You grill the Government - Will road charging benefit cleaner cars?

Q: Will proposed road-charging schemes penalise dirty cars? If I bought a hybrid petrol-electric Honda, would I pay less under future road charges than a conventional petrol car?
Brian Nicholas, Surrey

SL: It's too early to say exactly how future road pricing schemes might work, but they will be targeted at relieving congestion and getting people to make the most of existing road capacity. We want to encourage people to use cleaner vehicles, but we would have to be careful to prevent road charging schemes from becoming too complicated.

Road pricing has the potential to bring benefits for motorists in easing congestion. Our preliminary study showed that if you reduce urban traffic by 4%, you could ease congestion in those areas by nearly half.

There's a lot of work still to be done, but we're keen to see a pilot scheme in the next five years. Environmental concerns will be one of a whole range of issues that will be looked at.