Autumn Budget 2025

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell. I want to give some relief to the Minister by not following up the justified criticism that he is receiving from my noble friends but referring to one new policy in the Budget which I approve of and which I suspect that no one else will mention: the move towards road pricing. I declare an interest as the owner of an EV.

Although there had been some speculation about this before the Budget, the announcement surprised me because on 18 September I asked the Minister whether he had any plans to introduce road pricing. He said no. He said it not just once but seven times in 10 minutes. He could have used the reply that we all grew fond of hearing, that he could not anticipate the Budget Statement, but he did not. I once held the job that the Minister has, Financial Secretary to the Treasury. I am familiar with the Budget process and the long gestation. A radical policy such as road pricing, raising over £1 billion a year and involving consultation with the DfT and the DVLA is unlikely to have been a last-minute idea, particularly when we read in the consultation document that, regarding the loss of fuel duty:

“Doing nothing about this would be fiscally irresponsible”.


Therefore, I take with a pinch of salt the statement that some nine weeks before the Budget there were no plans to introduce road pricing and that fiscal responsibility was discovered at the very last minute.

There my welcome for the policy ends because the Government have ruled out the possibility of using road pricing to reduce congestion and pollution or to help motorists in rural areas for whom there is no alternative by denying the use of telematics to introduce proper road pricing. The consultation document says:

“The government has taken an approach that protects motorists’ privacy; there will be no requirement to report where and when miles are driven or install trackers in cars”.


The notion that motorists have privacy is for the birds. All new cars manufactured since 2018 have a system called eCall, which automatically contacts emergency responders with the vehicle’s location in the case of an accident. It also enables owners to track a vehicle if it is stolen. There are now between 4 million and 6 million CCTV cameras in the UK. They are ubiquitous, with between 16 and 24 cameras for every square kilometre, one per 11 people. Also, 20% of home owners now have video doorbells that capture passing traffic. ANPR is everywhere. More and more motorists have dashcams. While some motorists switch off GPS in their car, most motorists have their mobile with them, which can be tracked. So the notion that motorists have privacy does not withstand scrutiny.

No one expects an all singing, all dancing road pricing to be introduced in the near future. A crude pence-per-mile is a start, although I have doubts about some aspects of the timing. But the UK has a chance to lead the world in this field as all countries grapple with the move away from fossil fuels to EVs and are looking at how best to replace lost revenue. The Government should have announced a progressive move over time to road pricing for all vehicles based on a smarter charging system using existing telematics. This would deliver wider benefits on congestion, decarbonisation and network management. It would also improve reliability of journey times for motorists and reflect how other transport modes are priced. By all means start with this crude pence-per-mile rate, but please do not rule out a more sophisticated system on wholly illusory grounds of invasion of privacy.