21st February 2007

That's it then. We can all relax, crack open the champagne and say goodbye and good riddance to the prospect of our cars being electronically tagged and tracked 24 hours a day before we're charged up to £1.30 for every mile we drive them. How come the panic's over all of a sudden? Because the pro-Labour Daily Mirror carried a front page headline on 12 February that read WE'LL AXE THE TOLL TAX.

	Despite newspapers claiming road toll plans are dead, the minister responsible for them says that they are very much alive

The message to the worried car-using public really could not have been clearer, but for good measure, it's worth analysing that headline in detail: WE (the Government) WILL (that's definitely, not maybe) AXE (terminate) THE TOLL TAX (the proposed road tolling system). And in an effort to further clarify the apparent good news for drivers, the paper prominently described the above revelation as a "Government vow". Splendid. Job done. RIP Labour's proposed pay-per-mile road charging scam.

Or maybe not. The Mirror's headline told one story, but its "full story" inside seemed to tell quite another. In considerably smaller print, the paper went on to admit that "road charging pilot schemes in city centres will still go ahead". Furthermore, in the same paper on the same day, Transport Secretary Douglas Alexander wrote a column that included his name, picture and a chilling promise that "we are at the start of seeing how road pricing could work".

Does that sound like a man representing a Government vowing to axe the toll tax? I think not. More like a man licking his lips at the prospect of making additional billions from car users who already pay £50billion a year to the Treasury. In short, the Mirror headline says the future road toll plans are dead, while the minister responsible for them says they are still very much alive.

Because road tolls remain close to the top of his agenda, Mr Alexander is pleading for more debate on the thorny subject. So let's provide him with the no-nonsense discussion he says he craves. There are probably tens of millions of us who are against his plans because we know that an extra layer of direct, pay-per-mile charges will make most of us poorer and his Treasury richer.

It seems logical to start the debate by getting him to answer several questions. Will this be run as a money-making exercise by the Treasury, and how many billions does it expect to generate? What, if any, other taxes will be reduced or abolished to offset the cost to the motorist of road charging - the 17.5 per cent VAT on vehicles and fuel, for example?

If the often-mentioned charge of up to £1.30 per mile is, as the Government suggests, an inaccurate figure, what's the accurate one? If introduced, will road tolls rapidly increase by 60 per cent, which is exactly what happened shortly after Labour's congestion charge was introduced in London? And since local democracy in his native Scotland has already rejected the idea of road tolls in Edinburgh, will road charging cover the whole of Britain, or just England? Finally, Douglas Alexander claims that "false allegations" have been made by protestors who are uncomfortable that in order to charge us for every mile we drive, the authorities will have to know where our cars have been 24/7.

So at the end of the month, when you receive an invoice showing that you owe hundreds or even thousands of pounds in road charging fees, I reckon you might also receive a fine and endorsement if you have crept over the speed limit. Isn't that right, Minister?

Mike Rutherford writes for the Times, Daily Telegraph and Independent, presents ITV's Pulling Power and is founder member of the Motorists' Association

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