A Road Pricing bill is being put before Parliament today.
This is despite the fact that 1.8 million signed a petition against it. Despite the fact that the Secretary of State for Transport was elected in Scotland where this bill won’t apply. Despite the fact that the argument for it is complete bollocks.
According to the British government, unless they introduce road pricing congestion will go up by 25% in the next 10 years. Bullshit. If 10,000 vehicles sit in a a traffic jam every day one of our creaking motorways it’s because they need to, not because they enjoy spending 2 hours of their day looking at the back end of a dirty Ford Transit with a hilarious “Clean Me” message scratched into the paintwork. Road Pricing won’t stop those people from driving, it’ll just put them even further out of pocket and put up transport costs for businesses making goods more expensive.
I’ve spoken to the Scottish Executive about this recently and this is a devolved matter and will therefore only apply to England – no MP elected outside of England has a right to debate and vote on this bill, let’s see how many Scottish Liebour MPs poke their hypocritical snouts in.
A million people may have signed a petition against the bill, but 53 million other Brits didn’t sign the petition against road pricing.
Also, even though transport is a devolved matter, any road pricing scheme would be nation wide, i.e would include all the home nations. Meaning that Scotland, England & Wales (but possible not N. Ireland) would be under the same scheme.
In fact if anything the Scots may end up paying more, due the the Greens being in the Scottish Executive and due to the green loby of the SNP, Greens and the Lib Dems.
Calum,
Can I suggest you do what I did before disagreeing with anyone on this subject and phone both the Scottish Executive and Welsh Assembly and check your facts? Both confirmed that road pricing would be a devolved matter and not something that the DfT can impose on them.
Thats not what i read Alistar Darling say.
Also, even if you are correct, which i wont argue with as i am not 110% sure, even if you are right, then there is no way that the scottish and welsh executive wouldn’t follow suit. Especially due to the presence of the Greens in government with the SNP. Also the SNP have a fairly ‘green’ agenda and Salmond has been ambigious with regard to the scheme, etching towards support.
Alistair Darling – like every other Scottish cabinet minister that has no mandate in England – are very careful not to mention that things only apply to England.
If the Welsh and Scots put in their own scheme that’s going to be a bit of a mess isn’t it?