Reply to the Prime Minister

Well no-one's going to read it in the PM's office, so why not any lingerers on Blogger!

Dear Prime Minister,

Thank-you for your email. I’m fully aware that this reply will probably just go into an in-box like the 1.7m others, but on the off-chance that somewhere, sometime, a human might glance at it here is my response.

I’m not an expert in these matters. However, I am a reasonably intelligent voter and tax-payer who has been using the roads for 25 years and I think my views have some validity. Here are the points I’d like to make:

1. There is a fundamental disconnect in government planning policy, increasing demand for road use just as we’re being told congestion is costing billions and CO2 emissions from the increasing usage is causing devastating damage to the environment. In my local area on the south coast:-

a/ A major local hospital A&E unit is closing. It is somehow more ‘efficient’ to centralise to another hospital, 15 miles away, accessible only by travelling through two of the area’s worst traffic bottlenecks.
b/ In the last 5 years, several out-of-town retail parks have been built. I’m sure it’s theoretically possible to travel there by bus and travel home again with a week's shopping, but no-one with any option would even consider it when the alternative, to use a car, is so much more comfortable and convenient.
c/ Also in the last 5 years, several commercial office and industrial unit have also been built on the edge of local towns, each with a large car-park, and near major roads.
d/ Several thousand new houses are going to be built on the edge of a nearby town. There will be no school, shops, leisure facilities, or significant employment opportunities in this development, all it will lead to is thousands of additional road journeys as the residents travel to school, work, etc
e/ Our local post-office will close. The nearest one is two miles away.

Each of these developments, all controlled by central or local government, will lead directly to increased demand for road traffic. The alternative, a strategy encouraging self-contained communities with integral work, education, health, leisure and retail facilities, safe bicycle routes and cheap, clean, safe public transport just doesn’t appear to be part of government thinking at all. Surely that’s where the answers lie, not in taxing travel?

2. We, the tax payer, just don’t trust government not to start with a zero-net gain tax level on these schemes, and then just ratchet it up to feed the bottomless maw of Treasury spending. Sorry Gordon, this means your lot. We’ve seen this on every indirect tax set by your and previous governments, including stamp duty, inheritance tax, Community taxes, personal allowances. We’ve also seen direct taxes climb to near 50% of our salaries, and I don’t want to think of indirect taxes I pay.

3. In addition, we don’t trust the Government to run this scheme efficiently. Your track record of large-scale IT projects in the public sector is abysmal, and the experience of London’s congestion charging scheme shows that the costs of running the scheme may just outweigh the revenues.
Neither do we trust you to spend any net revenue on public transport. Sorry, but we just don’t, only a fraction of the billions currently raised by taxes on fuel, road-tax and VAT on related services go towards roads or public transport, and we don’t expect this to change.

4. And we don’t trust you not to miss-use the personal data that this scheme will generate.

5. In the past ‘simple’ technology led solutions to complex issues just haven’t worked. In the last 10 years, >5,000 ‘safety’ camera’s have been placed on the UK’s roads, ostensibly to prevent deaths and serious injury in road collisions. Yet, KSI numbers haven’t dropped in those 10 years. However unintended consequences include a growing lack of respect for the Police Service, erosion of driving standards, and creation of a large number of self-serving quangoes. None of these are to the long term benefit of society.

6. And by the way, I strongly suspect that the ‘£30B’ figure quoted as the cost of congestion is one of those number dreamt up by a treasury economist with a political objective to meet. Much like the ‘£1M’ cost quoted for every road collision fatality, where in reality <£100k are costs for damage, Emergency services and medical care, and the >£900k balance are vague opportunity costs.

7. And lastly, no-one is able to demonstrate how tax revenues from road pricing are going to be used to alleviate global warming.

In your last few months of office I hope you will bear these comments in mind as you continue to develop strategy in this area.

Regards,

From the Prime Minister

Here's Tony's response to all the 1.7million irritated Brits who asked him to re-consider his plans for nation-wide road pricing. It's certainly got a ring of truth about it - you can even hear him saying it....

Thank you for taking the time to register your views about road pricing on the Downing Street website.

This petition was posted shortly before we published the Eddington Study, an independent review of Britain's transport network. This study set out long-term challenges and options for our transport network.

It made clear that congestion is a major problem to which there is no easy answer. One aspect of the study was highlighting how road pricing could provide a solution to these problems and that advances in technology put these plans within our reach. Of course it would be ten years or more before any national scheme was technologically, never mind politically, feasible.
That is the backdrop to this issue. As my response makes clear, this is not about imposing "stealth taxes" or introducing "Big Brother" surveillance. This is a complex subject, which cannot be resolved without a thorough investigation of all the options, combined with a full and frank debate about the choices we face at a local and national level. That's why I hope this detailed response will address your concerns and set out how we intend to take this issue forward. I see this email as the beginning, not the end of the debate, and the links below provide an opportunity for you to take it further.

But let me be clear straight away: we have not made any decision about national road pricing. Indeed we are simply not yet in a position to do so. We are, for now, working with some local authorities that are interested in establishing local schemes to help address local congestion problems. Pricing is not being forced on any area, but any schemes would teach us more about how road pricing would work and inform decisions on a national scheme. And funds raised from these local schemes will be used to improve transport in those areas.

One thing I suspect we can all agree is that congestion is bad. It's bad for business because it disrupts the delivery of goods and services. It affects people's quality of life. And it is bad for the environment. That is why tackling congestion is a key priority for any Government.
Congestion is predicted to increase by 25% by 2015. This is being driven by economic prosperity. There are 6 million more vehicles on the road now than in 1997, and predictions are that this trend will continue.

Part of the solution is to improve public transport, and to make the most of the existing road network. We have more than doubled investment since 1997, spending £2.5 billion this year on buses and over £4 billion on trains - helping to explain why more people are using them than for decades. And we're committed to sustaining this investment, with over £140 billion of investment planned between now and 2015. We're also putting a great deal of effort into improving traffic flows - for example, over 1000 Highways Agency Traffic Officers now help to keep motorway traffic moving.

But all the evidence shows that improving public transport and tackling traffic bottlenecks will not by themselves prevent congestion getting worse. So we have a difficult choice to make about how we tackle the expected increase in congestion. This is a challenge that all political leaders have to face up to, and not just in the UK. For example, road pricing schemes are already in operation in Italy, Norway and Singapore, and others, such as the Netherlands, are developing schemes. Towns and cities across the world are looking at road pricing as a means of addressing congestion.

One option would be to allow congestion to grow unchecked. Given the forecast growth in traffic, doing nothing would mean that journeys within and between cities would take longer, and be less reliable. I think that would be bad for businesses, individuals and the environment. And the costs on us all will be real - congestion could cost an extra £22 billion in wasted time in England by 2025, of which £10-12 billion would be the direct cost on businesses.
A second option would be to try to build our way out of congestion. We could, of course, add new lanes to our motorways, widen roads in our congested city centres, and build new routes across the countryside. Certainly in some places new capacity will be part of the story. That is why we are widening the M25, M1 and M62. But I think people agree that we cannot simply build more and more roads, particularly when the evidence suggests that traffic quickly grows to fill any new capacity.

Tackling congestion in this way would also be extremely costly, requiring substantial sums to be diverted from other services such as education and health, or increases in taxes. If I tell you that one mile of new motorway costs as much as £30m, you'll have an idea of the sums this approach would entail.

That is why I believe that at least we need to explore the contribution road pricing can make to tackling congestion. It would not be in anyone's interests, especially those of motorists, to slam the door shut on road pricing without exploring it further.
It has been calculated that a national scheme - as part of a wider package of measures - could cut congestion significantly through small changes in our overall travel patterns. But any technology used would have to give definite guarantees about privacy being protected - as it should be. Existing technologies, such as mobile phones and pay-as-you-drive insurance schemes, may well be able to play a role here, by ensuring that the Government doesn't hold information about where vehicles have been. But there may also be opportunities presented by developments in new technology. Just as new medical technology is changing the NHS, so there will be changes in the transport sector. Our aim is to relieve traffic jams, not create a "Big Brother" society.

I know many people's biggest worry about road pricing is that it will be a "stealth tax" on motorists. It won't. Road pricing is about tackling congestion.

Clearly if we decided to move towards a system of national road pricing, there could be a case for moving away from the current system of motoring taxation. This could mean that those who use their car less, or can travel at less congested times, in less congested areas, for example in rural areas, would benefit from lower motoring costs overall. Those who travel longer distances at peak times and in more congested areas would pay more. But those are decisions for the future. At this stage, when no firm decision has been taken as to whether we will move towards a national scheme, stories about possible costs are simply not credible, since they depend on so many variables yet to be investigated, never mind decided.

Before we take any decisions about a national pricing scheme, we know that we have to have a system that works. A system that respects our privacy as individuals. A system that is fair. I fully accept that we don't have all the answers yet. That is why we are not rushing headlong into a national road pricing scheme. Before we take any decisions there would be further consultations. The public will, of course, have their say, as will Parliament.

We want to continue this debate, so that we can build a consensus around the best way to reduce congestion, protect the environment and support our businesses. If you want to find out more, please visit the attached links to more detailed information, and which also give opportunities to engage in further debate.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Blair