June 25, 200917 yr Pay-as-you-drive scheme shelved: Labour backtracks after 1.7m sign petition By Ray Massey Last updated at 7:45 PM on 25th June 2009 Comments (41) Add to My Stories A national pay-as-you-drive road tax plan has been shelved by Labour after the scheme sparked the largest petition on the Downing Street website. New Transport Secretary Lord Adonis said it was 'not the time' to introduce the scheme that would see drivers pay up to £1.50 a mile to use the road. The plan will not be included in the Labour manifesto in the run up to a General Election and will not be introduced in the next parliament if Labour is re- elected, he revealed. Going nowhere: The scheme would have tackled gridlock by charging drivers Under the controversial scheme, cars would be fitted with electronic tags or black boxes and be tracked either by satellite or roadside beacon every mile they drive - with charges rising significantly at times of peak congestion. When first suggested, the pay-per-mile scheme was meant to replace road tax and taxes on fuel - but ministers backtracked on that commitment following pressure from the Treasury, which was worried about falling tax revenue. But the Government has cooled considerably on the scheme since early 2007 when 1.7million signed a petition on the Downing Street website. Lord Adonis: It's not the right time for the £1.50-a-mile pricing scheme With the prospect of electoral wipe-out staring the Government in the face, the unelected Lord Adonis confirmed that, if re-elected, Labour would not go ahead with it. 'We will definitely not proceed with a national road- charging scheme in the next parliament,' he said. Lord Adonis was speaking after a conference in London in which he made a speech setting out 'My Transport Manifesto' - yet failed to refer to road-pricing. 'This is not the time to be putting that before the British public,' he said. Successive ministers have distanced themselves from the roadpricing idea, first advanced in July 2004 when Chancellor Alistair Darling was then Transport Secretary. Lord Adonis's predecessor Geoff Hoon had said the UK was 'a long way off' adopting a national roaduser-scheme. His predecessor, Ruth Kelly, had said in November 2007: 'Whilst it is possible that road pricing could have the potential to be extended to include parts of our national networks, that is a decision for the future.' Lord Adonis said it was important for any such scheme to have a democratic mandate. But there is still scope for councils to introduce their own local road or congestion charging schemes similar to those in London and parts of Durham. Voters in Edinburgh threw out plans for a road-pricing scheme in their city. And plans for a similar scheme in Manchester were rejected in December last year when a referendum saw voters reject it by four to one. AA president Edmund King welcomed the Government U-turn. He said: 'I think ministers have done the sensible thing by dropping these plans. 'We surveyed 15,000 AA members and found 86 per cent did not trust the Government to come up with a fair system of road pricing.'
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