MORE than £1.7m of speeding fines meant for road safety improvements in the North-East has been snatched by the Treasury, the Tories said last night.

The cash was claimed by Chancellor Gordon Brown after police and local authorities across the region failed to spend it on installing cameras or on road safety campaigns.

The revelation flies in the face of Government pledges that speeding fines fund local improvements and are not a "cash cow" to bolster Treasury coffers.

Alan Duncan, Conservative transport spokesman, immediately branded the windfall a "stealth tax" to fill a black hole in Mr Brown's finances.

The figures, obtained by Mr Duncan, reveal that speed traps in Cleveland brought in £3.6m between 2001 and last year.

But only £2.44m was spent on operating cameras, collecting fines, installing new sites and road safety campaigns - leaving £1.16m for the Treasury to claim as surplus.

In the Northumbria force area, £3.2m was raised in 2003/4 - the first year of its partnership - of which £2.6m was spent and £610,000 handed to the Government.

There are no figures for either Durham or North Yorkshire, which had not set up camera partnerships by April last year.

The number of speed cameras - and the level of fines - have rocketed after local partnerships were given permission to keep the proceeds in return for making cameras more visible.

But ministers have tried to stem public anger by insisting they are only interested in cutting road deaths and injuries.

The National Safety Cameras website states that partnerships, made up of police and local councils, "do not profit and do not have any incentive to raise revenue for the Treasury".

Mr Duncan, said: "This provides yet more evidence that speed cameras are being used as a stealth tax to raise money from hard-pressed motorists at a time of soaring fuel prices.

"We think any money raised should be used to fund road safety campaigns, not to fill Gordon Brown's black hole."

A Department of Transport spokesman said allocating the surpluses to the Treasury ensured local partnerships were not tempted to "keep increasing the number of tickets".

He said: "The Government has targets to reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured on our roads and that is far more important than any money received by the Treasury."