Highways (Financing) Bill (First sitting)

Jacob Collier Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Justin Madders]

With its wheels.

Ben Garratt: With its wheels, indeed—in terms of using a toll road to improve reliability in that space. The risk of rolling this out to other roads was highlighted earlier. We would have concerns about that. That is why I mentioned that this is a particularly important route for UK trade. We would not want to see the powers in the Bill used to push out tolling much more generally without new capacity. There is language in the Bill about associating it with new capacity, and again, we would seek further ministerial reassurances that the Bill is focused on that and not widespread tolling.

Declan Pang: I would just add, in relation to the role of the ORR, the stakeholder group needs to be strengthened much more in terms of how it is described at the moment. There is no statutory requirement for a representative of freight and logistics to be in the group. Really, it is quite vague as to who would be sitting in it. In theory, you could have representatives from toll companies or from the DFT, for example, and exclude any industry or road users. Clearing that up and making the governance of that much clearer is vital. I agree with the previous witness who talked about having a more independent role for a stakeholder group, which would make it much more impartial.

Ben Garratt: We would concur with all of that.

[Jacob Collier (Burton and Uttoxeter) (Lab)]

Q Both yourselves and the previous witnesses have talked about stronger independent regulation being something that you would support. Obviously, we have the M6 toll, which is a current operator. How well do you think current regulation works for the M6 toll? Is there anything that we need to change that is relevant to this Bill? Those questions are probably for Ben and Declan.

Ben Garratt: It may be that there is a market dynamic around the M6 that means it is working reasonably well, in that there is a good alternative route that is not always congested. I assume that Michael would feel that they are playing in a competitive environment. Logistics businesses, as we said, are often choosing to use it. It is a slightly different situation in other parts of the network when the current crossing is full a lot of the time, so it could be more of a distress purchase, let us say, to use the alternative route. Therefore it is important that it is regulated and that there is a role for the regulator in ensuring fairness, which the broader market might not necessarily apply in all parts of the network.

Declan Pang: The role of the regulator is certainly very important. As part of the process we need an independent element to that and to strengthen the role of the stakeholder group as an independent group.

On the specific aspects of the Bill that relate to toll amounts, clause 25 talks about classes of road vehicle in respect of which tolls are payable. We have some concerns about how that might impact different types of haulage operation and HGVs, which may disadvantage certain types of businesses. That is an example of something that we think needs to be a bit more consistent, given what we have with the M6 toll at the moment.