The Severn toll crossings linking south Wales to England will become a Whitehall-imposed tax on Wales with no benefit to the Welsh when the two bridges enter public ownership in 2018, it is claimed.
Wales’s first minister, Carwyn Jones, said the M4 and M48 links across the Severn river were seen as a “cash cow” by a UK government that was not prepared to share toll revenue and with “no money coming to Wales at all”.
Control of the two crossings, used by 80,000 vehicles a day, passes to the Department of Transport in April 2018 having been run by the consortium Severn River Crossing Plc, which built the M4 bridge and took on the debt of the M48 crossing in the 1990s. Both crossings revert to public ownership once the company has recouped costs through the tolls that are paid on entry to Wales, said to be on 1 April 2018.
The tolls are paid by vehicles travelling westward from England to Wales and have been described as “a tax on entering Wales”. Protesters have likened the controversy to that which sparked the 19th-century Rebecca Riots by impoverished agricultural workers, often men dressed as women, who stormed toll gates on Welsh roads in protest at unfair taxation.
Calling for control of the crossings to be devolved to the Welsh government, Jones told the Guardian: “As it stands … when it reverts to public ownership, the tolls will be set entirely in Whitehall, and the revenue from the tolls will be used entirely on English road budgets. There will be nothing coming to Wales at all.”
It was “wholly unacceptable” that “the people in Wales should have to pay a tax for something they see no benefit from at all”.
Feelings were running high, he said. The Welsh government, if it had control, would reduce the tolls, although to what level it could not say as the DfT had failed to provide full forecast figures and liabilities, he said. The revenue could be used to fund Wales’s transport infrastructure.
“I think the DfT sees the Severn bridges as a cash cow and are not prepared to share any money at the moment.”
He added: “It cannot be right that a cross-border bridge will be run on one side of that border, which then pockets all the profits itself, while the government on the other side gets absolutely no say and no money.
“We would have a scenario where Welsh tolls will be collecting money set in Whitehall for the benefit of Whitehall. That makes no sense. Why would we want to see that?”.
A study commissioned by the Welsh government in 2012 showed the scrapping of the tolls could improve the economic output of south Wales by £107m. Transport and logistics businesses were worst hit, with a small number of companies spending more than £200,000-a-year on tolls, the report said. The tolls were also seen as deterring commuting between south Wales and the south-west of England, as well as day trips and shopping trips, thereby affecting Wales’s crucial visitor economy and Cardiff as a retail destination, it said.
The chancellor, George Osborne, has pledged to cut the tolls, from £6.50 a car to £5.40, and from £19. 60 for HGVs and buses to £16.30, by removing the VAT that will no longer be payable once the bridges are publicly owned.
A DfT spokesperson said: “No decision has been made on the future of the tolls on the Severn bridge following the end of the existing concession”. The department said any future regime would need to recover costs incurred, make provision for maintenance, and reflect the interests of taxpayers in both England and Wales. The government was committed to working with the Welsh government and others to determine the long-term future of the crossings.
Some have called for tolls to be abolished altogether. Others question why either government should profit. The toll could be slashed to just £1 and still cover maintenance and running costs, said David Davies, Conservative MP for Monmouth and chair of the Commons Welsh Affairs committee.
Figures Davies had obtained showed a net revenue of £91.4m in 2014, of which £13.16m was for operation expenditure and £17m was paid in VAT. A total of £154m in VAT had been paid by Severn River Crossing up until 2014, which had been an unexpected windfall for the government after VAT payments were introduced in 2000 following an EU ruling, so any outstanding debts on the bridges by 2018 could be offset against that, he argued.
The figures showed a “huge surplus” being made over and above maintenance. “If there is no profit being made, then it shouldn’t really matter which side it goes to, because there will be no tax on the people of Wales,” he said.
“And if Carwyn wants to come forward with an absolute cast-iron guarantee that if the Welsh assembly got their hands on the bridges it would never make a profit out of the people using it, then I would certainly be interest in hearing more”. He added: “Frankly, though, if they are not going to raise money, why would they want to get their hands on it”.
Jonathan Edwards, Plaid Cymru MP and the party’s transport spokesman, said “It is a hugely emotional subject because it’s the main route in to the south Wales economy. And people in Wales find it very difficult to understand why they have to pay such a heavy price to re-enter their own country”.
Plaid Cymru wanted the crossing under Welsh government ownership, for the tolls to be reduced and any profits ploughed into the Welsh transport infrastructure, which, with no electrified rail line, shared the same status as Albania and Moldova, he said.
“I think the DfT need to be completely open and transparent with the people of Wales about their intentions once rhey assume control,” he said. “It’s a bitter pill that you have to pay such a huge fee. It’s a tax on entering Wales, isn’t it?”
• This article was amended on 9 November 2015. An earlier version said the consortium Severn River Crossing Plc built the M48 bridge and took on the debt of the original M4 crossing in the 1990s. The M48 bridge is the original M4 crossing. Severn Crossing Plc built the second M4 crossing and took on the debt of the original one.
