I will, but may I finish my point first, because I think that the hon. Gentleman will be likely to agree with me?
After 2018, all bets are off, and several things could happen when the money is paid off. The Government will no longer have to pay VAT so, at a stroke, 20% could be taken off the charges. They could decide to get rid of tolls and fund the maintenance themselves, although that is unlikely, because I have been given an inkling of the cost of maintaining two large bridges over an estuary—it is phenomenal. I do not have the figures to hand, but we worked out that we would need to charge at least one third of the current toll simply to cover maintenance costs, and the Government might want to take a little more just in case it is necessary to build a third bridge in the future. However, there is no doubt that there could be a huge cut in the tolls after 2018, when Severn River Crossing’s charges have been met.
At the same time, the Welsh Assembly Government are loudly demanding control over both bridges, although one is entirely in England, which seems to have escaped their attention. However, they are being rather silent about what they would do to the tolls if they were put in charge. We need some transparency. There was a lot of anger in my constituency, and probably throughout south Wales, when the latest toll increases were announced, and I believe that some of that anger could be assuaged if we had more transparency about what will happen.
I was disappointed when we were informed by one of the Minister’s colleagues in government that there was unlikely to be any decrease in charges whatsoever because of extra costs—the Committee was told that they were several hundred million pounds, but I believe that they are now around £112 million—that the Government want to recoup. I do not know what those costs are, and the first I heard of them was when the evidence was given to the Committee. We were told nothing about that when the inquiry took place, so we would like to know what those costs are and what will happen when they have been paid off. We cannot find ourselves in the 2020s with the Severn bridge being used as a cash cow to milk the public in Wales and south-west England of money that the Government should not be taking through a toll, so a little transparency would be welcome.