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Road pricing scheme a 'non-starter'

This article is more than 17 years old

A national pay-as-you-drive scheme will stall unless the government plugs gaps in the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency's (DVLA) database, warns Owen Paterson MP, a Conservative spokesman for tranport.

The road-pricing system, which "could be implemented within ten years" would charge the UK's 42 million drivers around £1.30 a mile to use busy roads at peak times and would have to rely on the integrity of DVLA records to track down drivers liable for paying the levy.

Mr Paterson told the Guardian that the scheme was a "non-starter" unless the DVLA finds the estimated 1.1 million drivers missing from its register.

Moreover, according to the DVLA's latest survey 2.6% are untraceable, and a further 2.1 million drivers are not immediately traceable but can only be tracked down "following further enquiries with neighbours", according to the DVLA.

Mr Paterson said: "The scheme is a complete non-starter. We do not get off first base until we have a secure database. We should not underestimate the scale of the task and the difficulty of keeping track of 42 million drivers and 33m vehicles."

Mr Paterson points out that the £47bn per year in taxes due to be raised from motorists could be at risk if a nationwide road pricing scheme is riddled with database problems.

"The database issue is fundamental. If you look at the government's track record on big IT projects, to suddenly switch the whole country to road pricing could completely jeopardise the whole exchequer. If the chancellor makes it revenue neutral then the government has to rely completely on road pricing."

Mr Paterson said officials in the Swedish capital Stockholm, which ran a road pricing trial recently, were "shocked" at how many cars could not be tracked down in the national licence database.

Unlike London's congestion charge, which charges a flat fee for entering a restricted zone, a national scheme would entail installing a satellite-monitored black box in cars. Motorists would be charged according to the time of day, the route they take, and the length of their journey.

Critics have warned that the logistical demands of putting a box inside every British car would be enormous, although insurer Norwich Union has set the ball rolling by launching a pay-as-you-drive insurance policy that monitors each journey via a black box tracked by a satellite.

StageCoach, one of Britain's largest bus operators, has also criticised the concept of a nationwide scheme. It warned recently that the "dysfunctional" structure of local government will would hamper the roll-out of a national road pricing network.

Local authorities across the UK are applying for funding to set up individual road pricing schemes, which will be the forerunners to a nationwide project that will incorporate motorways. Mr Paterson said such schemes will be of minimal use in setting up a nationwide levy.

He said: "I do not understand what we are going to learn from these quite limited provincial schemes that will be tailored to the unique congestion problems of towns and cities. It's a hell of a leap to get to a national road pricing scheme by 2015, which has never been done anywhere in the world."

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