This election is, perhaps, the most important election since 1910, when the House of Commons finally broke away from the House of Lords; the election could provide a similar shift in power towards the people.
With not a single question on transport in the three leaders’ debates the Environmental Transport Association (ETA) has examined all the parties’ manifestos and commented on their policies.
Director at the ETA, Andrew Davis, said: “The Green party has the most radical proposals regarding transport and the Greens have thought through policies on all modes and how they fit together as part of their vision. If they were to be the government and were therefore in a position to put these policies into effect I think they would find public opinion would be against them and they would have to undertake extensive publicity to get their ideas across. They would be interesting times.”
| Taxes. We would make the cost of private cars more effectively mirror their environmental cost to wider society: | Of course we should but how? Whatever we do we should do equally for all polluters. Motorists already pay far more for climate change than offices. How can we make motorists pay for perceived danger on our roads? And can we tally that with the danger that our government puts us in when it invades foreign countries. |
| Taxes. Discourage use of fossil fuels by bringing back the fuel duty escalator, increasing duty in real terms by 8% per annum and through a series of other measures in this manifesto. | I said in the 1990s that the fuel duty escalator was doomed to fail because it was based on nothing but the desire to tax cars. There should not be any tax on petrol at all – by all means tax carbon, danger, pollution, even social severance but not petrol itself. |
| Taxes. Abolish car tax and replace it with a purchase tax on new cars that reflects their emissions. That way we would affect the types of car chosen at the time that matters, when they are bought new. | People buy cars for all manner of reasons. As long as the environment is fully accounted for within the running cost people will take that into account. Research shows that a purchase tax of £1,560 will have a greater effect than an annual tax of £156 which in turn has a great effect than a weekly petrol tax of £3. (People notice lump sums more). On this basis we could send lifetime a climate offset bill to anyone who has a child. |
| Taxes. We would reduce air travel by introducing a tax on aviation that reflects its full environmental costs. Failure to tax aviation fuel, and choosing not to levy VAT on tickets and aircraft, amounts to a subsidy worth around £10bn every year in Britain alone. • | Totally correct in principle but it would be good if they had given us the details of how they plan to do it. Any duty that could be applied to aviation that took account of the lack of VAT and fuel tax would be useful as long as it did not conflict with international (American) law. |
| Taxes. Carbon quota for all. Everyone given their own quota and can buy or sell to others. | I like this idea and would recommend it to run in parallel to a carbon tax (or even supplant it) if the computer system require could be built on time and to budget – government does not have a good record on this. Perhaps a credit card merchant could provide the service. |
| Local Government. Revive local government, with the introduction of proportional representation and with grassroots democracy spreading through the use of smaller community and district councils. Such authorities should have enhanced powers, and in due course new tax-raising powers. | I cannot agree more. Sovereignty belongs to the people. If people pool part of their sovereignty for the common good then outside of the economy people look to their locality. Therefore I would say that local government may do what it likes as long as it does not affect the wider society. |
| Local government. Decentralise healthcare responsibility to local government, ensure that minimum service levels and national guidelines are provided to prevent a postcode lottery, and oppose further health service centralisation. | I could not agree more. My county has the people and the money to its own health service. |
Information correct at time of publication.
