Dear Stephen
1st October 2000
In the history of human liberation the motor car must count as a significant leap forward. During the first half of the 20th century the car was a luxury item enjoyed by the rich. In the decades after the second world war it became a primary source of mobility for almost everybody. It profoundly affects where we live, how we live, how we work, and how we play. We are heavily car dependent-a source of pleasure and of pain. We know that cars cause problems: congestion, accidents, CO2 emissions contributing to global warming. The question is how best to overcome these anti-social effects.
Public support for last month's Europe-wide fuel blockades shows that popular attachment to the car is undiminished. Tolerance for higher fuel taxes has reached breaking point, long before the goal of reduced car use has been achieved.
In the 1990s, the Conservatives highlighted poor air quality and global warming to justify the introduction of an annual fuel duty escalator of 5 per cent. But higher fuel taxes neither discouraged car use nor reduced emissions. Car dependence is so great that the motorist simply pays up rather than driving less. The escalator has become a big source of government revenue, but a sham as an instrument of environmental policy. This is the problem with the green's encouragement of taxing "bads." Governments rely on the revenue to such an extent that they depend on us continuing to be bad.
An even more serious problem for social democrats is the unfairness of high fuel tax. The very poorest in society do not have cars. That is usually a reflection of their low income, not their aspirations. But within the car-owning population, high fuel taxes fall hardest on the poorest. In rural areas, low-income car owners are spectacularly penalised. They are the most car-dependent of all, with the least access to public transport, and they travel the longest distances. High fuel tax is flagrantly regressive. If it worked it would have the effect of giving back to the rich the empty road space they enjoyed in the 1920s and the 1930s.
The centre-left needs consistent arguments in favour of fair and efficient tax. Fuel tax has been unfair and inconsistent. Labour reduced the Tories' rate of VAT on domestic fuel for social justice reasons. The same argument should have been applied to the fuel duty escalator.
Nevertheless, the government deserves some praise for its role in curbing car pollution. In 1998, during the British EU presidency, it secured agreement on directives on vehicle emissions and fuel quality which were a breakthrough in environmental regulation. As a result, cars will be almost one hundred times less polluting by 2005 than in the mid-1980s. A voluntary deal with the car industry will also mean a 25 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2008.
These improvements arise not from trying to tax people off the roads, but from new technologies such as advanced catalytic converters and the development of direct injection petrol engines, combined with low sulphur fuels. More than 35 per cent of cars on the road do not have a catalytic converter. The faster they are removed and the quicker we encourage the sale of 2005 standard cars, the better for air quality and fuel efficiency. Low sulphur fuel (petrol and diesel) promotes catalyst efficiency and is essential for the new technologies required to meet the 2005 standards. At present, low sulphur fuel is not widely available. Government should offer big incentives to use it and promote its manufacture by the oil companies. This would be both popular and green.
The most intractable problem for the car in the 21st century will remain congestion. Technology has some answers here too, with intelligent vehicle systems which can better manage the volume of traffic on the road. Part of the solution will involve road user tolls. Unlike fuel duties, which are an inefficient way of changing driver behaviour, road tolls can be varied during the day to discourage rush hour car use. But they would still allow all income groups to benefit from car use at the time most affordable to them-and there is no need for road tolls at all in rural areas. The revenue raised from road pricing in cities should be used to invest in public transport, to increase choice and reduce car dependence.
Trying to tax us out of our cars has failed. The fuel duty escalator was the Tories' poll tax on wheels and Labour should have been much more cautious about it. The government was misled by fashionably anti-car greens into ignoring issues of justice and overlooking the clear technological progress which will bring us a new generation of ultra-clean cars.
David
Dear David
2nd October 2000
You overstate the liberating effects of the car. It has not liberated children, who can no longer play on the streets or walk unchaperoned to school; nor the 3,000 people killed every year and 40,000 seriously injured in accidents on British roads; nor the 24,000 killed every year by air pollution. We cannot travel about our capital city any faster than in Victorian times. As green belts are lost to tarmac and their tranquillity shattered by the ubiquitous roar, we have to travel ever further to get away. Roads are unsafe for walking or cycling, so car travel becomes not a luxury but a near-necessity. That is not liberation.
You say that the benefits of motoring are now available to "almost everyone." Not so. In Britain, only about two thirds of households have access to a car. And in many of these households it is used by one person to travel to work, leaving other family members stranded. Globally, only a small minority experience the joys of motoring. Yet everyone on the planet will share in the discomforts which climate change will bring. The real cost of burning petrol and diesel, taking account of climate change and damage to human health, is much higher than we pay at the pumps.
You claim that fuel taxes have failed to help the environment. So why is it that in the US, where fuel is cheap, more than half of new car sales are of the inefficient sports utility vehicles, while in Europe they remain thankfully rare? Ford markets the 15 mpg Explorer in the US, the 50 mpg Ka in Europe. Is this a coincidence? Would the 80 mpg Toyota Prius have been introduced if petrol had been cheap? The car manufacturers know that without high fuel prices they will be unable to sell their more efficient models, which is why the agreement to improve efficiency by 25 per cent committed governments to maintaining current levels of fuel duty. We cannot simply cut the duty.
You're right that technology can tackle pollution, by cutting the link between transport and oil. It is an indictment of generations of political leaders that, 27 years after the first oil shock, and at least 15 years after the link between fossil fuels and climate change became widely understood, so little has been done to break our dependence on this dirty, unreliable, disappearing fuel [see page 24]. Even if it is true that people are in love with their cars (and not simply reacting to the unavailability of alternatives), it is surely not the case that they are smitten by the petrol-fired internal combustion engine.
The problem is that at present we are not being given much choice. There are electric vehicles, but they are more expensive and have a lower range than petrol or diesel equivalents. Eventually there will be a bigger role for battery-powered vehicles, with fuel cells generating electricity on-board from hydrogen fuel. The more expensive oil products become, the more attractive these alternatives will appear. But clean new technologies do not obviate the need for high taxes on dirty old ones.
Nor is it right to say that road tolls will make high fuel prices redundant. Tolls are good, and the sooner they are introduced the better. But tolls combined with cheap fuel would lead simply to traffic diversion to neighbouring towns and out-of-town superstores. The pressure for more such stores, already intense, would become irresistible. High fuel prices, in contrast, will eventually effect locational decisions made by both companies and individuals, reducing the need to travel. It is a short-termist fallacy that because we are car dependent, high prices have no effect. The truth is that we are car dependent because prices have been too low. Higher prices will eventually make us less dependent. This must be our aim because even the cleverest technology cannot overcome the physical intrusion of cars, the severing of communities, the accidents and the loss of land to more roads.
Your main objection to fuel taxes, though, is not that they don't work but that they are unfair. All indirect taxes are regressive: petrol taxes are less regressive than most because, as you say, the poorest cannot afford cars, and because the rich drive larger cars and drive them further. The poor suffer disproportionately from the negative effects of cars: they are more likely to be killed or maimed in accidents; they live in more polluted areas, often on streets used as "rat runs" by wealthier commuters. They also benefit disproportionately if tax revenues are spent on public services, including transport. It might be the case that the revenue foregone could be recouped through higher income tax, but I doubt it. Cutting fuel taxes means cutting public services, as Tony Blair has pointed out. A progressive transport policy would not cut petrol duty; it would increase it and use the extra revenue to make public transport cheaper and better.
Tony Crosland argued that opposition to cars was middle-class selfishness-pulling up the ladder of progress behind them. We have had 25 years since Crosland's death to learn that this aspect of "progress" has resulted in gridlock; the need is not to pull up the ladder but to climb back down. Meanwhile, what poor people aspire to is to stop being poor. This is the proper objective of the left.
If you want a really regressive tax, look no further than cigarettes. Poor people smoke more, and therefore pay much more tax. So on your view of social democracy, we should begin by abolishing tobacco taxes. Of course we do not, because tobacco taxes are recognised as essential for health protection. Petrol taxes are also essential for health protection. If it is reasonable to tax people to dissuade them from damaging their own health, it must also be reasonable to tax them to dissuade them from damaging the health of others.
Stephen
Dear Stephen
3rd October 2000
I don't believe I overstate the liberating effects of the car, nor am I blind to the problems it creates. I think it is a mistake, however, to romanticise the quality of life in Victorian cities in the age of horse-drawn transport.
An opinion poll in France published just before the fuel protests found that 87 per cent of respondents believed that the car was important to their freedom, with 82 per cent saying that it brings more advantages than disadvantages. Without a car, 72 per cent of parents said they would have to spend less time with their children, a third said they would have to move house, and 90 per cent said they would spend more time travelling to work. This survey comes from a country with probably the best public transport in the world.
I agree with you that the current degree of car dependence is worrying. But where is the evidence that higher fuel taxes will make us use the car less? You give the example of the US, where gas guzzling cars are so popular. Is that because of cheap fuel? In the 1950s and 1960s, when our fuel prices were similar to the US level, they were riding around in huge eight-cylinder tail-finned Chevrolets, we were making the four-cylinder Mini a fashion icon. In America they have big long roads, huge distances, and they want to be cowboys.
The problem you refuse to recognise is that high fuel taxes do not meet the green goal of reducing car use. They don't work, because levels of disposable income are much higher today than in the 1970s, while in real terms motoring costs are about the same. That is why people pay up rather than drive less. The kind of fuel duty increases necessary to make a real impact (perhaps 10 per cent a year) are politically unsustainable.
Trying to present the car as a cigarette on wheels is a typical example of anti-car rhetoric which overlooks the progress we are making towards safer and cleaner vehicles. New technologies will enable conventional petrol and diesel engines to remain an efficient, affordable and much cleaner source of power for many decades to come. I agree with you that, in the long run, fuel cell technology will lead to a new generation of non-polluting cars. Taxes should be used positively to encourage these trends. Hence the argument for a dramatic reduction in fuel duties for low-sulphur fuel.
But underlying these issues of taxation is a deeper prejudice. You just don't like cars. Even totally clean, ultra-safe, intelligent vehicles do not appeal to you. As you put it, "the cleverest technology in the world cannot overcome the physical intrusion of cars." But cars are simply evidence of another widespread physical intrusion-people. Politics is a process of managing human intrusion. How can we make progress in building a sensible transport policy until we recognise that the car will remain our preferred form of mobility for the foreseeable future?
David
Dear David,
5th October 2000
The US, with the lowest fuel prices, uses 1,600 litres of fuel per person per year. Australia, another country with big long roads, huge distances and wannabe cowboys, has fuel prices around 60 per cent higher; fuel use per person is 950 litres. In case you think this is a result of some obscure Antipodean virtue, compare New Zealand and Italy, two countries of roughly similar size and prosperity. New Zealanders use about 750 litres of fuel a year. Italians, whose fuel is twice as expensive, use 400.
You point out that motoring costs are not much higher in real terms today than they were in the 1970s. This means that, without current levels of fuel taxes, the real cost of motoring would have fallen. People would then be driving even further, and in less efficient vehicles. I concede that it would be politically unsustainable to raise duty by 10 per cent a year-at least without a big fall in oil prices. That doesn't mean it is politically imperative to reduce them.
Greenpeace has just commissioned a poll from NOP. Asked if fuel taxes were too high, 82 per cent said yes. This was predictable. Asked if they thought that high fuel prices made people drive less, a large majority said it made no difference They're wrong, but that doesn't help a government trying to win support for a tax. What could help this government is the finding that if more money were promised to fund public transport and develop alternative non-polluting fuels, 68 per cent said they would be happier paying high taxes. Asked to choose between the Tory proposal for a 3p per litre cut in tax, and no tax cut, but the ?1.5 billion used instead for environmental investment, again, 68 per cent chose the no cut option. Granted, polls about willingness to pay tax should be treated with scepticism. But I think this shows that winning support for current policies is not a hopeless cause. The real cost of public transport has increased significantly in recent decades. As the left favours public over private provision, I am surprised that so many people in the Labour party seem unconcerned by the rapid increase in the cost of buses and trains, but view the right to cheap driving as a sacred principle.
Higher public spending is, generally speaking, progressive. Fuel taxes bring in lots of revenue, making higher public spending possible. So while they are themselves regressive among car drivers, fuel taxes are part of a progressive package. In theory-and leaving aside the social and environmental drawbacks of increased car use-I accept that it would be more progressive to cut car taxes and increase income tax. But in practice it would be impossible. Not increasing income tax was one of New Labour's famous pledges. So cutting fuel taxes would mean cutting services.
The poorest inhabitants of the countryside, like their urban counterparts, cannot afford cars. Cutting fuel taxes will not help them; laying on extra buses might. Rich country dwellers, and those who have chosen to move out of town and drive back in to work, have no particular right to expect cut-price motoring. In the middle is a group of nearly poor who can just afford a car. Pricing them off the road could make it impossible to get to work, thus blocking one of their paths out of poverty. So yes, there is a real problem. But I would not address it by cutting fuel tax for everyone. I'd solve it by giving them money: the rural nearly poor, the rural very poor (who might then even be able to afford a car), and also the urban poor, who might not need access to a car but deserve a better standard of living, nevertheless. That means taxing and spending.
I don't think I romanticise life in Victorian cities. But I plead guilty to the charge that I don't like cars. In a utopian, William Morris kind of way, I wish they had never been invented. Cars have made it easier to travel, but less worth getting there. The Champs Elys?, Unter den Linden, and Trafalgar Square are all ruined by traffic noise and fumes. I know cars are here to stay, so I support efforts to clean them up and manage their use. High taxes on petrol and diesel are a way of doing this.
Stephen
Dear Stephen
6th October 2000
Greens do not want mass mobility and that is why they don't want cars. They want us to stay at home or restrict our travel to public transport. Progress towards clean cars upsets their prejudices and their vision of eco-catastrophe. But mobility is a vital ingredient of human freedom, and the car can provide it. Labour should welcome this.
None the less, our debate reveals significant areas of agreement. We both accept that new technology offers the possibility of a new generation of clean cars. We both agree that car dependency should be reduced, and this requires investing in more reliable public transport. We agree that taxes should be reduced for cleaner fuels. We even seem to agree that the car is here to stay.
The real problem is congestion. There is a good case for a more rational use of road space. But this will not be achieved by fuel taxation. It requires a combination of road pricing, better town planning and public transport. That way we can all enjoy the freedom of the car and walking up the Champs Elys?.
We disagree over the impact of higher fuel taxes. You are too optimistic about their effect. The tax man has been laughing all the way to the treasury, believing, until the recent protests, that fuel duty was a popular "green" tax which could be increased at will. Yet the policy has failed as an instrument of green policy. I too admit to a nostalgic attachment to Croslandite social democracy and progressive taxation. But if I am right, then this part of the argument has nothing to do with the car and the environment; it is simply about what is the fairest way to raise revenue for public expenditure.
David
Dear David
8th October 2000
You call yourself a Croslandite social democrat, yet you demonise "the tax man laughing all the way to the treasury." Anything which makes the tax man happy makes me happy too. We can debate the most progressive way to raise revenue, but your yearning for the days of high rates of income tax is almost as romantic as my longing for a car-free world. Fuel duties are temporarily controversial, but governments can address this in ways I've suggested. High fuel duties will remain a key part of any programme to improve public services.
Bill Ford, of the Ford motor company, says that while the price of fuel is cheaper than the price of bottled water, no one will be interested in more efficient vehicles. If a descendant of Henry Ford accepts a correlation between fuel prices and the vehicles people drive, I think it would be foolish to dismiss it. In Britain, a litre of petrol is at present slightly more expensive than a litre of bottled water. It must stay that way.
Cars can't provide mobility for all-there simply isn't room for everyone to own and drive one. And mobility isn't necessarily what people want-at least, not all the time. We want mobility for holidays, for day trips to the country, for visiting people. We don't want mobility for doing the shopping, getting the children to school, getting ourselves to work. What we want here is accessibility. Travel is a chore rather than a pleasure. But the amount of car travel for these purposes has increased exponentially, partly as a result of the failure of planning and partly because of the run down of public services.
However clean cars become, we still need to reduce their number-not to keep people at home (there is nothing green about that) but to make cities safer and more civilised, and to halt the loss of beauty and diversity in the countryside. That is why we need a revolution in transport thinking. Car worship has gone too far.
Stephen
