Pay-per-Mile – What’s the Crack?

With autumn well and truly on our doorsteps (did we actually get a summer?!), thoughts invariably turn to more seasonably appropriate topics. Like remembering which cupboard you stashed the woolly jumpers in last spring, those pumpkin spice lattes that everyone always bangs on about, and whether or not to throw a fancy dress party for Halloween so you can finally fulfil that dream of dressing up as Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean. 

And let’s not forget one of the biggies, folks: Sausages. Oops! Sorry. What we meant to say was the government’s budget announcement, because it’s always fun finding out how we’re going to get shafted even further, right? And it’s habitually us motorists that do get it in the neck. Whether it be an increase in road tax or an extra percentage on fuel duty, the budget that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will set out in a month’s time is never good news.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, as it turns out, the much speculated pay-per-mile tax (also known as ‘road pricing’) that has been bandied about for a while now as the UK government faces a hefty budgetary shortfall due to more and more motorists switching to electric vehicles causing a massive drop off in fuel duty, won’t be going ahead. Hurrah! Well, not this year anyway.

For those not au fait with the rumoured pay-per-mile initiative, it’s basically a new way of taxing UK motorists to drive on the roads and would potentially see the current road and fuel duty taxes rolled into one big fat single fee, with the amount payable being dependant on how much you actually drive, as well as the kind of vehicle you’re running. You can already see where this is going can’t you? If a system is indeed implemented we can almost certainly guarantee that our internal combustion-engined classics will be charged a higher rate than EVs in order to continue beating the “electric is the future” drum.

But the UK government has officially stated: “We have no plans to introduce road pricing. We are committed to supporting our automotive sector as we transition to electric vehicles in order to meet our legally binding climate targets”. So for now at least, a pay-per-mile road pricing system will not be coming into effect, but that doesn’t mean it won’t potentially happen at some point down the line and similar pay-per-mile schemes of varying forms have already been introduced in countries like New Zealand, Germany and Switzerland.

At the end of the day it all comes down to how well any system is managed. The funding gap created as more and more vehicles go electric will definitely need to be addressed and road pricing is just one way of bridging said gap, but implementing and supporting a pay-per-mile system isn’t going to be cheap. Not only that, but it will have to involve some kind of monitoring procedure to track drivers’ movements, further infringing upon our liberties, liberties that are already stretched to breaking point. Driving has always been about freedom, but it’s a freedom that seems to be diminishing day by day.

Generally speaking, we as classic vehicle owners use our older cars and bikes much less than those who drive more modern fare, but aren’t we already effectively paying per mile? What with the heavy duty we’re forced to cough up for fuel? Any potential savings we may make from a pay-per-mile system could, and likely will be counteracted by an increase in tax due to them being seen as more polluting day-to-day than EVs or hybrids, for example. 

It remains to be seen how the budget announcements on October the 30th will affect us as classic vehicle owners but even without the introduction of a pay-per-mile scheme, we severely doubt it’ll be sunshine and rainbows…