Roads: Charging

Lord Kinnock Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

The noble Lord makes an important point, of which my department is well aware. However, the objective of the lorry road-user charging scheme is to ensure a competitive and free market for all operators, whether UK or foreign.

[Lord Kinnock]

My Lords, I strongly welcome the action being taken by the Government in pursuit of an entirely necessary policy. In view of the various complications, could not the Government, so far as concerns both heavy vehicles and other vehicles, pursue the cruder but nevertheless effective course of abolishing road fund licences and heavy goods licences and replacing them with fuel charges, which would at least produce an equitable and economic relationship between road use, the nature of vehicles and the effect on the environment?

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the noble Lord makes an interesting point. One problem that we experience is foreign vehicles coming in with very large fuel tanks, sometimes containing in excess of 1,000 litres of fuel, which enable them to travel all around the UK and then leave without buying any fuel here. There is also an EU directive on the minimum vehicle excise duty rate.