The prestigious Wolfson Economics Prize has been awarded to a scheme that calls for the introduction of a per-mile car tax in place of fuel duty and vehicle excise duty.
UCL politics and urban planning graduate Gergely Raccuja suggests in his submission, titled “Paying for road use could be miles better”, that insurers collect drivers’ road bill at the same time as their insurance premiums, reducing administration costs.
Raccuja also claims that the scheme would be more representative of drivers’ usage of the roads, and would be fairer to lower-mileage car owners. Lighter and cleaner cars would be charged less than heavier, dirtier cars, but no numbers have been put to the proposal yet.
The scheme would charge drivers a fee per mile after the first 3000 free miles, which would raise £2.3m per day for the treasury, in place of the increasingly meagre fuel duty revenue. Fuel duty and vehicle excise duty would be scrapped to make way for it, and the extra money generated could then be put into fixing the UK’s pothole-scarred roads. Raccuja says that Britain could be pothole free within half a decade under the scheme.
Raccuja was awarded the prize - which includes £250,000 - by a panel of judges comprising former chancellor Lord Darling, Legal & General chairman Sir John Kingman, economist Bridget Rosewell, former deputy Mayor of London for transport Isabel Dedring and The Times associate editor Lord Finkelstein.
The idea also benefited from tweaks made by the RAC Foundation, the RAC’s motoring research arm.
The Government’s latest vehicle excise duty changes have come under fire, with critics claiming that the rules are not representative of the UK’s car industry and unfairly penalise more expensive, but less emissions-heavy, cars such as the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV. Mitsubishi CEO Lance Bradley was particularly outspoken about the changes.
Read more:
Budget 2017: fuel duty frozen, traffic and diesel tax measures
Car tax: everything you need to know about vehicle excise duty
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Road pricing
Coming soon to your local pub - a bloke selling dodgy black boxes that either defeat or clone the GPS tracking device in your car - well he still needs to earn a living despite selling all those cloned numberplates when the road tax disc was phased out....
Don't politicians consider how they come up with half baked ideas that ignore the side effects on, and creativeness and ingenuity o,f a significant part of their electorate, or are they too dazzled by/in the pockets of the companies flogging the technology?
What a bizarre world we live in...
Hasn't the 'only pay when you use it' idea been suggested a million and one times already?
Big Brother
"Dear Mr Bloggs, please find enclosed your monthly charge for road usage. During the course of our monitoring, we found that you exceeded the speed limit by over 2 mph on 17 occasions. We have reported this matter top the relevant authorities and they will be in touch."