Taxpayers will be kept in the dark over the bill for Yorkshire's new A1/M1 link motorway, the Evening Press can reveal today.

Highways chiefs have refused to say how much is being paid over in a "shadow toll" to Yorkshire Link, the consortium which has built the road and will maintain it for the next 27 years.

The Highways Agency says the monthly payments, made under a controversial Design, Build, Finance and Operate contract (DBFO), cannot be made public because of "commercial sensitivities."

But an MP today slated the decision, saying the Government was supposed to believe in openness.

Harrogate and Knaresborough's Liberal Democrat MP Phil Willis said he planned to table a Parliamentary Question, demanding to know how much was being paid out. And he also planned to press for such information to be made public with two future schemes to widen the A1 in Yorkshire, between Ferrybridge and Hook Moor, and Wetherby and Walshford.

Environmental campaigners Friends of the Earth said: "The public should have a right to know how their money is being spent."

The link motorway, which connects the A64 and A1 at Bramham Crossroads near Tadcaster with the M1 and M62 south of Leeds, cost about £200 million.

But unlike traditional road schemes, no money was paid out when the road opened in February. Instead, under the DBFO, a shadow toll will be paid over every month for the next 27 years, calculated on the basis of how many vehicles have used the road.

Friends of the Earth have attacked this payment system, saying it encourages more people to use the road when the Government is meant to be committed to reducing car usage. Yorkshire Link says between 45,000 and 55,000 vehicles per day have used the road since it opened - about three million vehicles over the first two months.

The Highways Agency says it wants to make as much information available as possible. "However, the first eight DBFO contracts - of which this link road is one - were awarded on the basis that the contract, including the financial figures for payments, would not be made public because of commercial sensitivities."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.