Labour calls for road-tax review

Press, 4 March 1982, Page 18

Labour calls for road-tax review

Parliamentary reporter The Labour Party has called for a complete review of road-user charges as a system of road-taxation. Three members of the party’s shadow Cabinet, Mr F. ,M. Colman (Works), Mr R. W. Prebble (Transport), and Mr C. J. Moyle (Associate Agriculture) said in a joint statement that the changes were “excessively bureaucratic, cumbersome, difficult to enforce, and, in some cases, downright unfair. “When the former Minister of Transport (Mr McLachlan) introduced the road-user charges in 1977, he said it was not possible to get it right the first time. That has proved quite true. Transport firms, particularly in the rural sector, have gone to the wall, while others have faced severe cash-flow prob-

lems because of road-user charges.”

The shadow-Cabinet members said that the latest increase, of 20 per cent, the maximum allowable under statute, was the fourth in a row of that size and would inevitably have an adverse effect on carriers already facing liquidity problems because of road-user charges and its onerous pre-payment provision. “The increases in roaduser charges since 1979 are double the inflation rate for that period, yet the Minister of Works (Mr Quigley) has glibly-'spoken of an increase as high as 50 per cent for one year.-j- . . “The Government must revise road-user charges in the short term, giving particular attention to the prepayment provision, to the

case for a special formula for rural and other carriers who do not have the same back-loading potential as other operators, and to the administration of the whole system. In the'Tong term there should be an evaluation of an alternative system of. fuel taxation.”. The shadow-Cabinet members said that a consistently high rate of inflation was a big problem for carriers and that the effect of increasing road-user charges ahead of inflation would pass on increased costs to producers such as farmers, who were also fighting escalating costs. Unless the running of the road-user-charges system was streamlined for the benefit of carriers and other road users, it would continue, as at present, to benefit neither group.