Time to scrap unfair road tax and cut fuel duty, too

The mood is changing. Not so long ago, all that was ‘green’ was good and so anything that punished drivers of cars with high-to-middling emissions was thought fair.

But the powers-that-be have whipped things along too fast and too hard. And fears of unleaded soon to reach £1.50 per litre, plus road tax for an ordinary Ford to increase by £90 per year have forced drivers to yell ‘enough’.

Most of us know we should think twice before jumping in the car when a walk to the local shops would do us and those around us good. But change works best when there’s encouragement.

And, the way things stand, there’s too much stick and no sniff of a carrot. Better-off folk will moan at the size of their fill-up bills, tut-tut when renewing their car tax, but shrug and carry on. Or, if it bothers them sufficiently, go shopping for a fuel-efficient, low-CO2 car.

But if you’re hard-up you won’t have the choice to switch cars: you’ll skimp elsewhere to make ends meet. While it’s reasonable to impose road-tax increases on new cars, it’s cruel to levy them on the ones we currently own.

If the government really wants us to change the way we travel – as it says it does – we need real alternatives. Buses and trains that are clean, comfortable and frequent, operating at affordable fares.

Cycle routes that are properly built and genuinely safe to use. The soppy strips painted a yard out from the kerb, that stop and start at random, are an insult to two- and four-wheeled road users.

If even a slice of the estimated £50m a day income from fuel duty was put to such purposes, I think more of us would stomach the extra our driving cost . But with nothing coming in return – and knowing that we pay higher motoring taxes than pretty much any other European country – it’s time for the Government to reconsider.

It should scrap the 2p per litre increase planned for the autumn, chip in a further 2p reduction and shelve plans to up road tax costs for second-hand cars. That done, the Govt should rebuild a public transport system blighted by a generation of under-investment and poor management.

But what do you think? Have you a solution to the current road-tax, fuel-tax mess? We’d love your comments – post ‘em below.