The Liberal Democrats yesterday performed a spectacular U-turn on charging motorists for road use in Scotland, ruling out the policy for at least a decade.
The abrupt change of direction appeared to be made on the hoof in response to tolls emerging as one of the most unpopular policies with voters in a BBC survey on election issues.
Tavish Scott, the party's election campaign director, had in his capacity as transport minister talked up the possibility earlier this year of Scotland becoming a pilot area for the UK introduction of road pricing.
More recently, he had to concede that there was no agreement on this with their Labour coalition partners, but yesterday his party leader ditched the idea entirely.
Asked about the BBC poll putting road tolls at the bottom of the popularity list, Nicol Stephen said: "We have listened to the public. We are not going to proceed with any road toll scheme in Scotland and we will only support such a scheme across the UK if the proposal is tax neutral."
Such a UK scheme, involving satellite tracking of vehicles to charge them for using different stretches of road at different times, was a decade away said Mr Stephen. Denying that yesterday amounted to a U-turn, he said it was a "change of policy" based on listening to the public.
Mark Ballard, who speaks on transport issues for the Greens, said: "Two months ago Tavish Scott was arguing his green credentials in the parliament based on his support for road-user charging, and here he is climbing down yet again - and remember this is the same party that campaigned against congestion charging in Edinburgh.
"On this track record, they can't be trusted or believed. The environmental credentials of the LibDems are now in even more disarray."
Both BBC Scotland and STV commissioned separate surveys to discover what the electorate's priorities were and both put public services at the top of the agenda.
The BBC Scotland poll found the top priority was ensuring all state schools and hospitals are built and run by public bodies, not private companies.
Next came more police on the streets. Cutting council tax payments for pensioners was third and fourth was a demand to stop closing local hospitals.
Meanwhile, replacing the council tax with a local income tax - something both the SNP and Liberal Democrats propose - came twelfth on the list of priorities and an independence referendum came in at number 17 out of 25. The least popular proposal was motorway tolls.
Scottish Opinion carried out the STV survey. As well as discovering health and education were the top two, the survey found law and order came a close third, the environment and the economy were joint fourth, ahead of council tax.
The SNP's Angus Robertson said the polls showed health, education, a fairer system of taxation and more police were key for voters.
Tory leader Annabel Goldie said the polls showed people wanted the parties to focus on "bread and butter issues", asking: "Why else is a separation referendum 17th out of 25 on the list of people's priorities?"
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article