The Conservative Party will resurrect the Lorry Road User Charge, but has not provided any details of how it would work. Trade associations have given a guarded response to the news that a Conservative government would resurrect the Lorry Road User Charge (LRUC), dumped by Labour in 2005, as a way of making foreign operators pay for using British roads.
Speaking to members of the Road Haulage Association (RHA) at Westminster last week, Shadow
Transport Secretary Theresa Villiers insisted that a Tory government would take steps to ensure that foreign operators "pay tax to the Chancellor of the Exchequer". However, she stopped short of saying how an 'LRUC Mk II' might work in terms of UK operators receiving a commensurate reduction in fuel duty or VED. "There's still a lot of detail that needs to be discussed," she insists.
Freight Transport Association (FTA) spokesman Geoff Dossetter says: "We'd look at it again. The reason we held on to it in the first place was that it provided a way to charge foreign trucks while on the other hand separating any charge for LGVs from cars - which is the big issue with road charging."
RHA chief executive Roger King confirms that the Tories have only been looking at an LRUC on major trunk routes and motorways and asserts: "It has to be everything or nothing, on all roads, if it's going to work - then you can have a sensible rebate
system. A VED reduction wouldn't be anything like enoughthere's no other way". However he maintains that although an essential user rebate for UK truck operators "is far more attractive we'd be content to establish the principle and built up the rebate over successive years."
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