Part of 1. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:55 pm on 28 March 2017.
I thank the First Minister for his response. The legal position, at least the position that was sent to me in correspondence, has, however, changed. Initially, the focus was that the UK Government could do it because it was the charging authority, but actually the UK Government isn’t seeking to enforce on our side of the road, and it would need to enforce, and there are real difficulties in doing that in a later Act. There are three different arguments, any one of which would be fatal to the UK Government’s position. So, they’re looking to either use the current toll plaza despite the Government of Wales Act saying it’s our right to enforce on roads in Wales, or they’re looking at investing in a free-flow scheme—a lot of capital—without legal certainty that if someone goes through and doesn’t pay, they chase them for the debt, they have to go to court, and unless they can know with certainty that that court is going to say, ‘Yes, that is a valid charge’, then it’s incredibly difficult for them to invest in that scheme. The frustration that I have over this is that there’s this fixed sum of, I think, £75 million or so that the UK Government says, it would raise that and we’d just beat it, but it would raise that within a year or so of continued tolling. Then it says that the continued operation and maintenance cost is about £15 million a year, but much of that is actually the operation of the tolls itself. So, we’re perhaps looking at a sum of around half that. While it’s not our ideal scenario, would the First Minister consider that it might be better than nothing if tolling continued just for a further year, and if thereafter we were able to make a modest contribution of perhaps £2 million or £3 million to the tolling cost, does he think that would be a deal worth having in order to get rid of those tolls? And will he work with parties across the Chamber to try and agree that?