Another day, another u-turn

For a goverment currently reeling from a series of embarassing u-turns on inheritance tax, super casinos, and their views on 24 hour licencing, you would think that the last thing they would want to set themselves up for was yet more allegations. However, it appears that is exactly what the government is doing after it shelved plans for a national road pricing scheme.

As predicted though the Department for Transport have made a vain attempt a spinning their way out of the situation by claiming that it was "rubbish to suggest the Government had ever planned a national road pricing scheme, insisting it had only put in place plans for local tolls".

The government really must have short memories at the moment, so let me help a bit. On 22nd February 2007, in a live webchat, the then Transport Minister Stephen Ladyman stated: "We can guarantee that we will respect privacy in a road pricing system. We are looking at ways to do this and one way is to have the money collected by a trusted third party."

So it is rubbish is it. The government have always planned a national pricing scheme, even Tony Blair admitted it, allbeit that we wouldn't see it for ten years though, so why lie.

The problem is that they government is so tired and without direction that it cannot get it's own spin right. After all, instead of distancing itself from the whole suggestion, it should have quoted another Ladyman statement he made on the same subject, in which he said "I promise this is a real debate. If we don't convince the public then road pricing simply won't happen." Now the easiest get out for the DoT would have been to say "we shelved it because we listened to you", but they couldn't even get that right.