs incurr should not be included in t figure for road expenditu which is appointed to users accordance with hypothetical -track costs th incur.
How hypothetical ti appointment is needs no mc illustration than the FTA pr vides. It advocates a ne method of approaching the su ject and compares it point point with the present offic, system.
At almost every stage, tt Association has to admit that is dealing with estimates rath than actual figures. Its defent is that the Department guesses are even wilder. Tt reader cannot help wonderir — and it may be part of tt FTA's purpose to guide hi towards this conclusion whether the game is worth tt candle.
It is sometimes suggestE that the real opponent is BritiE Rail, said to be the victim t unfair competition by haulie who get their infrastructure c the cheap. The FTA, as one mE expect, considers it importer that "firms consigning freigt make the free choice betwee road and rail based on servic and costs, uninfluenced by sut sidy or artificial taxatio penalty."
What renders this principl little more than words is not onl the impossibility of decidin whether or not the heavy lorry being subsidised. There is equ; uncertainty about the allocatio of rail costs among, sa} passenger and goods traffic and the extent to which BR i dependent on site aid.