Abolition of Forth and Tay Road Bridge Tolls (Hansard, 7 May 1985)

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to abolish tolls on the Forth and Tay Road Bridges.

The Bill is designed to rectify a long-standing injustice whereby Fife is the only county in Britain in which people have to pay tolls on the south as they enter and also on the north as they leave the bridge. Secondly, it is designed to end one of the early, expensive and unfortunate experiments in privatisation, as a result of which motorists crossing have to pay for the bridge four times over—as taxpayers, as ratepayers, as road tax payers and as toll payers. Thirdly, it is designed to remove one of the many Government-imposed barriers to the creation of jobs in Fife, where unemployment is rising faster than in almost any other part of the country.

The Bill also provides an opportunity for Conservative Members to fulfil at least one of their election promises to the people of Scotland. With broken promises on pensions and on rates high in their minds, Ministers may care to consider that more than 10 years ago, at exactly the same time as they promised to abolish domestic rates, the Conservatives gave a specific manifesto undertaking to abolish tolls on the Forth, Tay and Erskine bridges. Since their return to office in 1979, with tolls, as with rates, the Government's response to their long-standing commitment has been not to abolish the tolls but to double them, and then to attempt to raise them again—ignoring all respectable advice, including that of their own appointed officials, that the present system of charging tolls is unfair, inconsistent, inexplicable and economically unsound.

Tolls are unfair because some bridges, such as the Forth and Tay, are subject to tolls, while others, such as Kessock and Ballachulish in Scotland, and many more in England, are not. Tolls are inexplicable because the Government cannot satisfactorily explain to anyone the criteria whereby tolls are selectively imposed. Tolls are also illogical. Their only public justification is that there are exceptional benefits to users, but Ministers have never been able to define those benefits, because they are not definable.

The charging of tolls on the Forth and Tay bridges in particular is unfair, inconsistent and illogical because the roads involved, which the Government say offer exceptional benefits, are essential elements of our national road system. Eleven million vehicles cross the Forth bridge every year. It is indisputably an indispensable part of the British motorway system and it is listed as part of the European system of major roads. It is also the main northerly route for Britain's North sea oil-related traffic. What possible justification can the Government have for continuing to classify the Forth road bridge merely as a private road and accepting no responsibility for its debt, running and repair costs?

When the bridge was first conceived 40 years ago, the then Labour Government offered to pay £4⅔ million, which was 75 per cent. of the projected cost of building the bridge. By the time the bridge was completed, that contribution represented only one quarter of the final cost. If the Government were prepared to pay most of the cost in the 1940s when the economic benefits were perhaps 659 speculative, what explanation can the Government now give for their refusal even to reconsider the finances of a bridge which is clearly an essential element of our road system?

The toll system on the Forth is unsound for yet another reason. Uniquely, users of the Forth bridge contribute tolls not just to pay off the £13 million cost of the bridge but to pay off £6 million of debt accumulated in building 8 miles of motorway approach road—a stipulation which the Secretary of State's most recent investigator found extraordinary, unfair and unreasonable. As a result of all this, the Forth bridge, which cost £19 million to build 21 years ago, now has a larger debt than it had when it was completed. Even after 170 million cars have crossed it, paying £34 million in tolls, the debt continues to rise and there is no sign that this trend can ever be reversed.

The only legal constraint upon the Secretary of State when he seeks to push up tolls on the Tay bridge, as well as on the Forth, is the ritual public inquiry, which has become a circular exercise in self-justification. The Secretary of State recommends an increase, he appoints his own reporter to examine the recommendation, he receives the reporter's report and then accepts his original recommendation and raises the tolls.

These bridge tolls should be abolished because they are a tax not only on cars and on travel but on jobs and industry in Scotland. Last week, a monthly rise of exactly 5,000 was reported in the British unemployment figures and half of that increase was in Scotland. More serious than that, 14 per cent. of the overall increase was attributable to three constituencies close to the Forth bridge, including my own constituency, which make up only 0.5 per cent. of the British population.

For the first time ever, there are officially more than 20,000 unemployed in Fife, and I believe that the real figure is nearly 30,000. In the past six years, 12,500 jobs have been lost and as many jobs again are at risk as a result of the threat to Rosyth dockyard and to the mining industry in Fife. The Government's response to this record and rising level of unemployment has been to take from Fife £20 million in regional development grants over the next five years. The Secretary of State, in proposing toll increases, will be taking an additional £1 million in tax from the county of Fife and from bridge users.

660 The Government's only response to my plea for emergency help for areas in my constituency with 40 per cent. male unemployment was a letter saying that the unemployment figures did not justify a major initiative by the Government. How much higher must unemployment rise before the Government are moved to take action, whether by removing bridge tolls or through direct funding of job creation projects in Fife?

The Government's record on election promises in Scotland is appalling, as the Secretary of State and his Ministers know. The Secretary of State's reputation in London, as he well knows, is that not of Scotland's Minister in the Cabinet, but of a district commissioner for an economically derelict, electorally dispensable northern outpost. If it is within his power to make a small exception to the Government's disastrous record in Scotland, the Bill offers him that chance.

The Bill will bring an end to the expensive privatisation experiment on the Forth and Tay, which has gone so badly wrong, and provide for the future employment security of those who work on the bridge. The cost of abolishing tolls will be small, but the economic benefit in uninterrupted flow of traffic, cheaper fuel bills, reduced administrative overheads and in the encouragement of industry north of the Forth will be substantial.

Perhaps the journey of Conservative Ministers to meet their diminishing band of supporters at the Scottish conference in Perth will be a little easier if they can tell the conference that they will support the Bill, and that, although they cannot fulfil their most recent election promises to the Scottish people, they will at least honour the long-standing one to abolish tolls.