As the Chancellor puts the final touches to his first Budget, the warnings about unfilled black holes seem only to grow, along with the split between spending-cutters and tax-raisers on what to do about it. As an avowed spending-cutter, I nonetheless find myself with the tax-raisers on one point. Let the owners, leasers and drivers of those monster cars progressively crowding my modest little hatchback off the road pay their way – and the bigger the tax penalty, the better.

More than two decades ago, when I lived in the United States, I could not believe that the acronym SUV (for Sport Utility Vehicle), let alone the outsized vehicles it denoted, would cross the Atlantic, either at all, or so quickly and with so little apparent resistance. I could just about comprehend why Americans, enamoured of the great outdoors and needing to cover huge distances and compete for road space with even more gigantic trucks, would take to SUVs as a natural upgrade from their already roomy saloons and pick-ups.

SUVs seemed just about excusable there, too, given that most US roads could accommodate them, and that Americans seemed to spend so much time in their cars that room for cup-holders, snacks, children, and – er – larger Americans became priorities when choosing a vehicle. The bloating of the passenger car also had to be seen in the context of a general trend towards gigantism, which included the building of enormous ‘McMansions’ – a fashion I am happy to say now seems to be in reverse.

I have to say, I never bought into either trend, and a perennial nightmare was trying to pick up a hire car only to be told that my reserved ‘compact’ – in European eyes, that would be an almost normal-sized car – was unavailable, and they were delighted to upgrade me to something that looked like (and drove like) a cross between a primitive military vehicle and a boat.

Then these behemoths came here – here being a land of generally narrower, more winding roads and smaller parking spaces. At first they stood out, to the point of being ridiculed as ‘Chelsea tractors’. But you hear that term a lot less nowadays, as SUV has become practically synonymous with ‘family car’ – a description I note is favoured by those now reporting, with disapproval, that the clean energy group, Transport & Environment, has been lobbying for a new tax on SUVs in the coming Budget.

Forgive me, but an SUV is no ‘family car’. It is a vehicle that, when seen from my driving seat, obscures my whole view of the road, conceals any child that might be crossing in front of it, reduces many normal urban roads to one-way, as there is no room for on-coming traffic to pass, blinds other drivers at night as their headlamps are set so high, and spills beyond what used to be regular-sized parking spaces, reducing the space for all. The only way they can legitimately be called family cars is that, alas, they seem to have become the norm for the London – and doubtless other city – school-runs, creating a rush-hour all of their own.

So why have these huge vehicles caught on at all in a congested country to which they are mostly so ill-suited? One attraction often cited is the sense of safety (to those inside, it should be clarified), the visibility they afford (again, at other drivers’ expense), and the sense of dominance of the road – which I might rather describe as selfish, bullying, and destructive of the good-mannered give and take that used to be such a generally pleasing feature of driving on British roads.

There was, though, I suspect, another aspect to their appeal, which helps to explain why annual sales of SUVs have risen steadily, to the point where they accounted for 60 per cent of all new car sales last year, despite prices several times more than you would have dreamt of paying for an ordinary roadster a few years ago. This was the official push to get people out of their petrol or diesel cars and into hybrid or, better still, all-electric cars. SUV manufacturers leapt to produce hybrid or electric versions of their monsters, which they, and their buyers, could claim were more environmentally responsible than their fossil-fuel equivalents. Until this year there was an added incentive, with a total exemption from vehicle excise duty for all eVs. So you not only saved on the ever-rising price of petrol, but on the car tax, too. And you can follow the rationale: what on earth could be wrong with a bigger, even a mega, car, if it offered zero-emissions. You were already doing the environment and the community a favour.

But that argument leaves a lot to be desired. Size matters. If you want a non-polluting car, you can still – just about – obtain one without it being an SUV. Smaller and much smaller e-Vs and hybrids are as clean as e-SUVs, but far more eco-friendly in other respects, starting with the space they occupy, moving and parked, their weight, their life-span and difficulty of disposal.

As was seldom pointed out when they were first introduced, eVs and hybrids are around 30 per cent heavier than their fossil-fuel equivalents, because of the weight of their batteries and the structure needed to support them. They wear down tyres much faster, they put more of a burden on roads and bridges – maybe it is not just neglect causing the pot-hole problem? – they inflict more damage on people and other cars in accidents, they are (a lot) more expensive to repair, they have pushed up everyone’s insurance costs, and the batteries present a whole new category of waste.

All these are reasons why, far from being given tax breaks, e-Vs and hybrids should have to pay their way, and why the bigger and heavier the car, whatever its fuel, the greater that tax levy should be. There is already an ‘Expensive Car Supplement’, charged on vehicles costing more than £40,000. That could be applied to all SUVs, according to size and weight, and increased several times over. If a punitive tax starts to erode the appeal of these behemoths, and encourages people to buy smaller, lighter, more manoeuvrable vehicles, better suited to this country’s roads, so much the better.

Such a change would not be before time. The liabilities of eVs and giant cars, and the lethal combination of the two, should have been recognised and penalised in the tax system long before these monstrosities started to rule the road. Rectifying that mistake would offer an easy win for the Chancellor. It could also help UK manufacturers, given that many of the newer, cheaper, e-SUVs are imported tariff-free from China. And it should chime well with the Prime Minister’s concern with everyday irritations, while addressing road safety issues as well. An SUV tax is surely a tax whose time has come.

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