Should we privatise the roads?

The government is looking into privatising Britain's roads - a good idea to revive the nation's finances? Or just another way to rip off motorists? Emily Hohler reports.

David Cameron's announcement that the government is thinking of privatising our major road network has been met "with a mixture of admiration and outrage", says Philip Johnston in The Daily Telegraph. "The facts are inescapable." The existing network is "decrepit and congested", costing the country around £8bn a year.

Yet, the investment to improve it isn't there. Cameron hopes that the sale of our major roads to the private sector on long leases will unlock investment from pension and sovereign wealth funds. To that end he has ordered a feasibility study. Not that one is needed: "just such a study" was carried out in 2009 by NM Rothschild, which estimated that a sale could "raise £100bn and help revive the nation's battered finances".

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/mw70aro6gl1676370748.jpg

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up
Emily Hohler
Politics editor

Emily has worked as a journalist for more than thirty years and was formerly Assistant Editor of MoneyWeek, which she helped launch in 2000. Prior to this, she was Deputy Features Editor of The Times and a Commissioning Editor for The Independent on Sunday and The Daily Telegraph. She has written for most of the national newspapers including The Times, the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, The Evening Standard and The Daily Mail, She interviewed celebrities weekly for The Sunday Telegraph and wrote a regular column for The Evening Standard. As Political Editor of MoneyWeek, Emily has covered subjects from Brexit to the Gaza war.

Aside from her writing, Emily trained as Nutritional Therapist following her son's diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes in 2011 and now works as a practitioner for Nature Doc, offering one-to-one consultations and running workshops in Oxfordshire.