| |
|
|
News Release 12th January 2005MINISTER RESPONDS TO AMBULANCE TOLL ON M6Following the incident at the end of last year when a Staffordshire ambulance was held up for several minutes at a toll booth on the M6 (see news release of 2nd December), the Minister for Transport, David Jamieson, has told Michael Fabricant that emergency vehicles are exempt from toll charges and should not have been held up. He said: "Under the statutory Order governing tolling at the M6 toll road (The Birmingham Northern Relief Road Toll Order 1998 (SI 1998/124)), police vehicles, fire engines and ambulances are exempt from toll charges. "The M6 toll road concessionaire, Midland Expressway Limited (MEL), has primary responsibility for the operation of the M6 toll road during the lifetime of the concession agreement. Therefore, it is for MEL to ensure that adequate procedures are in place so that emergency vehicles are not unduly hindered when using the toll road. "As regards the Government's policy towards the charging of emergency vehicles for using other toll roads, this generally depends on the legislation governing the tolled undertaking. However, in the consultation paper "Breaking the logjam", published in March 1999, about giving local authorities powers to bring in road user charging schemes, the Government stated that it ". . . does not consider it to be appropriate to charge vehicles used by the emergency services . . .".". Michael Fabricant says: "I welcome this clarification of the law. The operators of the M6 Toll road should have been aware of this. They had no right to hold up a Staffordshire Ambulance vehicle and the law clearly states that it is irrelevant whether they are on an emergency call or not. "It is a disgrace that the ambulance finally had to use its emergency blue light before the vehicle was allowed through and then later claim that that they could not recognise the vehicle as being an ambulance even though it was clearly marked as such. I hope that the management of the M6 Toll will now issue clear instructions to the toll booth operatives. Lives could be put in danger if emergency vehicles are delayed in future" Michael adds. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
