Supplementary memorandum by HM Treasury
(RP 51B)
ROAD PRICING EVIDENCE—LORRY ROAD-USER
CHARGE
In the course of your current inquiry into road
pricing, you have recently taken evidence about the proposed Lorry
Road-User Charge (LRUC) from Mr Mike Shipp, Director of the LRUC
Programme at HM Customs and Excise. The Transport Committee also
wrote to Mr Shipp on 17 February asking for additional information
about a Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA). I am replying as Minister
responsible for LRUC.
As you will be aware, the rationale for LRUC
has been set out in various Progress Reports following a public
consultation in 2001, which favoured a distance-based road-user
charge for lorries. Although we have introduced paving legislation
in s 137 of Finance Act 2002, as amended by s 292 of Finance Act
2004, we would not normally expect to publish an RIA until the
first substantive legislation is produced on a new measure.
We have also found that it would be premature
to publish a detailed RIA at this stage because the technological
solution, which will determine what hauliers need to do to comply
with the charge, has not yet been decided: we are approaching
the market with an outputs-based specification and leaving bidders
to propose how best to deliver the required outputs.
However, assessing the impact of LRUC on hauliers
and others affected by it is an important part of the way we are
developing the charge. Both the LRUC team and I have engaged with
the haulage industry from the earliest stages of the project and
we are continuing to do so. This is primarily through a sub-group
of the Road Haulage Forum which was set up to consider LRUC, but
we are also aiming to engage as wide a community as possible as
our plans develop and take shape over the next few years. As announced
in last year's Pre-Budget Report (Cm 6408—paragraph 7.46),
we recently published a Discussion Paper which invites responses
on various details of how the charge might operate in practice.
The LRUC team are engaged in the process of
developing an RIA for LRUC in the light of progress with the procurement,
responses to the Discussion Paper and preparations for future
legislation. The Government will be taking into account progress
on these areas in making decisions about the next stages of LRUC
in the context of this year's Budget and Finance Bill and, as
I am sure you can appreciate, there is little more that I can
say about that at this stage. However, we would anticipate that
any RIA published in these early stages would be supplemented
with further RIAs as it becomes clearer precisely how LRUC will
operate in practice and as more detailed legislation is brought
forward.
I hope you find this response helpful as your
inquiry continues.
John Healey MP
Economic Secretary
23 February 2005
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