Lib Dems plan motorway tax for truck drivers
Date: 20 September 2007
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The Liberal Democrats have announced a plan to tax freight haulage drivers for using motorways in the UK.
At the party conference yesterday, Lib Dem environment spokesman Chris Huhne set out a series of 'green' proposals, which include charging lorries to use roads, getting rid of nuclear power stations, building a high-speed rail network, giving more weight to green mortgages and indexing fuel duty to GDP growth.
"We are the first British political party to tackle global emissions from every part of our economy: from transport, from electricity generation, from our housing, from offices and from factories," he said.
Meanwhile, the Tories' Quality of Life Working Party found that road freight accounts for around eight per cent of the UK's CO2 emissions.
However, the Freight Transport Association (FTA) asserts that the sector has done a great deal to improve the efficiency of freight fleets and reduce CO2 emissions.
Methods used include improving operational efficiency, focusing on driver fuel saving techniques and the use of biofuels, which have less of a carbon footprint.
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