Road Pricing

The principle of road pricing doesn’t bother me but in practice it’s just another way the government gets to see where you are, what you’re doing, how much you’ve got and what you’re spending it on all the time. Governments are obsessed with control, if the last few years haven’t shown people enough…
 
if all they're asking is for you to declare mileage it's hardly something they won't already know from an MOT for example, facebook or google ect. probably know way more and can influence more folk than the government does and I'd say that control was necessary at the start of these last few years at least(assuming you mean the lockdowns), anyway that's unrelated.

as for the link - it's a fair point regarding lost tax revenue with electric vehicles though, the car tax we pay goes somewhere and there has to be something to replace in some form or another whether or not road pricing is the thing I guess we'll find out
 
Most new cars already track each journey (MyT etc) so the technology is in place now , “black box“ used by insurance companies have been around for years and many young drivers opt/ must have to have them for insurance cover. Until we see a proposal it’s hard to see if you would be better/worse/neutral under new proposals 🤔 The idea of those who use the roads the most should pay the most has some logic 🤔
 
The 'lost' revenue to electric cars is a bit of a misnomer for me when taxes are so high. Proportionately more revenue is extracted from the economy as a whole than ever before. It's who is sharing the burden that could be addressed. The irony is that it's those that are relatively well off that have received the tax advantages and incentives to go electric. I never understood why for years people who could afford a £100k+ Tesla got free road tax, thousands of pounds in grants towards the cost of buying the car and grants to install charging equipment. But that's all water under the bridge.

The revenue takes about £5bn in VED and £25bn in fuel duty (yet the gov only spends about £9bn maintaining the roads) - so it'd make more sense to keep chipping away at fuel duty - which if you think about it is a road pricing scheme in itself - you use your car, you need more fuel, you buy more fuel, you pay more fuel duty.

There is also the fairness issue. These schemes are often dreamt up by civil servants and activists that live in major cities where everything is on their doorstep and they hardly ever use a car (or even own one). The practical reality for the millions of people that depend on the car means taking journeys on a regular basis.
 
I think the linkage between money for roads , The Road Fund Licence , ended years ago when the government moved to Vehicle Excise Duty, and probably before then.

At the end of the day all tax ends up in the treasury “pot” how it gets spent is another question. Why should old cars not pay any tax , or need an MOT , especially when they are probably more polluting than current models 🤔 No system is perfect but change is coming
 
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