Tony Blair Institute calls for electric car road tax to avoid ‘gridlock Britain’
By Paul Homewood
h/t Paul Kolk
Tony Blair’s think tank has said Jeremy Hunt must “urgently” introduce a road tax which would make driving electric cars more expensive.
James Browne, senior policy adviser at the Tony Blair Institute (TBI), called on the Chancellor to introduce a new system of road pricing to stop the country becoming “gridlock Britain”.
Analysts have warned that the Treasury must step in to plug a £25bn black hole in the nation’s finances and stop traffic jams from surging as more motorists shift to electric vehicles (EVs).
This will happen because EV drivers do not pay fuel duty. As the Government phases out petrol cars as part of its push to get to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, this means Britain’s fleet of cars will become far cheaper to run.
As it becomes cheaper, people will drive more, while the Treasury’s tax take from fuel duty disappears.
Mr Browne said: “This [road tax] needs to happen urgently, before too many people buy electric vehicles on the basis that they will not be taxed, making it impossible to introduce it later.”
A report published by the Tony Blair Institute in 2021 warned that Britain will spend 50pc more time in traffic as driving becomes cheaper.
By the Government’s own estimates, over 50 years, the transition to EVs will cost the economy an extra £52bn because of extra congestion and £5bn because more cars on the roads will mean more road accidents.
While an EV costs around 4p per kilometre to drive, a petrol car costs 10p. That means a 400 mile (644km) drive from London to Edinburgh would cost an EV driver £26 in charging costs, while the driver of a petrol car would pay £64 in fuel.
The transition away from petrol cars will also leave a gaping hole in the nation’s finances.
The Treasury’s tax take from fuel duty will fall from £25.1bn in 2022-23 to zero in line with the Government’s planned transition to net zero by 2050, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).
Using a public charger already works out dearer per mile than petrol, and this road tax will make driving unaffordable for many drivers who have no off street parking. Even with a home charger, a new road tax will probably wipe out current savings.
And there is one certainty in all of this. The new tax will pull in more revenue than fuel duties. That is after all the way all governments work, when they introduce new taxes.
It is becoming clearer by the day that the real intention of the likes of Tony Blair is to force millions out of their cars completely by making them unaffordable.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Gosh! Didn’t see this coming….much!
Beat me to it
URGENT! Let’s demand IQ tests for all politicians, civil servants and all Public Sector ‘workers’ on more than £50,000pa. Perhaps give them an option to sit a GCSE Physics exam. I bet the results would be akin to David Lammy on University Challenge.
There is a difference between IQ and intelligence and possessing common sense and knowledge so that wouldn’t help. A simple starter question is to ask them if the UK should rejoin the EU Customs Unions to make it easier to export goods to the EU. If they answer ‘Yes’ then as they say in court – no further questions M’Lord – as they have already shown they are too thick and unsuitable for any public office.
Elites will embrace this idea enthusiastically. They’ll require IQ of 50 or more for serving in the government. On a second thought, 35 would be better.
gezza1298 You fail the intelligence test. Firstly, rejoining the Customs Union, will do nothing of much use, it’s the Single Market that we would ideally rejoin.
However, to join the Single Market, we’d have to be either full members of the EU, fulfill all the criteria to join and have our application approved by all existing members, or join the European Free Trade Area & thus access the European Economic Area that way. That would require all existing members to accept our application.
Too late, the ship’s sailed.
Back in Blair’s day getting people out of their cars and onto public transport was a stated part of government policy. John Prescott was forever on the radio banging on about it.
The Left simply hate people making their own decisions. It’s why they are on the Left.
On current evidence (particularly in the US) the so-called “Right” are little different. It’s what’s known as the “Uniparty”…
And then Two Jags left the radio studio in one of his er…2 Jags.
I believe he had three Daimlers, actually!
And then got his umpteenth speeding fine and ban.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jun/08/lord-john-prescott-driving-ban-speeding
As he drove a few hundred yards from hotel to an event “so his wife’s hair wouldn’t be messed up”.
John Prescott was forever on the radio banging on about it.
Before getting back into one of his large luxury cars.
Cough, Spit – or CHOKE …. T Bliar stuff. “Socialist” policy, etc …… just more political non-useful rubbish. recent storms – recovery operations – can just see it, getting granny back into a home or hospital – have to wait to recharge the vehicles ….. Oh can’t get back to recharge either – gridlock with EVs …. where? at our local EV charging station ? Fat chance.
Back to the present: All this Cold – must be to do with reduced CO2 emissions over our area, eh? Already ! Back to limited regular work today – Electric demand much higher and we only have 1/8th of power being supplied by Nuclear. – ONLY SEVEN more stations would do the trick …. but how many Windmills doing nothing today? – and they want to build more, MORE ! ? !!!!! The Heron wants FISH, not more Herons to stand alongside!
Ahh well, according to future energy secretary Milliband, building more wind turbines will “give us energy security” apparently by making them generate electricity when there’s no wind.
This must be about the most insane idea ever. Apart from the established fact that the buying, maintaining and running costs of an EV are going to be considerably greater than that for an ICEV which in itself will reduce the numbers …
Need I go on?
I’m amazed that so many people drive electric cars already, when they cost and pollute more overall, than IC cars. Road tax could be the death knell of EVs thank goodness.
The only people driving milk floats are rich virtue signallers and BIK dodgers – there’s a few good engineering reasons battery vehicles have never been mainstream and never will
“I’m amazed that so many people drive electric cars already”
It’s (highly) likely they don’t follow sites such as this one, or watch “Geoff Buys Cars” on YouTube, and they continue to believe everything they see and hear on the MSM & BBC…
But the impression given is that Britain is in the economic doldrums – how comes so many people can afford electric cars?
Most buyers are business and fleets, who buy them for large tax subsidies.
I suspect most private buyers are rich two-car types!
Only the more affluent could and can, which is why car manufacturers, e.g. Audi, are starting to dramatically reduce their sales forecasts for EVs. After all, they are businesses in the real world, where the wishful-thinking net zero fantasy doesn’t operate.
It’s all very well buying a new EV – if you’re lucky enough to have the money to buy one – or stupid enough more like. Wait until the battery is knackered and you have to buy a new one at £15000 plus.
Nobody in their right mind is going to buy a secondhand EV surely – it wouldn’t be worth the risk. There are already stories out there about EVs that have been in accidents that have to be written off due to ridiculous repair costs. They’re like the eight-track player of the eighties – a total white elephant. Let’s hope sales of them continue to fall…
“Wait until the battery is knackered and you have to buy a new one at £15000 plus”
Here’s the sob story of one EV buyer now finding himself in those circumstances:
I am confused as to why commentators here so upset. Surely an EV car tax is needed as currently EV drivers are freeloading off of the rest of us?
They don’t pay car tax, fuel tax, they get benefits in parking and pollution taxes and subsidies to buy and tax breaks.
EV’s need to maintain the road infrastructure that they degrade more than ICE drivers due to the weight of the EV’s. The estimated cost of their shortfall in taxes was £1500 per car per year.
Because its about pay as you go charging which will mean rationing.
The basic point remains that EV drivers are freeloading off of the rest of us and need to pay much more tax. The less they pay the more the rest of us have to pay and those increased charges will ensure price rationing.
Yes, once road pricing is brought in, the Govt will have the means to track every road journey. We’ll then see journeys rationed to “save the planet” and you’ll need a permit prior to every journey you make. Soviet style stuff resurrected. Stopping EV drivers free loading is a good idea but doing it by road pricing is a very bad idea
I agree. EV drivers tend to be financially well-off, and there they are avoiding the motoring taxes that the poor have to pay.
That can’t be right. It’s also inevitable that the government will have to fill the £38 billion black hole created when there is no income from fuel taxes.
I don’t think it is as much the vehicle mass as the torque applied. I did look into this at some point, but have since forgotten exactly what goes on. If an EV has the same tyres as an ICE then the mass is important, but if the tyres have a larger footprint then it would compensate for the higher mass of the EV.
Of course EV builders probably like to minimise the contact patch in order to decrease rolling resistance.
Nobody takes any notice of the TB institute or its “you are f’ing kidding me” ideas.
He wanted Covid vaccine mandates and passports for a vaccine that self evidently didn’t stop transmission of the disease.
Paradoxically the Covid pandemic ended when we all caught the disease.
Sadly they do. It advises dozens of governments and our government has picked up a number of its “ideas” such as forcing pension funds to invest in Green tech.
The road tax shortfall cannot last, so something has to be done. EV’s are loaded with tech so either it’s sat-nav automated pay per mile (including peak time, location surcharges etc) or there needs to be an cost adjustment at the charging point.
Smart meters are now fitted as standard for all EV domestic chargers. That will allow gov’t to charge premium rates for EV charging and also restrict access via monthly allowances.
If you go over your allowance you should expect to pay escalating charges. All this will simply price people off the road which as PH states, is the primary objective.
A big fly in the ointment is consumer pushback. Millions will ignore the EV ‘revolution’ and buy an ICE car to run forever. That will cause auto manufacturers huge viability problems. Be in no doubt, chaos looms.
“Millions will ignore the EV ‘revolution’ and buy an ICE car to run forever.”
And even if they ban petrol and diesel, there is always the wood option!
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/01/wood-gas-vehicles-firewood-in-the-fuel-tank/
Just paint a sign saying F~~k You on the back.
I think the Haynes motor museum has an example of a car powered by wood gas from the Second World War when petrol was rationed.
I suppose Blair is thinking that the next generation of EVs will have enough range to drive from Derby to the Lake District or wherever and back without having to recharge at some point before returning home. Until then it’s safe to assume any trips by EV will be short or involve an overnight stay.
EVs have to compete with cars like the Audi A8 3.0 Tdi AWD Auto that Jeremy Clarkson tested by driving from London to Edinburgh and back on a single tank that took 5 minutes to fill.
So as a means of saving the planet – 0
As a means of continuing to treat the motorist as a national cash cow – 1
Just what we suspected.
It’s utter garbage for one simple reason – virtually no-one doesn’t take a car journey because of the cost. We can see this extremely clearly in data when petrol prices rise and fall. Demand is inelastic. The idea we will all drive more if costs fall is thus nonsense. And costs will not fall anyway, as switching to EVs means vastly more infrastructure costs. And they of course fail to price time. Adding an extra hour or two for charging to long journeys will price us out of making them.
Beware Jevons Paradox.
When I was young, I would go on “joy rides,” because it was so cheap to drive. My motorcycle riding today is 100% joy rides.
Energy demand is indeed inelastic, but there can be changes around the edges. The notion of joy riders being so numerous as to cause ‘traffic jams’ is hilarious.
I assume you’re using joy ride in the sense of a Sunday Afternoon drive, or going the pretty way home?
Rather than this:-
Joyrider a person who drives fast and dangerously for pleasure, especially in a stolen vehicle.
“Jevons Paradox” needs a lot more publicity !
If you save money on energy, you are likely to spend that saving on another foreign trip by air.
If you get more mpg with a new car, you are likely to drive further.
Any saving made in one area will increase spending in another, and therefore there is not necessarily any saving in resources. Your environmental impact is not reduced overall.
A lot of people don’t realise this.
Glen,
Joy·ride
/ˈjoiˌrīd/
noun
1. a ride for enjoyment in a vehicle or aircraft.
The Tony Blair Institute, that well known supporter of authoritarian regimes around the world. I struggle to think of anyone who has had a more malign influence than Blair on the planet recently, although Maurice Strong, Bill Gates, Vladimir Putin and Osama Bin Laden are up there.
The current most evil man – Bill Gates – is behind putting toxic chemicals into dairy cattle to reduce their farting to save the planet. So far the milk is labelled ‘low fart’ so you can avoid buying it. No, it isn’t 1 April.
Just how does this cause gridlock? Blair obviously thinks that they’ll be so cheap we’ll all have several each at our disposal & I’ll be able to drive all of mine at the same time.
Correct. Road capacity has to meet the demands of the number of drivers, not vehicles registered. A similar misunderstanding permeates the 20mph -= lower emissions claim, which doesn’t understand that emissions are related to engine speed, not vehicle speed – it’s called ‘gears’ (and that gearing is designed for optimum engine/fuel efficiency at higher then 20mph speeds).
Geoff Buys Cars has pointed out after visiting Wales that his automatic car is not suited to driving at 20mph and that he fears prolonged driving at that speed will damage the gearbox – auto boxes are not cheap to fix. After all, vehicles that can only do 20mph are not required to have speedometers as speed limits below this need Secretary of State approval. The idiots I used to work with at the City of London proposed a 15mph limit but thankfully it was rejected.
gezza1298
In 2022, London’s rush hour was the slowest moving in the world, according to the TomTom Traffic Index. The average speed of motor vehicles in the city center during peak hours was just 14 kph (around 9 mph). When traffic is moving this slowly, travel times are over 40 minutes for a typical 10 km (6 mi mile) trip across the city center.
On Thursday evenings between five and six o’clock in the afternoon, traffic is at its worst in London. The average speed during these hours is around 13 kph.
When traffic is moving optimally in London’s city center, average speeds hover around 25 kph. Across the entire year, the overall average speed is 17 kph.
So either (1) there’s simply not enough road space, (2) traffic management is incompetently appalling, or (3) the appalling traffic is a result of deliberate ‘blocking’-style management. I’m inclined to #3, and the sceptic in me says that this has been Khan’s intent so he could claim an ‘air quality’ crisis as a pretext for ULEZ.
The only gridlock is likely to be around every charging station as EVs queue for a charger.
That has already happened.
Seems to me that’s a very bizarre way of looking at the situation… assuming that the cheapness of ‘electric motoring’ will make drivers use their vehicles more. Setting the whole, very debatable viability of EVs to one side for a second, surely the majority of journeys are taken out of necessity, rather than for pleasure. In my own case, I couldn’t see me all of a sudden starting to drive more, simply because the cost of doing so becomes cheaper. I use my car when I need to – essentially for work, plus all the routine journeys that everyday life requires. As things stand, if the cost of diesel was cut in half, I wouldn’t start using my car appreciably more just because it was cheaper to do so. The journeys I take and driven by necessity and get made whatever the cost of the fuel. I have neither the time nor the need to drive more than I do, and I imagine that that’s the case for most ‘normal’ UK motorists. As far as I can see, the motive behind this move is nothing more than another tax grab.
Road tax exists to get money out of low mileage drivers, if those drivers didn’t exist all the tax could come from the price of fuel, with no chance of evasion.
The simplest way to tax everyone fairly would be via MoT test fees, based on the mileage of the vehicle. These fees could also cover insurance.
In short, tax is way too complicated.
I can see that creating a new ‘clocking’ industry if it is worth it to people.
A little known issue is that Odometers are not compulsory on cars AND it also not compulsory for mileage to be logged on MOT certificates.
” to stop the country becoming “gridlock Britain”. ”
Generally, the primary reason why many roads are gridlocked is the dismal level of road building and road improvements over the decades.
Plus all the measures put in place to make driving difficult, Bus Lanes, Traffic Light phasing, blanket 20mph speed limits.
Notice the parallel with “wind is free.” “Nine times cheaper.”
Build a 20 million pound tower to harvest the “free” wind, and think of how much money you will save.
Spend an extra 300 pounds a month to save 20 pounds over petrol fill up, and “it will be so cheap people will be driving all the time.”
I said a couple years ago that EVs and heat pumps won’t get you to Net Zero. While they push you to EVs, they are already plotting how to kill them, too.
If you read our Kings Terra-Carta it essentially says ‘Net Zero by 2050’ has become ‘humans removed from 50% of the planet by 2050’ using the one-health approach
If you use 1,000 litres of fuel in a year you will pay ~£250 in VAT, and £550 in fuel duty. Plus another ~£200 in VED (a lot more if you own a new expensive ICE). At the present rate of increase of insurance premiums it will not be long before the increases surpass the tax revenues (add in extra for congestion and ULEZ charges).
Insurance now threatens to become the largest cost of operating a vehicle – particularly an EV – but the costs are loading onto ICE drivers as they risk being involved with an EV write-off in any accident. A risk that will rise as EV penetration increases. An (un)intended consequence?
Huh, “involved in advocating for change” says RollsRoyce Read into that what you may: https://www.thomasnet.com/insights/how-rolls-royce-plans-to-get-to-zero-emissions/ ‘ involved in advocating for change” Outside of its internal objectives, Rolls-Royce says it will “actively engage with those who have the power to change policies and others involved in advocating for change.” The company believes this will add momentum to the general progress in aviation towards reaching Paris Climate Accord targets. ‘
I got a reminder of the Net Zero bullshit this morning when I looked at the new Shell Energy tariff. The whole REGO thing is a complete scam as they claim all the electricity they supply me is ‘renewable’ – and they clarify that this is wind, solar & biomass – while showing that this only makes up a mere 40.8% of the UK supply. And on OutFoxTheMarket they claim the same 100% renewable but then they supply my gas so not relevant to me.
“advocating for change”
Today, we have prosperity. Rolls-Royce is working to fix that.
Blair ruined irrevocably this country whilst elected; now elected by no one he is still at it. I wonder where his fortune came from (rhetorical)?
Blair managed to hide his Far Left past as he embarked on his spell ruining this country. Worryingly, Kneeler Starmer has done the same thing with his Far Left past.
Aye! – I keep telling everybody who’ll read or listen
I guess the next announcement from the ‘Institute’ (AKA: TB’s pension fund) will be education seminars for Grandmothers on the subject of sucking eggs, followed by, ‘how to slap your forehead without causing brain damage’.
RE: The last paragraph.
Then what?
Dear Call-me-Tony:
Few people are buying electric cars. Even if the prodigious numbers of BEVs about which you fantasise are bought, there won’t be the electricity supply or grid infrastructure to enable them to go far and ‘grid-lock’ British roads.
Nontheless, I heartily approve your suggestion of a BEV tax.
Yours,
The Real World
The gridlock was caused by THEIR immigration policies. Did they think that immigrants would never drive?
Back in 1975 I called for a slow reduction to 40 million people in the UK, at which levels there would be no gridlock.
Since politicians and civil servants caused this mess, I think all of them should be banned from driving for life. Now that would help ease the gridlock.
R
Julia HB addressed climate in general and electric cars in particular on Talk TV this AM and demolished the leader of the “Climate Party” (can’t remember his name). He is very aggressive and spouts the usual drivel but she didn’t pull any punches. On EVs, two points that may or not have come directly from the programme. She said that the only people who will be able to afford (and charge) EVs will be those living in large detached houses. Er, no. Somewhere else it was said that insurers will not insure properties with EVs being charged nearby. On the subject of fire risk (previous thread) has anybody tried extinguishing EV fires with BCF? It was a great success fighting marine fires (because it chemically inhibits combustion, doesn’t smother them) but was (rightly ) banned because its chemical family was damaging the ozone layer. But……?
” .. leader of the “Climate Party” (can’t remember his name) ”
Ed Gemmell.
According to Honeywell Safety and Productivity Solutions, 239 fires recorded in the UK from July 2022 to June 2023 were linked to EVs.12 Nov 2023
Perhaps Mr. Blair has believed his own propaganda that bevs will indeed be cheaper to buy and run and hence is worried that the resulting congestion, which affects even elites in their expensive luxury vehicles, will make his car journeys more time consuming and difficult. Hence his desire to impose sufficient taxes to reduce the number of vehicles on the road as well as allowing for his Zil lanes to be built. I don’t suppose he will apologise for his part in the massive immigration into the country where one of the many negatives has been to make our roads more congested.
Tis Blair nonsense is either indicative of their own stupidity or is deliberately uttered to test how stupid people are to believe it,