'Anti-motorist measures show Labour's ideological obsession,' says Andrew RT Davies
Andrew RT Davies fears more anti-motorist measures are to come
Andrew RT Davies is the leader of the Welsh Conservatives
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When Labour transport secretary Louise Haigh said earlier this week that the UK Government would be making it easier to create 20mph zones and LTNs, it came as little surprise. In fact, it was inevitable.
The war on motorists was started by Labour in Wales with their default 20mph speed limits. This policy, brought in by the Labour Welsh Government, has proved to be the most unpopular in the history of devolved governance in Wales.
The most-signed petition to the Welsh Parliament calls for the move to be reversed. Labour pushes on with the policy regardless. Just this week, polling by YouGov revealed that 72 per cent of all Welsh adults oppose the 20mph speed limit.
The Welsh Government’s own analysis suggests that the economic cost of the policy could reach up to £9billion. These anti-motorist policies are not rooted in economics, nor in public support, but in ideological dogma.
In metropolitan centres, where most lawmakers spend a lot of time, lots of people can use public transport or cycle to work. So civil servants, lobbyists and ministers forget that in our rural communities or smaller towns, people need cars to go about their lives and keep our country moving.
While proponents of the measures also say they will lead to fewer traffic accidents, we shouldn’t let that argument be a trojan horse for these ideological measures.
Road traffic accidents can be prevented by implementing slower speeds in sensitive areas such as outside schools and hospitals. There’s no need to implement any sort of blanket policy that has far-reaching consequences.
The ideological dogma is not just limited to Labour in Wales. We saw that with the extension of ULEZ last year by Labour’s mayor in London. And now that we have a Labour UK Government, the same policies will be imposed on the rest of the UK.
Keir Starmer said that the Welsh Labour Government was his “blueprint” for what a UK Labour Government would look like, and the move to reduce speed limits is evidence that he meant what he said.
This week it was revealed that the number of penalty charge notice cases referred to bailiffs in 2023-24 was 4 million, up from 1.3 million in 2017-18. By implementing even more restrictions on drivers, law-abiding people are being made criminals and having their property seized when they don’t pay up or can’t afford to.
The most shocking part of this is that Labour has suggested money may be available for new anti-motorist schemes in Rachel Reeves’ first budget which will be brought forward in October.
It is frankly shameful that having scrapped Winter Fuel Payments to save money, Labour are prepared to dip into the public coffers for anti-motorist measures.
Here again, we see Labour’s ideological obsession, which is prioritised even more than keeping pensioners warm this winter.
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We all want to live on a cleaner planet.
We all want to see road traffic accidents reduced.
We want safe streets. But we also want a thriving economy, and we want to spend our spare time with our families, not in traffic.
We can have both, and the way to do that is targeted, reasonable measures that balance our priorities.
It’s time to end the war on motorists and make them part of the solution to climate and safety issues, rather than paint them as part of the problem.
