Will a revolt over the cost of motoring decide the next election? No. But will the votes of motorists determine the outcome? Absolutely.
There are 23 million motorists in the UK and the election cannot be won without them. Although they won’t decide their vote on motoring issues alone, it will be one of the factors they take into account.
But beyond the election, we need motorists on board with our national objectives. We have no hope of hitting our carbon reduction targets without a major cut in greenhouse gas emissions from cars. Since we live on a small island that cannot accommodate ever more road building, we cannot tackle congestion without the co-operation of drivers. We can choose the carrot or the stick to achieve our ends, but politically the carrot is always best.
So what are motorists looking for? They are worried about fuel costs, the fairness of motoring taxation and congestion and they want government ‘on their side’. What is government looking for? Motoring taxation has always been a key part of the exchequer’s revenue and must be protected. We need to see an affordable strategy for dealing with congestion and we need to shrink carbon emissions from land transport. Is there a ‘deal’ to be struck that makes everyone happy?
A good start would be to rethink the proposed changes to vehicle excise duty and ensure they apply only to new cars. A retrospective change that hits cars already on the road is unfair, hits buyers of second-hand cars (who, incidentally, are more likely to be Labour voters) disproportionately and will have no impact on carbon emissions since it will not affect the mix of vehicles on the road.
Many motorists think about their carbon footprint but too few are able to act on it and so they want us to make ‘green’ driving choices easier and more attractive. So why not introduce a ‘tax and credit’ system for new cars? A sales tax on ‘dirty’ cars that was used to fund a tax credit on clean cars would be popular and more effective than graduated vehicle excise duty.
Why not also demonstrate that we are serious about moving to the hydrogen economy? At 650C water can be split without electrolysis into hydrogen and oxygen. The secondary coolant water of a modern nuclear power station is heated to this temperature and should be used to produce hydrogen, not evaporated to the atmosphere. We should insist that all new nuclear stations are designed to accommodate this process and we should begin to plan a ‘hydrogen’ infrastructure for 2015 and beyond. We would be cutting carbon emissions and at the same time showing car drivers and manufacturers that we see a future for personal motorised transport even in a ‘green’ world.
Dealing with congestion means road pricing. The challenge is making it popular. To do that we should commit in the long term to a new model of motoring taxation that is not based on fuel tax but on the road charge. We should also involve the private sector in plans to collect it efficiently and bundle it with other services such as pay-as-you-go insurance, mobile phone calls or traffic information.
Road pricing must not be a way of raising extra money. In the short term any revenue raised from road pricing must displace revenue from another source or be used for transport spending that motorists will see as a direct benefit. We also need to prove road pricing can work at a national level, so as well as local schemes why not revisit lorry road pricing? We could put our UK road haulage industry back on its feet by reducing VED on British trucks and raising the lost revenue from non-UK hauliers while at the same time proving to the motorist that road pricing works.