HGV Road User Levy Bill

Lord Wigley Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wigley]

My Lords, I will intervene very briefly and take up the last point emphasised by the noble Lord, Lord Snape, that there should be a level playing field and the same system of charges should apply. I do not object to the approach that the Government are undertaking, although the amount of money to be collected is miniscule in the context of the needs and indeed, I suspect, the damage that is inflicted on roads and the cost of adapting roads to handle the ever larger vehicles that seem to be coming over.

The point that I want to put to the Minister—he may or may not be in a position to reply—is that of course the highway system is devolved. We in Wales have a very substantial cost arising from the two main east-west roads, the M4 in the south and the A55 in the north, which carry a very large volume of traffic to and from the Irish Republic via Holyhead and the ports of Pembrokeshire. This means that a disproportionate cost lands on the budget of the National Assembly, and that is over and above the cost of adapting the small roads, bridges and all the rest to be able to deal with some of the very large vehicles coming from the continent.

Is the money just going into the Treasury as another source of funding that is not in any way related to expenditure on roads? If it is meant in some way to meet the additional costs arising from such transport, what mechanism is there to allow even a small proportion of this to go through to the budget of the National Assembly? On a 5% basis we would expect about £1 million, which is hardly going to fill the potholes that are caused by these vehicles. As a matter of principle, this is something that should be taken on board. Certainly, if this is a first step, I hope that there will be further steps to genuinely provide a level playing field.