Really worried about the possibility of “pay per mile”

[Yorkiepud2614]

I’ve been seeing more and more about this new proposal “pay per mile” that would replace car duty (I think). Which the average household bill somewhere around £450 - £600. Lots of reports that it may come in this October.
Living in the Highlands this would completely cripple us. Do people really think the new government will bring this change in?

I heard that the only way to get freedoms and avoid woke culture in the West is to immigrate to Russia. They have a labour shortage and plenty of cheap oil so you can drive anywhere. The army pays well so that young people have plentiful opportunities and they do not have to worry about the evils of woke and liberalism to destroy their lives. They will also have the freedom to criticise the west and western culture as much as they want without the mind control police arresting them.

The permanent civil servants are the ones doing the long term planning. To a large extent, it doesn't really matter which party is in power. The general public only really get to know about random/big issues which the media pick up. Most of what goes on is done in committee rooms via cross bench committees working with the permanent secretaries of each department. The actual governing party can only really help steer in the general direction and instruct the civil servants in the general direction, but likewise, the civil servants are constantly telling the "temporary" parliamentary secretary of state a range of options. The permanent civil servants stay in position regardless of party in power as do their small army of civil service staff.

Very true but Alicia Kearns, who someone mentioned above, started to make people worry by doing her survey, has been a British Conservative Party politician, who has been the Member of Parliament since 2019, did not bring up this problem when the Conservatives were in power. Why only highlight the problem and sort of blame the Labour Party after a few weeks they have started to govern and not before? Surely if she had been that competent she should have bought it up while her party were in power and maybe could have achieved something.

Yes it is a worry, are they planning on running it like the French system, that would take time to set up. I would prefer the Swiss system, much more affordable. And if they were to do a more expensive system like the French they surely couldn't charge us the high tax on fuel as well, they can't have it all.

The government needs to keep their sticky beaks OUT. Driving a car is already too expensive in this country.

Honesty I really despair for this country. Don’t know why we are worried about artificial intelligence when we have a pandemic of natural stupidity.

The only ”pay per mile” that will be in force in October is as others note, fuel duty tax. The more you drive a petrol car the more you pay. Its been that way for decades. (Although I would note plenty of other countries - including some parts of the UK - have road tolls, which you could argue are sort of similar)

The technology for anything else simply doesn’t exist. Taxes need to be simple to collect and not easy to evade. There’s a reason nothing similar is in force anywhere else in the world.

Even if the technology did exist, the chances the UK will be the first country in the world are zero. We’re not capable of being first and anything.

This scare tends to be used by right wing politicians in a pathetic attempt to frighten people into voting for them with the tired “war on motorist” rhetoric. Whereas in reality the only “war” is one by car drivers on the planet, pedestrians, cyclists, etc.

Toll roads are pretty common all over the World, even in the UK, we have toll bridges and the M6 Birmingham by pass. It's not that much of a stretch to start charging tolls on busy motorways and congested town centres using the existing gantries and camera poles. Yes, no way will it be in force in October, but it may be announced in October with trial tolls within the next couple of years.

But yes, a national system of "pay per mile" covering every road in the country would be a decade or more away, but never say never. These things have to start somewhere, and modern technology using SatNav, in car black boxes, or "pinging" off cell towers wouldn't need anywhere near as much infrastructure as a network of new cameras everywhere.

One way or another, something along these lines to charge "per mile" WILL be introduced within the decade as the fuel duty taken on petrol and diesel WILL reduce considerably and that loss will need to be replaced by another form of road pricing.

Surely the gvt could just make black boxes mandatory in all vehicles?

Not if they want to get voted back in and last their full five years.

My worry, as a non-driving pedestrian, is that the already dangerous rural lanes will become a great deal busier if there are differential charging rates for roads - with drivers seeking to stay off the expensive primary network routes.

I read about this too, and am moving to the Highlands quite soon, I dread this law coming in , on top of all the other ways we pay tax already , in the Highlands there's also more repairs on cars due to the terrible state of the roads. I will be also working in community so driving for work too, and this will also hit campers touring around i expect which we like to do This really is the most unfair tax of all, why not just put a tax on electric cars too, just cos they are better for environment they still add to the damage to roads especially the weight of some of them with their batteries , or pay per mile in cities where there is good transport and no excuse to use car

I do think if we hear anything about this in October it will be to announce a proposal, unless there is already a simple process proposed. One simple idea might be to charge once each year based on kerbside weight and annual mileage. Don't forget that taxes are simply the governments means of managing wealth distribution and inflation. Tax pays for nothing.

I've not read the updates but isn't this going to be a way of "scrapping" car tax (easily avoided by dodgy people since they stupidly scrapped the tax discs) and adding those contributions to fuel?

It’s harder now it’s all computerised. It pings up on cameras if your cars been used, we frequently have the dvla do sweeps of our area and just take them away. So you could be out shopping and find your car gone.

That may have been how it looked to be going with electric cars being exempt from vehicle tax.

But, I believe electric cars (not sure if some or all) are to be subject to paying vehicle tax from next year.

So it's a bit strange to introduce vehicle tax on EVs if there's a longer term plan to scrap it completely.

I think every car is going to pay tax from next year. My 2016 petrol Fiesta, at the moment is £0, is going to be £20 I think next year

I didn't realise that happened but I'm glad to hear it does.
(If the vehicle is leased that must put the person leasing it in a very awkward position?😬)
If vehicles which are non-compliant with road tax can be identified and removed like this then it should be straightforward to enforce a pay per mile system.

That is part of the reason for the deficit.

I was paying three times that 40 years ago for a bog standard family car probably not any bigger than a modern Fiesta.

Actually it was more than I thought… £90 for 12 months in 1984.

Yup. Nail on the head. Emissions targets etc are costing the country heavily. A bit stupid to give people cheaper vehicle tax and lower taxable benefit in kind taxes etc to "nudge" people into buying low emission cars and then paying people under the scrappage scheme for old, perfectly serviceable cars to be taken off the road and left to rot in fields! What about all the energy and scarce resources used to build new cars, transport them half way across the World, etc. Utter madness. Not just the environmental damage, but also the loss of tax revenue!

At least now we're seeing taxes rise for low emission and electric cars, as they should have done a long time ago, in fact, they should never have been subject to such low taxes (or zero tax) in the first place.

No. It is widely believed but a complete myth that "keeping your old banger going for more years is actually a lot more environmentally friendly than buying a new EV!"

See chart below. Getting a new EV rather than continuing to run your old ICE car does result in more emissions initially, but the difference then rapidly disappears and reverses. Huge environmental payoff long-term, especially since the UK electricity supply will only continue to decarbonize (and EVs produce fewer emissions even in the hypothetical situation that the UK was still getting most of its elec from coal, which it is not).

I don't think it's instead of car tax, I think it's instead of fuel tax (because people won't be using cars that need fuel). But it's going to be a good few years yet, as it's going to take ages for the majority of people to stop using cars that need petrol or diesel.

Depends on mileage! Fair enough for high mileage users. But not for low mileages.

That is a fair point! Although, as EVs get more and more efficient and also easier to produce, the cutoff point will start to decline as well.

Just returning to the main point of the thread, but I was interested to see that Iceland appears to have a “pay per km” system going on for EVs and hybrids, which may offer a roadmap for other countries going forward. They introduced it earlier this year, so this is a very new pioneering development which will bear watching, to see how it works out.

The Icelandic system does not yet give any discounts for rural residents, and the reason given for this is that, at present, there are fewer EVs or hybrids in rural areas of Iceland, so perhaps this policy will change going forward as EVs make inroads into rural Iceland.

https://island.is/en/kilometer-fee

https://vegirokkarallra.is/en#will-the-per-kilometer-charge-weigh-more-heavily-on-rural-residents

Yes it depends on your annual mileage and the size of your old car. I've got an elderly medium sized hatchback and do 3,000 miles a year, so even though I'm generally an advocate for electrification I'm not feeling the need to go electric until the existing one dies: in the meantime the second hand electric market is improving.