Because our climate change obligations oblige us to look at the ways in which we're going to make modal shift, to be less polluting and less destructive of our environment. We have a completely different attitude to road users than we do to rail users. Why is it that rail users are not rioting, like the Rebecca rioters did, when they get these above-inflation increases every single year to what they have to pay for rail fare? Instead, we hear nothing. It's a whimper compared with the howl at any suggestion that road users should pay more.

There are too many people who struggle to maintain a car, which they can't really afford to do, because they're spending money they should be spending on food and other necessities, simply because they think it's the only way they can have the independence and the mobility that a car can offer. But this is, unfortunately, a reflection of our inadequate public transport system, which should be enabling everybody to be able to move around more freely, including almost 25 per cent of households who do not have access to a car. So, it's deeply unfair that we spend so much of taxpayers' money on roads, rather than expecting the people who use the roads to pay more.