News

Motor Transport's sustained criticism of the failed Lorry Road User Charging project has been vindicated - by the DfT minister Stephen Ladyman.

With wording that reflects exactly what MT has said consistently since 2002 and was repeatedly rejected by the government as ill-informed and irresponsible, Ladyman says: "We did a thorough feasibility study, and published it, of Lorry Road User Charging and came to the conclusion that if we went ahead with that charge on its own,  it would cost several billion pounds and deliver us only several hundred million pounds in revenue."

His comments, to the House of Commons European standing committee, reveal three points made public for the first time:

• The feasibility study. This is news to us. What feasibility study? When was it carried out? Where was it published? We have been unable to get a response from the DfT. We suspect Ladyman is referring to a report circulated in secret to those advising on the project in spring 2005.
• The cost difference. This has never been revealed before.
• The link to national road pricing. There was no reference to this before the project was axed, although many suspected there was a link.

When LRUC was announced, as a Treasury project, by Chancellor Gordon Brown in 2001 there were only two publicly-stated justifications: levelling the playing field on duty and taxes and modernising road haulage taxation.

If those really were the reasons  for the project, it is clear from Ladyman's statement that either the government knew that LRUC was a non-starter from the start - or made a major commitment to the House of Commons without even seeing whether it was feasible.

Either way, the question of bad faith towards the haulage industry is inescapable. Years were wasted - not to mention at least £40m of taxpayers' money. Meanwhile, under-taxed trucks are pouring into the country and are the only vehicles on the roads that pay nothing for their use.

Ladyman now says - five years after the LRUC project was launched and 15 months after it was abandoned: "We have agreed with the RHA and the FTA that we will reconsiderWe are examining whether a vignette system could be implemented in a short time scale in advance of a more comprehensive and technologically-advanced road-pricing system."

This is being done within the highly secretive road haulage task group, which the Treasury formed after publication of the Burns Report.

Worryingly, after more than a year, the Treasury has made no comment whatever about progress of the task group.