Sadiq Khan will bring more driver taxes unless voters remove him

Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan (Image: Getty) Imagine being forced to have a taximeter bolted to your car’s dash, ringing up a fare every time you drive on any London road. A fare you must pay to the London’s Labour Mayor. A fare so high that its whole purpose is to deter you from driving. When Roads Minister Richard Holden MP recently told his colleagues that London’s Mayor already has people working on this scheme, Mayor Khan poured cold water on the idea. So, who’s right? The Mayor’s bloated press office issued a carefully worded statement saying the technology for road user charging is ‘years away’ and that there are ‘no proposals on the table’. As someone who’s been following these plans very closely in City Hall, this raised a wry smile. Pull up a chair, get comfortable, and let me take you on a behind-the-scenes tour of City Hall’s worst-kept secret. We’ll start in July last year: the Mayor’s consultation to expand ULEZ was still running, on paper he was still listening to Londoners’ views. But Transport for London’s Finance Chief had just told the London Assembly that the Mayor had ordered them to ‘explore the technical feasibility’ of a per-mile scheme to follow on from ULEZ. Before the ULEZ consultation even closed, a recruitment drive for a ‘significant number’ of engineers to work on post-ULEZ per-mile charging was already underway. And this is what TfL tells those potential recruits: ‘London was first with Contactless and the Congestion Charge and is now looking to lead the way in introducing a new, more sophisticated type of road pricing. Join TfL now and make this happen. Help us build the next generation road use charging (RUC) platforms.’ No plans, eh? Meanwhile, the ULEZ consultation was already being used to try and soften Londoners up to the idea of per-mile charging. Sadiq Khan set to roll out London ULEZ expansion (Image: Getty) Among six questions on road pricing, one brazenly stated ‘New technology could be used to integrate existing schemes such as the Congestion Charge, LEZ and ULEZ into a smarter, simpler and fair scheme that would charge motorists on a per mile basis’ and continued ‘We are now starting to explore the potential for future road user charging.’ No plans, eh? Imagine my surprise in November last year when the Mayor decided he would expand ULEZ, ignoring overwhelming opposition in the consultation. To get to the bottom of the Mayor’s road charging plans, in February we invited key people to the London Assembly Transport Committee. In an extraordinary session, we were told that there is already a Road User Charging Steering Group meeting regularly within TfL. We were told that they’d already scoped out ways the charges might work, for instance the need to keep the charge simply meant they’d ruled out a per-mile charge that varies with traffic levels, something economists often advocate. And they told us that, although Parliament has explored a cost-neutral way to replace petrol and diesel tax if cars all go electric, the Mayor’s idea is fundamentally different – his idea is to use a high per-mile charge to price people out of their cars. That’s a lot of planning for a Mayor with ‘no plans’. The Mayor’s statement that the technology for per mile charging is ‘years away’ is telling when you know that TfL think the expanded ULEZ will only make money for two years, and that they’re going hell-for-leather to develop that technology. So, what do you think is going to happen in year three, when the ULEZ cameras no longer make any money – according to TfL’s own budgeted plans? If Sir Kier Starmer thinks his defeat in Uxbridge, caused by ULEZ, is the end of his Sadiq Khan-shaped London headache – he’s about to find out Sadiq’s a pain that shows no sign of ebbing.