1 March 2007
Road pricing may or may not be the answer to congestion, but it must be considered as an option, Tony Blair has told Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond.
In our podcast, the PM tells Hammond - known as the Hamster - that he welcomed the 1.8 million-strong petition against pricing on the Downing Street website.
It had made the government "sit up and take notice", he admitted, and would act as the starting point of the debate.
"The idea", he said "is to engender a serious national debate about what the options are so that people can study them."
But with more than six million more cars on the roads than a decade ago, there was a "huge problem" looming on congestion, Mr Blair stressed.
It is important, Mr Blair stressed, to ask "how do you make your road network more effective … because it can’t possibly keep pace with the number of cars that are going to come on to the road."
The BBC star and Daily Mirror columnist, sceptical about the benefits of road pricing, posed questions on road tax, fuel duty, tracking devices and privacy issues.
Pictures: Mike Moore, Daily Mirror
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