This week saw the publication of the Prime Minister's response to an 8,000 name petition calling for action to deal with bridge tolls on the Humber Bridge. Instead of a pledge of action, the Prime Minister instead stated that the bridge tolls were a matter for the Humber Bridge Board and thus the Government would not be doing anything.

Andrew Percy responded angrily saying, "Last week we had Government Minister for Yorkshire and the Humber Caroline Flint saying the government wont scrap the tolls and now we have the Prime Minister saying the issue is none of their business. What an insult to the thousands of local people who signed the petition. North Lincolnshire has four Labour MPs who claim to want action on the tolls and we now know from this response that this issue for them is more about photo opportunities than it is about real action.

"Everyone knows the issue of the bridge tolls is not an easy one to solve. However, for Labour to simply say it is nothing to do with them is clearly unacceptable. We want leadership from the Government to help us find alternative ways of managing the bridge debt and most importantly of all we need them to be actively engaged and open minded on the issue.

"Funny how the Government claims it can't act on the bridge debt of about £300-400 million but yet two nights ago our local Labour MP felt able to vote to increase our payments to the EU by an average of £2.7 billion per year from now until 2013."