Battle lines drawn over Tamar Tolls

One of the worst parts of being a Councillor is being stuck with the responsibility for dealing with the failures of the national Government. With the Tamar Tolls this is true three-times over: Firstly, the Government’s failure to control inflation has dramatically increased the cost of running the bridge and ferries. Secondly, after last year’s “mini-budget” spooked the financial markets and sent interest rates soaring, the cost of debt repayments has gone through the roof. But the biggest failure of all is that the cost of crossing the Tamar falls on individual drivers in the first place.

So now the Tamar Tolls are set to rise again, just months after the last 30% increase. And with a General Election drawing nearer, all political parties recognise that the cost of crossing the river will affect how people cast their votes.

The geography of South East Cornwall is totally unique; Saltash and Torpoint are the only towns in the whole of the UK to depend on a neighbouring city for so many essential services whilst being divided by such a large river. Nowhere else do so many people have to pay a toll every day just to get to work, college, shopping centres or a hospital.

Yet Conservative and Labour MPs on both sides of the river have refused to call for the crossings to be fully funded by Central Government. This is an astonishing failure of leadership from our representatives, who seem to have resigned themselves to the idea that they could never persuade a majority of the 650 MPs in Parliament to support something which mostly benefits one small corner of the South West. (They obviously haven’t realised that when an election leaves the ruling party without a large majority, local MPs suddenly have great power, which is how other Cornish MPs managed to secure funding for major road upgrades in their areas in 2010 and 2017).

Local Conservatives say they oppose an increase, but won't explain how they would balance the books. Some have even suggested defaulting on the debt, failing to realise that this would have a catastrophic effect on the Council's credit rating, making it far more expensive for the Council to borrow money for other projects.

Labour have launched a petition calling for the TAG discount to be made more generous, but would balance this out by making an even larger increase in the cost of cash tolls.

Only the Liberal Democrats are calling for the Tamar Tolls to be abolished altogether and for both the bridge and the ferries to be fully funded by Central Government. If you support our campaign, please sign our petition at www.seclibdems.uk/tamar-tolls