“My Lords, the Government have no plans to introduce road pricing.”

So responded the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Lord Livermore, when asked on the floor of the House of Lords less than two months ago what plans the government has to introduce this new species of tax. It was a line he maintained doggedly throughout the exchange, but one that, if press speculation from this morning (06 November) is to be believed, he and his colleagues have abruptly reconsidered. 

Newspaper reports have suggested that the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves MP, is planning to make drivers of electric vehicles pay a levy of 3p per mile, or a lower rate for hybrids, from 2028. The scheme as reported already looks confusingly designed, requiring drivers to estimate their anticipated mileage over each coming year, pay in advance and then have adjustments made to the following year’s payment based on their actual mileage. 

The Countryside Alliance saw this coming. Government policy is firm on encouraging drivers away from internal combustion engine cars; the current government has restored a plan, introduced and then scrapped under its predecessor, to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030. Regardless of how viable this may be – and the Alliance has raised grave doubts about its feasibility for rural drivers – some degree of transition is inevitable, with one result being an accelerating decline in revenues to the Treasury from fuel duty. 

The view expressed by Lord Harper (Con) in the September exchange is tantalising: 

“If the cost of motoring becomes cheaper as people get more electric vehicles, protecting the environment, we should welcome that it has become cheaper, not look for opportunities to make it more expensive.” 

The unfortunate reality, however, is that unless the government is willing either to live within more constrained means or replace those revenues elsewhere, and if it is determined to source them from motoring, some version of pay-per-mile road pricing is inevitable too. 

That is why, in our representations to the Treasury prior to the Budgets of both last year and this year, we urged the Chancellor to set out an assurance that any future model for road pricing would take full account of the necessity for those living in rural areas to take more and longer journeys by private transport. Rural residents already pay over the odds in both fuel costs and duty. Our research, highlighted in a parliamentary report launched in April 2023, showed that rural households spend almost £800 a year more on fuel than people who live in urban areas, and spend up to 6p per litre more for petrol. 

For those in rural areas who can adopt an electric vehicle, a transition from fuel duty to road pricing presents an opportunity for a fairer system that takes proper account of rural needs. The trailed proposal does no such thing. 

Whether this policy will actually make it into the Budget, whether the scheme design has been accurately reported and how genuine any consultation exercise will be, will all remain conjectural until the Chancellor takes to the dispatch box on 26 November. The Countryside Alliance will be watching, ready as ever to fight the corner for rural communities.