This Government is no friend of the motorist. Gordon Brown rakes in some £45 billion a year in taxes from road users, yet ploughs back no more than £7 billion into roads.

So it was no surprise that 1.8 million people signed the petition launched by the Telford campaigner rejecting Brown's plans for road-pricing.

But congestion on our roads gets worse each year, damaging our quality of life and our economic competitiveness. Congestion will worsen, unless action is taken - traffic on motorways and A-roads is forecast to grow 51% by 2015. And we cannot forget about climate change.

I am not opposed in principle to road-pricing - I have seen it work well in Singapore. But I am against the Government's control freak Big Brother proposals for a national scheme to track every movement of every car in the land.

Any road-pricing scheme must be fair. It must take into account that for many of us in rural Shropshire, there is no alternative but to drive. Most of our rural roads are thankfully not congested. Any road pricing scheme must reflect this - not be another assault on those in rural areas.

National politicians should leave this to local decision making. But instead of giving real responsibility to local people and local communities, this Government is blackmailing them to adopt road-pricing schemes by restricting all £1.4 billion in new funding for public transport to those councils that press ahead with road pricing.

Road pricing could well become Brown's poll tax.