Labour uses majority to drive road tolls on

Labour used its overall majority in the city council to vote through proposals to develop a fully-fledged tolls scheme.

The authority is also to investigate extra public transport improvements which could be in place prior to any congestion charging.

Amid Labour accusations that the city’s opposition parties "hadn’t a clue" how to deal with Edinburgh’s transport problems, a Liberal Democrat move to find out if three tram lines could be built without the need for tolls was defeated.

A separate Tory bid to throw out the whole idea of congestion charging, and instead talk to ministers about massive government funding for public transport, was also thrown out.

The decision came as UK Transport Secretary Alastair Darling said he backed the principle of tolls, but would not make up his own mind about whether he supported them for the Capital until plans had been finalised.

"The devil is in the detail," he said.

Meanwhile, sources at West Lothian Council said they were optimistic Edinburgh will not object to them running their own referendum in tandem with the Capital’s. The city’s Labour group finally came to a consensus on tolls last week after the referendum plan was tabled. Its executive agreed to proceed with plans for an all-day city centre toll cordon and a rush-hour bypass cordon; investigate what extra public transport could be in place before tolls; and hold a referendum.

But ultimately the final decision on that rested with the full council.

It had been thought the issue would not be debated there until November because opposition parties were expected to "call in" tolls to a watchdog panel first. Instead they took the policy straight to yesterday’s full council meeting.

City transport leader Councillor Andrew Burns sought to rubbish Tory, Lib Dem and SNP objections to road tolls . He said the Liberal Democrats represented "complete transport hypocrisy" because of their previous support in the Scottish Parliament for congestion charging, claimed the SNP had a "complete transport policy vacuum," and branded the Tories a "complete transport mess".

Cllr Burns said Labour’s Integrated Transport Initiative, which marries tolls with 1.5 billion of transport improvements, was the only comprehensive, costed programme for solving Edinburgh’s transport problems. He said: " The opposition have no answer, no blueprint and frankly no clue."

Lib Dem transport spokesman Fred Mackintosh claimed Labour had invented transport projects to use up the 1.5bn tolls would yield. He said the fact that 375m of government money was expected to be available for tram lines showed major transport improvements were possible without tolls.

Tory counterpart Councillor Allan Jackson said: "The Government is quite happy to fund better public transport and indeed better roads. What I can’t get a handle on is why in that case do we need this extra charge in Edinburgh? The citizens of Edinburgh don’t want it. We should just forget the whole thing."

Meanwhile, a senior source at West Lothian Council said Labour leaders there were confident they could run their own referendum and that the city council would co-operate with that.

The source said: "They’re quite willing to sit down with us. They can’t stop us doing it and the reality is it makes sense to do it together."