Department

It’s never easy to bring in
behavioural changes on the
roads, as Alistair Darling
found during his time as
Secretary of State when
road pricing plans were
abandoned following a mass
e-petition to No 10 in 2006
Peter Headicar charts a
challenging century in the
lifetime of UK transport policy
The Ministry of Transport was created
just over a century ago in 1910. At
that time the future of motorisation
(then in its infancy) was uncertain
and the funding of improvements
to the nation’s highway network was
problematic. Plus ca change!
A deal was done with motoring
organisations to introduce vehicle registration
and fuel duty with the revenues assigned
to a ring-fenced Road Improvement Fund.
The Fund was wound up before the Second
World War with the Exchequer assuming
responsibility for motoring taxation and
public expenditure on roads within its overall
budget. However the idea that there is, or
should be, a direct relationship between these
two remains firmly embedded in the public
mind and has dogged attempts at policy
discussion ever since.
For much of the 20th Century the Ministry
of Transport was caricatured as the ‘Ministry
for Roads’. In the mid-1930s it took control
of ‘trunk’ roads – major roads connecting
strategic points like cities – from local highway
authorities and after the Second World War
embarked on the planning of a purpose-built
motorway network. By contrast responsibility
for the transport industries nationalised by the
post-war Labour Government was divested
to a British Transport Commission. During
the 1960s and 1970s the Ministry was directly
responsible for the development of the national
road system with cost-benefit analysis being
used successfully to secure Treasury
backing for a large investment programme.
March 2013 | THE HOUSE MAGAZINE | 5