Setting out the party’s ambitions for transport to the Institute for Government think tank, he asserted that the present administration’s “ever expanding” programme of road building was causing growth in traffic and emissions.

“For too long, transport has been put in the ‘too difficult’ box so far as climate change is concerned,” he said. He highlighted that fuel duty has been frozen since 2010, at a cost of over £50Bn to the Treasury, while rail and bus fares have been on the rise.

“This is not a sensible approach to transport policy,” he said. The Shadow Transport Secretary pledged to set a carbon reduction target and budget within the Department for Transport and reform regulations to drive behavioural changes.

However the proposal to raise fuel duty has not gone down well with lobbying group Fair Fuel UK, whose founder Howard Cox described the measure as “declaring war on drivers”.

Conservative MP Douglas Ross of the Fair Fuel UK All Party Parliamentary Group said: “For many people, diving is the only method of transport available to them. Increasing fuel duty would be narrow minded and hit families and businesses right across the country.”

Freight Transport Association head of UK policy Christopher Snelling said: “If any Government wants businesses to switch to using more environmentally friendly vehicles, they should instead focus on how to make these options a viable solution to transporting the millions of tonnes of goods Britain needs delivered every day.

“Right now, more fuel tax on vans and heavy goods vehicles would just reduce the size of the British economy and little else.”

Other priorities set out by the Shadow Transport Secretary include establishing closer links between transport and planning, improving public health through a shift to public transport and active travel and delivering a “fairer” allocation of transport investment across the UK.

(Photograph: Rama and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence)