I'd raise congestion charge to £50, says Green who would be Mayor

Green mayoral hopeful Jenny Jones set out plans today to expand the congestion charge to the M25 boundary and raise prices to as much as £50 a day.

The London Assembly member, who launched her bid this morning, said charging a steep fee was the only way to reduce car use in the capital.

"You have to raise the congestion charge by more than £10," she said. "It's quite an elastic amount people are prepared to pay it. You have to put it up to a level where people will think hard about paying it. If you put it up to £25, or £50, I'd say you're starting to get to grips with the problem." Ms Jones set out plans for a road pricing scheme that would cover the whole of London with a sliding price structure, charging £5 to travel around Zone 6 but up to 10 times that to travel into the city centre.

The system would use sophisticated technology to penalise motorists for driving during rush hour but offer discounts for travelling locally or at quieter times. She said public transport would be improved, and that reducing traffic would save lives and reduce air pollution. She also suggested businesses could sign up to large delivery depots on the city's outskirts. Ms Jones, who has sat on the Metropolitan Police Authority for 10 years, also said she would take on the new role of police commissioner.

The 61-year-old, a vocal critic of the Met's human rights record, said: "I have got huge respect for the police and think they do an incredibly difficult job but at the same time they are a very privileged group of people and at times a few of them abuse that privilege."

Ms Jones, who described the force's handling of recent student protests as "infuriating", denied that her criticisms undermined the Met. "I'm often a thorn in the side of the police but they can actually use all my complaints to make things better," she said.

"I'd have to stop moaning about them in public but that doesn't mean I couldn't still do that privately."

Ms Jones, brought up in a council house in Brighton, admitted London's affordable housing shortage would be "almost impossible to solve".

She said: "I can't see a solution. Supply now is so far behind demand. Unless we have a sudden population slump I can't see us fixing it. But I think we have to keep trying."

The former archaeologist said her green principles would underpin everything she would do at City Hall, and criticised Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone's records.

"When it comes to the crunch, when there's budget cuts, both revert to saying green is too expensive," she said. "London has gone backwards on green issues in the last two to three years."

Ms Jones admitted: "It's going to be very difficult for me to come through as a personality between the two monoliths of Ken and Boris. But hopefully I'll be seen as the voice of reason." The Greens only picked up three per cent of the first preference vote in 2008.

"An awful lot of things would have to happen for me to win," she said. "But I would be standing to set out a better view of how London could be run."

The party will announce its candidate in March.