Highways (Financing) Bill (First sitting)

Olly Glover Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2026 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Olly Glover (Didcot and Wantage) (LD)]

Q It is a pleasure to serve on another Bill Committee with you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. One of my key concerns about the Bill is that a lot of it is about stuff being decided by regulations and secondary procedures, and by the ORR. There is a real concern about making sure that rights of consumers—the people who are going to be charged to use these roads—are protected. Do you have any suggestions, in addition to what you have already said, about better safeguards that the Bill could have to make sure that tolls are set and continue to be maintained at an affordable level for the people who will use these roads?

Steve Gooding: Our starting point would be that the right sort of duties are applied to the ORR in the Bill, in terms of having regard to the interests of road users and customers of this service. Of course, there are certain things that the Bill provides for that we have not seen yet: we do not know what the terms of the licence will be, we do not know what the terms of the Secretary of State’s guidance to the ORR will be, and we do not know exactly the ORR’s template will be. I am well aware that there is always a balance to be struck between what goes into those documents and what could actually be in the Bill. In principle, I think that the protection is there, but in practice, it might be sensible to have a bit more in the Bill and a bit less reliance on the other documents—but until you see the drafts of the other documents, it is quite hard to tell.

Edmund King: Clause 26 talks about tolls being “fair and transparent”. I think that we would like to have seen something built in there about affordability, because they can be fair and transparent, but can people afford them? In effect, the lower Thames crossing and Dartford will have a monopoly position. If you want to cross the Thames to the east of London, they are your choices.

When the M6 toll first opened, it was rumoured that the tolls for HGVs were initially artificially high and that the operators did not particularly want HGVs to cause wear and tear on the toll. I think that question of affordability is important, and it goes beyond cost: if people cannot afford the toll, they will use other, inadequate roads or go the long way around the M25, which is already vastly congested near Heathrow. I think something about affordability should be built in—perhaps linked to inflation; something more—so that the monopoly position cannot be exploited.

[Olly Glover]

Let me make a brief comment. On your point about some of the things that are dependent on the Bill, such as the licence, not yet being specified, we had a similar debate during the passage of the Railways Bill through the Commons. I think the Government ultimately decided to at least start publishing some of those things alongside it, so I hope the Minister might give some thought to that.

[Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)]

Q It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. Thank you to both of our witnesses for being here. You will not be surprised to know that, as the Member of Parliament for Dartford, I have residents who are hugely inconvenienced by the overcapacity of the current Dartford crossing every day and who really welcome the plans, which have been advanced very well under this Government, to build the lower Thames crossing.

One concern for them is that there might be perverse incentives via the tolling to use one crossing rather than another. Do you have views about how we could make sure that does not happen and what the ORR would need to do in negotiation with the licence holder? Do you have any views about local resident discount schemes, including how well they have worked elsewhere and whether they should be a necessary part of any future arrangement, although that may not be in the Bill?

Edmund King: Those are all relevant questions, even down to the time that the toll applies—is it 24 hours a day or 6 am to 10 pm, as it is currently? Are motorcycles free? What is the resident discount? Could there be a resident discount? We believe that there should be, because frequent users, such as those who live on one side of the crossing and work on the other, are already paying motoring tax in other ways, but is this a tax on jobs? Those issues are vital. It is also vital to get the support of local people, whether they be businesses or drivers. Giving those concessions would help win that support, particularly when we know that the construction period will cause a lot of congestion and adverse effects. Those are all valid points.

Steve Gooding: All I would add is that this is one of the challenges with creating an overarching framework in the Bill rather than something specific to the Dartford and lower Thames crossings. I do not doubt that in the Secretary of State’s guidance to the ORR, there will be explicit reference to the need not to create the sort of problems that you envisage and to set toll levels in such a way that manages the traffic flow between the two crossings, but we have not yet seen that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Madders]

That is very helpful. I wonder whether the other two witnesses have anything to say from the other side of the road, so to speak.

Ben Garratt: It is a challenging calculation. Look at how much the logistics sector is currently paying to cross the Dartford crossing: it is about 40% of the road use but it is more because HGVs and larger vehicles pay more than that. We can assume they are paying over £100 million a year to cross it, as a rough calculation. The cost of congestion to drivers is about £200 million a year. We can add on to that—we do not have the numbers, but we know beyond that is the cost to wider supply chains and the cost of unreliability. We can make an assumption, thinking about the experience on the M6 toll, that the sector would rather pay up front for reliability than pay during the day for a lack of reliability, knowing that the costs for that are much bigger than the £200 million because of the impact across supply chains.

Declan Pang: The most important thing for our members is reliability. They want reliability and consistency of journey times. Congestion can be very unreliable, which drives a significant amount of cost into the supply chain, so that is, first and foremost, the most important consideration. Clearly, if we ended up in a situation in the future where we had multiple tolled routes, the cumulative impact of that situation would be deeply concerning to us, but I appreciate that the Bill is looking specifically at the lower Thames crossing.

[Olly Glover]

Q Could you say a little more about what you think can be learned from the M6 toll in terms of how we might look to improve or amend the Bill? That is perhaps the largest geographical manifestation of tolling at the moment, and the most similar to the presumed application of this Bill to the lower Thames crossing.

Ben Garratt: There are features of the Bill about which we are not seeking amendment but seeking reassurances. For example, it must be ensured that there is a strong regulator for establishing the scheme and monitoring it going forward. That relates to the licensing conditions too. Therefore, we see value in there being a Bill setting a broad framework and including the regulator in that, rather than potentially doing things how they have been done in the past in the sense of having individual schemes. We would seek reassurances about the strength of the regulator in that space, and that it will think about freight and logistics when it thinks about economy.

We have heard from Michael about how the sector is voting with its feet—

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Madders]

Q I will briefly follow up on your comments. Obviously, this Bill is designed to cover the trunk roads network. It is correct, isn’t it, that mayors currently do not have any specific control over those?

Ralph Smyth: That is correct, yes. It is almost like an area that devolution has forgotten. We hear about the importance of roads; we heard about that from the previous witnesses, so it does appear a bit odd that there is not much there. One thing is that currently there is a duty, whether you are a local highway authority—county councils and so on—or the strategic highways authority, which is National Highways at the moment, to co-operate, but this Bill will create a new type of private highway authority and it will not join up. Some of the schemes that have seen funding withdrawn in road investment strategy 3 are very close to urban areas, and if they were funded via this route, that would not be an integrated approach and would be very different from what we are hearing about for the railways, where the Government have talked about the need for a single guiding mind.

[Olly Glover]

Q On that theme, do you have any concerns that the financing arrangements proposed in the Bill and its general intentions could affect the balance of investment between strategic roads and local transport networks?

Ralph Smyth: Very much so. There is the issue of crowding out. If there is certainty that there is going to be a road scheme, that makes it harder for a mayor or someone else to promote an alternative, such as a tram or a rail or bus upgrade. After this meeting, I am taking part in the mass transit taskforce, where perhaps those issues will come up.

[Mike Reader]

Q If tolling is used, what is preferable—a statutory regulator with enforceable licensing conditions, or an unregulated commercial tolling arrangement?

Ralph Smyth: We heard a lot about regulation in the previous session. If you look at Ofwat and Ofgem, their income comes from lots of different companies. Whatever you might think of some of the water companies, at least that means diversity of income. You can compare that with the ORR. With nationalisation, now—or soon—all the money will be coming from the Department for Transport. It is similar for much of the road function. That is about National Highways. We are talking about only a very small bit if there is going to be only one toll scheme. If you put yourself in the shoes of an investor, would you be confident that that was an independent regulator if pretty much all its business came from one person—the Secretary of State for Transport?