Severn Bridges (Tolling)
Debate between Peter Bone and Nia Griffith(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Nia Griffith
Perhaps I could ask the Minister to look at that remaining 3% and see if there is any wriggle room at all, because when we are talking about paying the huge amounts mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith), even 3% would make a considerable difference.
VAT is a massively important question. The Minister confirmed in his letter to me that VAT comes off the charge when the crossing is managed by a public, rather than private, company. We would be delighted if that meant an automatic 20% decrease. However, if the rates were to be kept the same, that would be a massive penalty for all the business users who currently reclaim the VAT, because effectively they would have to pay 20% more and would have no opportunity for clawback.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) mentioned the figure of £112 million. Mercifully, the letter from the Minister says that that has reduced to £88 million. Of course, we on the Welsh Affairs Committee would be pleased if the Department for Transport were to revise that figure downward again. There was an issue about how that was calculated in the first place, and we want to ensure that we get up-to-date information about that. Although the Minister previously said that 2018 was a long way away, firms such as Owens are investing long-term, looking eight to 10 years ahead, and they have to make decisions. The more certainty such firms can have, the better.
The Minister may think that we will have another Government in place in 2018—some of us hope that we will—but I am sure that every Department plans ahead and thinks about what it would do. The Department for Transport is in a position to make the necessary assessment and get hold of the statistics, so that we can have more information about the £88 million being paid back, about when there will be an opportunity for the bridge to be debt-free and just have a maintenance charge, and about what would be done with that maintenance charge.
I am a little concerned by the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) saying that he would like a levy on the existing bridges—in other words, on people coming into Wales—to fund a bridge further up the river. I much prefer his first suggestion, which was that such a bridge should be funded through general taxation spread across the UK, to the suggestion that we penalise one particular group of users. One of the main bones of contention about the bridge all along has been that such charges are unusual in this country; it is not like in some countries on the continent where most of the motorway network is tolled. That is why there is such great resentment of the toll, and the level of it, in the first place.
We certainly want a little more clarification of what will happen in the future. I would be grateful if the Minister gave us any indication of where we are going, and kept the Welsh Affairs Committee fully updated with any further information.
Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)
Order. It might be useful for Members to know that I intend for the wind-ups to start no later than 3.40 pm.