Robert Halfon, the Conservative MP for Harlow, issued the warning in a letter to the Labour leader of Harlow Council Mark Ingall. The Tory MP called on him to “urgently lobby” Mr Khan over his plan to charge motorists £5.50 for entering Greater London.
The London mayor is looking at the Greater London Boundary Charge in a bid to salvage Transport for London’s finances, which have been badly hit by the coronavirus pandemic.
But the move would affect an estimated 1.3 million drivers a day from counties such as Surrey, Kent, Essex, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire.
Mr Halfon warned motorists driving into London for work would face a bill of £1,000 a year under the plan.
He said: “Hundreds of hard-working Harlow residents commute into London every day in vans and by car.
“The Labour mayor is proposing to clobber these workers with an extra £1,000 a year bill in the form of a ‘border tax’ just to go to work.”
He added: “This would absolutely destroy the livelihoods of so many residents at a time when we should be doing everything possible to support them.
“The taxpayer has already bailed Transport for London out twice to the value of over £3.4 billion and now they are being asked to pay even more.
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Mr Halfon’s intervention comes after Tory MPs criticised the London mayor’s plan to fleece drivers £5.50 for entering Greater London.
Reigate MP Crispin Blunt told the Telegraph: “This is plainly nothing but a tax to rescue the desperate fiscal situation the current mayor finds himself in.
“It will hurt businesses in outer London and have unfair impacts on many, for example, parents of a child in school just the wrong side of the Greater London Authority boundary, including a number of my constituents.”
Writing in the Evening Standard, Tory MP Paul Scully, minister for London, said: “Sadiq’s new land border with the Home Counties – his Checkpoint Chigwell – is not the answer.
“He should put away the map table and go back to the drawing board.”
The border into Greater London roughly follows the line of the M25.
Express.co.uk has contacted the London mayor for comment.
