Road pricing - it's about trust, not transport

I've just had an email from the Prime Minister. This is because - and I don't mind admitting this - I'm one of the 1,800,597 people who have signed the petition against road pricing. This has been making waves in the media for the past few months, but on the off-chance that any of my fellow Lib Dems agree with me, it's too late to add your name. The petition's now closed.

Considerably more of my yellow-feathered colleagues will be wondering if I've flipped my lid, and joined the gas-guzzling motorist lobby. The other signatories, they'll argue, are simply after a licence to damage the environment for free, and no liberal has any business suporting them. But I assure you, I haven't got into bed with Jeremy Clarkson (although he does make very entertaining TV).

The stupid thing is, even though I've signed this petition, I think that road pricing is quite a good idea. Replacing flat-rate road tax with a scheme that takes distance into account is extremely clever. It's much fairer, it gives people a real incentive not to use their cars for pointlessly short journeys, and it penalises people for being irresponsible motorists, rather than just being motorists in general. More to the point, the maths suggests that it would do a very good job of cutting congestion.

So why am I joining the majority of sportscar drivers in this country in petitioning the PM? Simply because I don't trust him. I want him to scrap the road-pricing scheme, not because road pricing is bad, but because this particular scheme will be implemented by New Labour, and I cannot trust New Labour to do what they've promised.

By an accident of birth, I escaped the top-up fees that Labour promised not to introduce. By renewing my passport this year, I've bought myself a decade's freedom from the ID cards that Labour said would be completely voluntary. And when I go to the polls at the next general election, I'll be voting under the same rigged voting system that Mr Blair promised to replace in 1997.

So when he tells me that road pricing will simply be used to send everyone a bill at the end of each month, I get alarm bells in my head. The next time there's a black hole in Brown's budget, will I start getting speeding tickets in the post? Or more worryingly, if I'm ever suspected of a crime with political implications, will the press start to get anonymous briefings about where the Government thinks I might have driven? Access to tracking data from every car in the country is a huge amount of power, and it's not the sort of power I want our country's top brass to get their hands on.

This debacle isn't a matter of transport policy; it's a matter of trust. And on the last day of the road pricing petition, I have no regrets about my name being up there on the Number 10 website, however many 4x4 owners' are alongside it. Say yes to distance-related road tax, yes to real incentives for people to drive less - but for pity's sake, say no to a virtual Government monkey on my shoulder whenever I drive.