MPs split on Humber Bridge tolls review

MPs have met with Transport Minister Sadiq Khan to press him to consider cutting or scrapping the Humber Bridge Tolls.

Last month Mr Khan pledged the toll would not rise for 18 months after meeting a delegation of business and council leaders from the region.

He announced £6m of public funding to allow the bridge to balance its books after earlier rejecting a proposed 20p increase in the £2.70 charge.

And he also promised that Department for Transport experts would for the first time examine the report by independent transport consultants Colin Buchanan, which suggested that scrapping or cutting the charge would boost the region's economy.

This week he met with Brigg and Goole MP Ian Cawsey, Cleethorpes MP Shona McIsaac, Grimsby MP Austin Mitchell, Haltemprice and Howden MP David Davis, and Beverley and Holderness MP Graham Stuart, who arranged the meeting.

While the need to cut the tolls has so far inspired cross-party consensus, Labour and Conservative MPs are now taking a different view on how best this can be achieved.

The two Conservative MPs present, Mr Stuart and Mr Davis, asked Mr Khan to press the Treasury to commission its own review into the economic impact of abolishing tolls. The Conservatives have committed to such a move should they win the election, expected next May.

But Mr Cawsey said: "Austin, Shona and myself feared a Treasury review would simply argue that tolls give them more revenue than economic growth and would lead to nothing.

"We argued that the local authorities had paid for research on this matter already and this needed to be acted on."

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