AS many as 150 civil servants working for the Department for Transport may have been among the 1.8m signatories to a petition against their own ministry’s plans for national road pricing, it has emerged.

According to department insiders, officials are investigating the claims that some of their colleagues lent their names to the mass e-petition on the Downing Street website. It is not clear whether their identities were revealed because they used office or personal e-mail addresses.

The scale of the mass internet protest was enough for Tony Blair to send his own e-mail to the signatories last week in an attempt to explain the policy. He rejected accusations that road pricing was a “stealth tax” and denied “Big Brother surveillance” was planned.

According to insiders, many who joined the protest work at the department’s Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (Vosa), based in Bristol. It issues MoT certificates and is responsible for testing, inspecting and licensing buses and heavy goods vehicles.

An insider claimed that an e-mail was circulated about involvement in the petition last week, although a DfT spokesman said there was no inquiry into the claims.

Lord Hanningfield, a Tory transport spokesman, said: “Even the civil servants who would be expected to implement road pricing are registering opposition. It’s time for Labour to go back to the drawing board.”

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