Government proposals to replace the road fund license and fuel duty by road pricing dependent on satellite tracking have been described as "like Orwell's Big Brother" by Christian Voice, the group behind the Jerry Springer the Opera protests, which also monitors assaults on civil liberties.
Stephen Green, National Director of Christian Voice, said today:
"Motorists are already taxed on how much they use the roads, by fuel duty. Fuel duty also reflects the environmental impact of vehicles, highly-polluting vehicles paying more.
"The radical solution is to ring-fence transport income and expenditure in the Department of Transport, and plough all the money raised from motoring into road improvements, and more importantly, public transport. It should be possible at least to halve fares on trains and buses and reach an equilibrium where fuel duty is subsidising an envirogated public transport system, based on a re-nationalised rail network. Christian Voice have already proposed such an idea, in our alternative Queen's Speech.
"We have a profound civil liberties issue with the Government's proposals. The satellite technology they depend on will track every vehicle. fitted with the spy-in-the-car black box. Motorists will be paying for the transmitter and for the miles they drive, but the spin-off is that the Government will know where every car is at every moment. Many of us don't see why the Government should know where we are, and we see a similar control-freak mind-set in the pages of Orwell's "1984". The Government will have data on the whereabouts of every vehicle, and we shall be financing their intrusion into our privacy.
"We must fight this proposal, and push for an alternative which will subsidise public transport and help the environment. Our counter-proposal does exactly that."
ENDS
