THE Conservatives want to impose a road pricing charge on all lorries using roads in the UK to counter the problem of overseas hauliers forcing their British rivals out of business, The Times has learnt.

Chris Grayling, the Shadow Transport Secretary, will tell road hauliers today that the Tories will prioritise a lorry road-user charge of the sort that Labour scrapped last year amid uncertainties about its overall road pricing strategy.

The Conservative scheme would be based on the principle that every lorry that uses Britain’s roads should pay for their upkeep. The intention is that revenues from the charge would be used to lower fuel duties, so that a cost disadvantage suffered by British hauliers would be removed.

Mr Grayling told The Times that the past few years had been disastrous for the road haulage industry in the UK, causing many haulage firms to go to the wall. He said: “The British industry can’t compete. Diesel costs about 20p a litre less in France than it does here and foreign hauliers can fill up on about 1,000 gallons in Calais and then spend ten days plying their trade over here.”

Ten years ago, about a million lorries left the UK to go to continental Europe. Just over half of these were British. Last year, about two million lorries went to the Continent, but only a quarter (517,000) were British.

Mr Grayling is also concerned about safety standards of many foreign-registered vehicles. “Over 40 per cent of Czech and Romanian trucks stopped are faulty or do not meet UK roadworthiness standards,” he said. “Often they operate outside the rules of the tachograph, with drivers earning wages well below UK levels.”

Mr Grayling will tell the Transport Association that the next Conservative government will level the playing field. He says that the road haulage industry should not pay the price while the Government dithers over a national road pricing scheme for all vehicles.