Other parties are witless and Opportunistic

Michael Howard and Charles Kennedy are both being opportunistic in supporting the fuel protesters. And Labour is being witless as usual when it comes to dealing with fuel price issues in a manner that's both fair and sustainable.

Fuel duty brings in £23 billion a year, but the total cost of road transport to society every year is twice that. We must take into account not only costs of roadbuilding and road maintenance, but also the costs of crashes, provision of emergency services, the huge health impacts of traffic pollution and that road transport directly contributes more than a fifth of greenhouse gases. Climate change is the biggest threat to our economy in coming decades, and we simply can't let up on dealing with it.

Fuel prices must increase. But only on the condition that there are also tax reforms that redistribute wealth downwards so that eco-taxes don't impact unfairly on poorer people. We must also offer much more support to hauliers and invest hugely in alternatives to the car so that people have proper choices in mode of transport.

British governments have had thirty years to make Britain immune to increases in oil prices. By failing to respond to the first oil crisis in 1973, and the subsequent ones, they have laid the basis for repeated problems in this area. Only the Greens are thinking seriously about how we need to stop being oil dependent. We must not be deflected from the effort of tackling climate change and reducing the thousands of annual deaths and hospitalisations attributable to traffic pollution.

Philip Booth, Press Officer, Gloucestershire Green Party.

(ii) INCREASE FUEL DUTY

Those, like the AA, who complain that Britons pay more fuel tax than the rest of Europe should consider how greatly Britain subsidises car use (Citizen 20/07/04). Unlike most Europeans, we pay very few road tolls. The scrapped fuel duty increases, would have been in line with increases in the cost of living, and represent only a small fraction of what car use costs this country.

Traffic on Britain's roads has risen by 18% since 1990 making Britain's roads the most congested in Europe. The CBI estimates suggest that road congestion costs the UK economy up to £20bn every year. In addition to billions spent in road building and maintenance, health care costs and other external factors- up to another £23bn a year.

And the costs are not only financial. In addition to the 3,500 people killed in accidents on Britain's roads last year 24,000 are killed each year by air pollution of which road traffic is a major cause.

Despite complaints about fuel duty increases drivers have had a much better deal from the government than users of other forms of transport. Between 1975 and 2000 the real cost of motoring has stayed static relative to the cost of living. In the same period non-drivers have faced bus and coach fare increases of 87% and rail fare increases of 53%.

Increases on fuel duty will not solve the crisis on Britain's roads. But they will go some way to compensating for the massive subsidies for motoring.

Cllr. Sarah Lunnon, Gloucestershire Green Party, 6 Springhill, Stroud GL5 1TN