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Last week I went back to the home where we lived in the Seventies. Back then the road outside the house used to be clear, with just the odd parked car.

Forty years on, it was hard to get down there. The road was clogged with cars. Some homes had three lined up on the street.

Car ownership in the UK has risen from 19 million in 1971 to 32 million today, driven by greater prosperity.

Our roads are now grinding to a halt with the sheer volume of cars.

This week we found out that drivers are spending up to three days a year stuck in jams.

It’s time for us to be truly radical with transport because our roads can’t carry on with worsening ­gridlock and air pollution.

I came into government as Transport and Environment Secretary to reduce congestion and ­integrate our transport services.

I wanted to introduce a congestion charge whereby motorists had to pay to enter certain areas.

Number 10 aides weren’t happy. They were obsessed with so-called Mondeo Man and didn’t want to be seen as anti-car.

In fact, Number 10 was so against my idea that they sent me a message as I was on my way to the House of Commons, telling me not to make the ­statement announcing the congestion charge.

I told them to get stuffed and made it anyway.

I’m glad I did. It reduced congestion and transport in London by 30 per cent.

More importantly, with Gordon Brown’s backing, I arranged it so the income from the congestion charge could only be used to improve public transport. And London became the only city to increase passengers.

This method of charging people to exclusively pay for something else is called hypothecation, like National Insurance to finance the National Health Services. I was proud that, thanks to our transport policies, millions more use our trains and buses. The number of rail users more than doubled during our time in office from 54 million in 1997 to 119 million in 2010.

Unfortunately, over that period, seven million new cars were bought and the old vehicles were either sold on or given to family friends, thus creating greater congestion and pollution.

So now we need to be more radical to improve our public transport system and get more people out of their cars.

The Tories have slashed transport spending in the north, cutting rail electrification and not regulating privatised bus services. You have only to look at the mess they’ve made of the East Coast line to see they haven’t a clue about the importance of public transport. Above all, we need a proper debate on the financing of the transport system to give greater priority to public transport and reducing the cost to the NHS from pollution.

That means the polluter must pay, and commercial and multiple car households are doing the most damage. Nearly a third of UK households now own two or more cars. Seven per cent own three or more.

So why don’t we look at introducing a tax on second cars? I know many will say that’s a bit rich coming from “Two Jags”. But I only ever had one car, the second was my government Jaguar when I was down in London.

The second car tax, set at an aver age £100 a year, would be hypothecated to help fund public transport locally and nationally and could raise over £1billion a year.

It wouldn’t be popular with the Jeremy Clarksons of this world.

But if we make the case that £1billion would be pumped into improving local public transport, especially subsidising rural bus services and reducing NHS costs, then people could be convinced.