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The freight industry says it welcomes Conservative proposals to charge foreign lorries for every mile they travel on British roads but warns there must be no returns to plans for the discredited Lorry Road User Charge. All lorries, including those registered in the UK, would face road use charges under radical plans to tackle congestion announced by John Redwood's economic competitiveness group. However, UK haulage firms would receive corresponding cuts in either their fuel duty on diesel or truck  excise duty to compensate, meaning their overall level of taxation would not rise.

According to the Conser-vative report, this would not break EU competition rules and would enable UK firms to compete more fairly. Road Haulage Association chief executive Roger King says: "The proposal sounds so far like a re-run of the lorry road-user charging scheme announced by Gordon Brown in his pre-Budget state-ment of 2001 and abandoned in 2005, apparently on the grounds of impracticality and cost."

But he adds: "The recognition of the need for additional road infrastructure is most welcome but we are more cautious in our response to this renewed enthusiasm for lorry road-user charging, however well-intentioned it is in seeking to achieve an urgently-needed levelling of the fuel duties paid by UK and foreign hauliers." The Freight Transport Association (FTA) welcomes the proposals, but believes the Conservatives should guarantee no real increase in tax on UK commercial vehicles  for the foreseeable future.

Geoff Dossetter, FTA external affairs director, adds: "UK lorry operators are already paying extremely high levels of taxation, well in excess of their foreign competitors. "A single UK lorry doing 75,000 miles per year delivering the economy, pays more than £31,000 per year in tax. That enormous burden must not increase."