Blair: road charging 'not about imposing stealth taxes'

Tony Blair denied today that road charging was about imposing stealth taxes or introducing Big Brother-style surveillance.

In an emailed response to the 1.7m people who signed an online petition opposing road charging, the Prime Minister said: " As my response makes clear, this is not about imposing "stealth taxes" or introducing "Big Brother" surveillance."

He insisted that "pricing is not being forced on any area", but said that the pilot schemes being proposed by the Government "would teach us more about how road pricing would work and inform decisions on a national scheme".

And he hinted that road charging could lead to a cut in car tax.

He said: "Clearly if we decided to move towards a system of national road pricing, there could be a case for moving away from the current system of motoring taxation."

His reply, posted on the Number 10 website this morning after the site's anti-road charging petition closed at midnight with 1,792,168 signatures, said that "all the evidence shows that improving public transport and tackling traffic bottlenecks will not by themselves prevent congestion getting worse".

Mr Blair said the options for tackling congestion were to do nothing, build new roads and widen existing ones, or introduce road charging.

Referring to the second option, he said: "Tackling congestion in this way would also be extremely costly, requiring substantial sums to be diverted from other services such as education and health, or increases in taxes. If I tell you that one mile of new motorway costs as much as £30m, you'll have an idea of the sums this approach would entail.

"That is why I believe that at least we need to explore the contribution road pricing can make to tackling congestion. It would not be in anyone's interests, especially those of motorists, to slam the door shut on road pricing without exploring it further.

"It has been calculated that a national scheme - as part of a wider package of measures - could cut congestion significantly through small changes in our overall travel patterns.

He emphasised that no decision had been made yet and that a national debate was needed.

Nigel Humphries, spokesman for the Association of British Drivers (ABD), said today: "We are delighted with the response to this. I think the final total would have been higher if the petition had gone on longer.

"The number of objectors represents quite a big tip of an even bigger iceberg."

The petition was started by Peter Roberts from Telford.

For technical reasons, No 10 will have to send out the responses in batches and it may take several days for all the signatories to receive their message.

The petition calls on the Government to "scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy".

A Downing Street spokesman yesterday denied that it was embarrassed by the scale of the response to Mr Roberts' petition, which was started on an experimental section of the No 10 website launched in November to allow voters to bring issues to Mr Blair's attention.

Brian Gregory, chairman of the ABD, said: "We don't want further explanations from the Government about what they are trying to do, because explanations from the Government are like promises from a snake-oil salesman.

"This petition will have succeeded only if it causes the Government to stop and think, makes them understand that this is a vote-loser and dump it, or at least call a referendum of everyone in the country on road-pricing."

Mr Gregory said the ABD hopes to contact everyone who has signed the petition in order to build on its campaign for a referendum.

He rejected ministers' claims that the petition's wording was misleading.