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The Government appears to favour EC proposals for sharing national freight data across the Continent, after ruling out a vignette to charge foreign lorries to use the UK's roads. The Freight Data Feasibility Study progress report, published last week, says the vignette had been considered along with collecting data from government sources, collecting data from industry sources and a voluntary registration scheme. But it was decided that none of these schemes would provide value for money.

The report stated that a vignette would have the potential to generate a database with the highest percentage of relevant vehicle records, but the revenue raised would be limited by the Eurovignette Directive Instead the government seems to support the idea of each country maintaining a national database which would be shared across the EU. The DfT plans to argue that these databases should include vehicle registration marks. Under the European Commission plans these databases would be interconnected by 2010.

Jack Semple, director of policy at the Road Haulage Association, says: "We're a little bit disappointed but not hugely surprised. The vignette was strongest of the options, which led to a misperception of how much the gap can be closed. It was adrift from what was possible by EU rules... it shouldn't be seen as a tax issue."  Theo de Pencier, chief executive at the Freight Transport Association, says: "To suggest that none of the schemes proposed would result in safety benefits is frustrating and surprising and fails to recognise the government's own statistics published just last month in Road Casualties Great Britain 2006.

"These statistics show that last year injury and fatal accidents involving LGVs totalled 11,336 of which 1,072 involved foreign registered vehicles," he adds. "As such, although foreign vehicles represent some 4% of lorries on UK roads they are actually involved in over 12% of the accidents. The FTA calculates that the annual cost of casualty accidents linked to foreign lorries is £100m." He is sure that the provision of more and better information as foreign lorries enter the UK would substantially aid our enforcement authorities and help to reduce accident.