Highways Finance.
In introducing an amendment to the Finance Bill, whereby the transfer of £500,000 of petrol taxation to the Consolidated Fund is to be conditional upon the Highways Board's minimum needs for maintenance being satisfied, the Government has made a wise concession in principle, though its extent may prove to be slight. Without this amendment, the Board might have been seriously embarrassed and the roads have suffered badly, if revenue fell short of the estimate; and the exigencies Gf the situation have been accepted by motorists with so good a grace that they deserved this assurance against being put at an even greater disadvantage than they had bargained for. How narrow a margin of safety has been left —if any at all —for the protection of the surfaces they have been . specially taxed to build appears in the Minister's statement that £650,000, or £65 a mile, would be enough for " bare maintenance," but " not first-class maintcnance." An amendment which reduces the risks of something even barer than this bare sufficiency is obviously sound economy as well as a fair concession.
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Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20542, 10 May 1932, Page 8
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181Highways Finance. Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20542, 10 May 1932, Page 8
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