Mark Harper: Labour’s thirst to delay, tax drivers cannot be quenched

Conservatives are on the side of drivers. The Labour Party will find any way possible to force them off the roads.

I know that for many who live in towns and villages across the UK, the car is an essential mode of transport. Something city-obsessed Labour don’t seem to understand, or simply don’t care about.

All you have to do is look at our respective records. Wherever Labour is in power, we can see their thirst to frustrate, delay and tax drivers cannot be quenched.

In Labour-run Wales, they are waging all-out war on the driver. Between blanket 20mph zones costing the economy billions and a ban on all new road infrastructure projects being built, the driver is being demonised.

I know that for many who live in towns and villages across the UK, the car is an essential mode of transport. Something city-obsessed Labour don’t seem to understand, or simply don’t care about.

All you have to do is look at our respective records. Wherever Labour is in power, we can see their thirst to frustrate, delay and tax drivers cannot be quenched.

In Labour-run London , Sadiq Khan expanded the ULEZ even to areas where a car is an essential not a luxury.

In Labour-run London, Sadiq Khan expanded the ULEZ even to areas where a car is an essential not a luxury. This aggressive and regressive tax on drivers, enforced by an Orwellian array of surveillance cameras, punishes the poorest drivers unable to afford a new car.

Traffic piles up in areas of London due to poorly designed low traffic neighbourhoods that don’t have local consent.

Whereas, we have offered a secure future for drivers with our Plan for Drivers. We have made clear that it is not right that drivers feel under attack and have offered long term bold action to make their lives better.

We have frozen fuel duty 14 years in a row, saving the average family thousands of pounds. We have invested hundreds of millions to make our most dangerous roads safer. And we’ve committed to pour billions of savings from HS2 into filling the potholes and resurfacing the roads.

Ever the backseat driver, Keir Starmer has opposed these at every turn.

So in an age of aggressively anti-driver local politics from the left, we will continue to actively champion the driver at every turn.

That is why if re-elected, we will introduce a new ‘Backing Drivers Bill’ to cement the rights of drivers in law as soon as we can.

We will unilaterally reverse Sadiq Khan’s unfair ULEZ expansion in London.

We will ban any kind of pay-per- mile scheme from appearing. The last Labour government tried to implement it., We will stop it.

Finally, we will empower local people to have a vote on any new LTNs or blanket 20mph schemes and a right to challenge existing ones because it is local people who should decide what’s best for their area.

These are not decisions that we take lightly, and I fully expect the anti-driver left to be up in arms about it. And that will tell you everything you need to know about whose side they’re actually on.

So there is a clear choice. Getting around quicker, cheaper and more freely with the Conservative’s plan for drivers and record of bold action or getting stuck in the slow lane with Labour.

• Mark Harper is the Transport Secretary and the Conservative election candidate for Forest of Dean