Sunak Under Pressure to Cut Fuel Duty

[3rd rail land]

and that it does run, and to time...

Exactly. I planned on getting a certain train home from the office last week only to find it canceled. Fortunately I noticed in enough time to get the previous train.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Is it still the case that 90% of all journeys are made by car? If so it doesn't help rail's case for investment ?

Cars on motorways are, overall, the least damaging and most efficient ones. The emissions are typically through open space*, so the carbon matters but the rest of it doesn't have much effect on health.

The most damaging cars are those in towns and cities. Rail will do very little for these other than in those cities where there is an urban heavy rail network which is seriously deficient (e.g. Manchester and Leeds).

Thus if you want to remove the most damaging cars, you want to spend on bus and tram (including park and ride), much less so rail.

Also add to that that if an urban dweller has enough high quality options to mean they don't want to use their car locally (i.e. quality segregated cycle facilities and excellent local bus/rail/tram), they might get rid of it (or reduce from 2 to 1 per family), and so they will be more likely to choose rail for the long distance trips too.

* Give or take the M6 through Brum. That does give rise to the idea that the M6 Toll should be made free at the point of use (cheaper than the M6 through Brum in the case of road pricing being implemented) and a permanent 50 limit slapped on the route through Brum to discourage its use other than for access as well as reduce pollution on that stretch. There's already a 60 on a fairly long stretch near Wolves to reduce pollution. Perhaps also renumber the old M6 to the M46 to signify it being secondary, a bit like the way the A5 now goes onto the M1 after Dunstable and the remainder has been detrunked and renumbered to a 4 figure number I forget.

 

[Harryn9000]

Cars on motorways are, overall, the least damaging and most efficient ones. The emissions are typically through open space*, so the carbon matters but the rest of it doesn't have much effect on health.

The most damaging cars are those in towns and cities. Rail will do very little for these other than in those cities where there is an urban heavy rail network which is seriously deficient (e.g. Manchester and Leeds).

Thus if you want to remove the most damaging cars, you want to spend on bus and tram (including park and ride), much less so rail.

* Give or take the M6 through Brum. That does give rise to the idea that the M6 Toll should be made free at the point of use (cheaper than the M6 through Brum in the case of road pricing being implemented) and a permanent 50 limit slapped on the route through Brum to discourage its use other than for access. There's already a 60 on a fairly long stretch near Wolves to reduce pollution.

not enough is spent on public transport to make it viable for some commutes, i know my only alternative is bus and it near an hr an half commute compared to 35 mins via car. unless u live right by a station in my case merseyrail is local operator u basically relying on diesal buses to get u to a station or home from work

 

[Failed Unit]

I also can't see rail fares getting cut and totally understand everything is impacted by fuel costs. Reduction of some things because of the fuel duty may not by a bad thing, couriers for example. Cutting fuel duty in that respect is a subsidy to online shopping to the detriment of the high street. However it is sickening that after a 19% fare increase last year on rail, the yet again the government is showing its pro car bias.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I also can't see rail fares getting cut and totally understand everything is impacted by fuel costs. Reduction of some things because of the fuel duty may not by a bad thing, couriers for example. Cutting fuel duty in that respect is a subsidy to online shopping to the detriment of the high street. However it is sickening that after a 19% fare increase last year on rail, the yet again the government is showing its pro car bias.

DPD (the only vaguely reputable one of the lot) is now heavily using EVs. I think something specifically targetted to push couriers onto EVs would be a very good thing, but think simply fiddling with fuel duty is too blunt an instrument. Because most couriers are self-employed, some form of heavily incentivised leasing terms might be a good option to look at. The same could be done for other self-employed service industry drivers such as private-hire cars.

I don't frankly give a stuff about the High Street. Chain stores are no more reputable than Amazon. It might be nice to recreate the "old style" high street by incentivising small business (which might be more viable with increased home working - if you live in a small town, popping into town for lunch is potentially quite attractive and could be done on foot or by bike), but I shed no tear for the likes of Dixons Group or the utterly dire WH Smith.

 

[Ken H]

Is it still the case that 90% of all journeys are made by car? If so it doesn't help rail's case for investment ?

Its a sad fact of life that outside London and the SE, for many, rail is an irrelevance. But the cost of road fuel certainly is. That is what the government will be thinking of.

 

[Ken H]

I also can't see rail fares getting cut and totally understand everything is impacted by fuel costs. Reduction of some things because of the fuel duty may not by a bad thing, couriers for example. Cutting fuel duty in that respect is a subsidy to online shopping to the detriment of the high street. However it is sickening that after a 19% fare increase last year on rail, the yet again the government is showing its pro car bias.

i thought online shopping was greener than having loads of people driving to go shopping.

 

[stuu]

Is it still the case that 90% of all journeys are made by car? If so it doesn't help rail's case for investment ?

No, it's ~88% for passenger miles, for journeys it's more like 60%

 

[Horizon22]

As I already stated, pretty much everyone is impacted by fuel cost. Even if you don't drive and never take a taxi or a lift off others nor travel by diesel bus, every product you ever purchase has been carried at some point in a diesel lorry or van.

It's not really a simple reduction, anyway, it's balancing the added VAT from the price increase.

Yes but that's pretty much everyone. If it solely related to the cost of living, then it should be another tax or instead, scrapping the NI rise or raising the personal allowance temporarily. It might not impact those not in work/employment but I imagine the reach is more.

 

[Mikey C]

I think certain people are slightly missing the point, that while rail fares are increasing by 3.8% (well below RPI), fuel prices have ROCKETED up in recent months. Any reduction in duty would just be reducing some of this massive increase

It would be hard to manage, and make the government income hard to predict, but I've always though fuel duty should be continually rising and falling to counter fuel price rises and falls. When fuel prices fall, stick up the duty, when fuel prices rise, lower it.

 

[Failed Unit]

DPD (the only vaguely reputable one of the lot) is now heavily using EVs. I think something specifically targetted to push couriers onto EVs would be a very good thing, but think simply fiddling with fuel duty is too blunt an instrument. Because most couriers are self-employed, some form of heavily incentivised leasing terms might be a good option to look at. The same could be done for other self-employed service industry drivers such as private-hire cars.

I don't frankly give a stuff about the High Street. Chain stores are no more reputable than Amazon. It might be nice to recreate the "old style" high street by incentivising small business (which might be more viable with increased home working - if you live in a small town, popping into town for lunch is potentially quite attractive and could be done on foot or by bike), but I shed no tear for the likes of Dixons Group or the utterly dire WH Smith.

That is the trouble that we have created a monster over the years. My Son asked how we used to cope before the Supermarkets, I highlighted that back in the 70s the local shop parades that most towns have would probably have everything they need within walking distance. Trends have changed and people tend to want to buy their goods in one shop, so the shops that are left in these smaller local retail parks often don't even have an onion for sale. (previously the parade would have had a butcher, baker, candle stick maker - but not lots of charity shops).

All very sad but now we have created this monster by letting the supermarkets build car focused out of town shopping centers, a lot of people have not choice but to drive to survive.

I know that as part of the planning conditions some of these supermarkets provided free buses to local areas, which soon disappeared as taking a weeks family shopping on a bus isn't really practical. Saying that if the local shops has survived, would most people really want to be shopping every couple of days to ensure they could walk and carry home what they purchased.

Chickens coming home to roost. I suspect regional train services are booming at weekends more because of traffic congestion rather than fuel costs.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 21 Mar 2022 ==

I think certain people are slightly missing the point, that while rail fares are increasing by 3.8% (well below RPI), fuel prices have ROCKETED up in recent months. Any reduction in duty would just be reducing some of this massive increase

It would be hard to manage, and make the government income hard to predict, but I've always though fuel duty should be continually rising and falling to counter fuel price rises and falls. When fuel prices fall, stick up the duty, when fuel prices rise, lower it.

Try 19% last year, when the flexible season ticket was introduced and the Carnet was removed on my route. But irrespective I agree the rises are tough, but when fuel drops will they put it back up again?

 

[RailWonderer]

Fuel duty has always been a regressive tax that hits poorer families who have to drive to work and school the hardest. Speed limit reductions only increase congestion (and increase journey times), which makes CO2 emissions worse and is bad for business and progress.

In the end, if the Government feels a need to do something to ease the cost of living crisis, then cutting fuel duties seems completely the wrong way to go about it. Far better to cut some tax or increase some benefit that would benefit all people (or all people who need it) irrespective of whether they drive or not. Something like, reducing the planned NI increase would be much fairer all round than cutting fuel duties.

Not an option. NI increases are brought about by an ageing population starting to get ailments of all kinds increasing NHS waiting lists, and younger working people will have to subsidise them.

 

[ac6000cw]

Is it still the case that 90% of all journeys are made by car? If so it doesn't help rail's case for investment ?

No, it's ~88% for passenger miles, for journeys it's more like 60%

From the 2019 UK transport statistics (to avoid covid-19 effects) - the average number of passenger trips per person in 2018 was 986, of which car/van accounted for 602, walking 262, rail 33, bus 48 and taxi 10. (Rail includes London Underground)

So rail trips were 3.3% of the total, bus 4.8%, walking 27% and car/van 61% - meaning there were 18 times more car/van trips than rail trips.

Using passenger km (which makes rail look better due to the higher average trip length), the total was 808 billion, with 68 billion by rail and 27 billion by bus - so rail was about 8.4% and bus 3.3%.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That is the trouble that we have created a monster over the years. My Son asked how we used to cope before the Supermarkets, I highlighted that back in the 70s the local shop parades that most towns have would probably have everything they need within walking distance. Trends have changed and people tend to want to buy their goods in one shop, so the shops that are left in these smaller local retail parks often don't even have an onion for sale. (previously the parade would have had a butcher, baker, candle stick maker - but not lots of charity shops).

I don't know about the 70s as I wasn't alive for most of those, but my experience in the 80s of living in the Old Roan (Merseyside) was of walking to the supermarket, which was a medium sized Kwik Save. The building is still there (you can see it from the train) and now contains a Tesco Express, so the same approach is still possible for those who want that. You've also got the large Asda the other side of the railway bridge which is easy walking distance (and was I believe one of the first French-size hypermarkets in the UK). There are also other businesses nearby on the other side, enough that it's easily possible to live locally if you want.

One thing that's changed, and in my view for the positive, is the wider scope of a typical UK household's menu - we, alongside the urban US, probably have the biggest variety of cuisines that we eat on a day to day basis. Back then a trip to a Berni Inn was a novelty, and chicken tikka masala was not something you'd heard of unless you lived in an established Asian area (which Merseyside definitely is not - there was always a Chinese chippy but not a lot else). Now people want a far wider range of foods which need a larger shop. I think it's more about that (and longer opening hours) than the viability of having separate shops for different things.

I don't think a bus to a large supermarket is a useful way to live other than for retirees or unemployed people who have the time to shop daily. It will invariably result in a taxi back, which is barely any better than driving there in the first place.

I know that as part of the planning conditions some of these supermarkets provided free buses to local areas, which soon disappeared as taking a weeks family shopping on a bus isn't really practical. Saying that if the local shops has survived, would most people really want to be shopping every couple of days to ensure they could walk and carry home what they purchased.

Deliveries using electric vehicles are probably the solution here for non-car owners. If homes were fitted with lockable outside delivery boxes including a coolbox for perishables (no need to be powered, you could chuck an ice block in it on the day of delivery), then the routes could be more efficient, more like postal delivery. If I didn't have a car I'd almost certainly have a monthly delivery of freezable and non-perishable food and top it up with a shop every couple of days for fresh fruit and veg and meat either on foot or by bike. FWIW I did, for about the first 8 months or so of COVID, shop solely locally (I could never face the whole supermarket queueing thing), but it did limit my menu a bit.

 

[Watershed]

I've long thought that there is scope for fuel taxation to be reformed. At the moment, due to fuel (including fuel duty) being subject to VAT, the government perversely receives more tax the higher that prices rise.

Whilst I would normally be the last person to want fuel prices to be cut, I would have said this is as good an opportunity as any for Sunak to cut the price of fuel by 10p a litre or whatever, by abolishing VAT and increasing fuel duty by the amount required.

Thus gaining a short-term political "win", but with the environmental and tax benefit that when prices drop again (as they no doubt will at some point), the government will continue to earn as much tax as they do now.

As much as it'd be nice for rail fares to be frozen, let alone cut, it's just not going to happen. There is very little political capital in the ongoing plight of rail users; there are far more column inches to be gained by bunging consultants a bit of cash for yet another hopeless Skipton-Colne reopening study or whatever.

 

[CaptainHaddock]

Fuel duty has always been a regressive tax that hits poorer families who have to drive to work and school the hardest.

This is the standard tabloid argument but I would rebut this by suggesting that very few people HAVE TO drive to work or school - if you've chosen to live far away from your workplace or kids' school with no access to public transport then you've chosen to rely on your car. I would also suggest that if you can afford to run your own private vehicle then by definition you are not poor!

 

[DynamicSpirit]

i thought online shopping was greener than having loads of people driving to go shopping.

Online shopping is probably greener than plonking an out-of-town retail park in the middle of nowhere so everyone can drive to it. I'd doubt that it's greener than a high street or local shopping centre located in the middle of a town where most customers can easily walk to it, or (as would be the case for some of the local town centres in London) loads of people would use public transport to get to them.

 

[Bletchleyite]

This is the standard tabloid argument but I would rebut this by suggesting that very few people HAVE TO drive to work or school - if you've chosen to live far away from your workplace or kids' school with no access to public transport then you've chosen to rely on your car.

Yes, it's a choice, but it's a choice that takes time to change. That's why slowly creeping fuel taxes up (the so called fuel duty escalator) is a good idea (because it slowly creeps people into moving house, changing job etc) but none of those things can happen quickly.

I would also suggest that if you can afford to run your own private vehicle then by definition you are not poor!

I think you need to be aware that most business failures aren't due to a lack of assets but rather a lack of cashflow, e.g. because of customers not paying quickly enough. That's true for individuals too. Someone living in a 4 bed house in rural Buckinghamshire worth a million quid with two new Range Rovers on the drive can as easily end up bankrupt as someone living in a Council studio flat in Middlesbrough who has no car and walks everywhere. Should they have savings? Yes, of course, but they may well not have. That house and those Range Rovers can be sold, but that takes time, and if you can't pay the mortgage tomorrow the bank will be on your case pretty quickly.

This is the problem with quick, big jumps, and is why the Government are sensibly looking at smoothing it a bit.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Fuel duty has always been a regressive tax that hits poorer families who have to drive to work and school the hardest. Speed limit reductions only increase congestion (and increase journey times), which makes CO2 emissions worse and is bad for business and progress.

I don't personally see fuel duty as a tax: I see it as being part-payment to make up for the huge harm you do to the community and to everyone around you every time you get in a car and turn the engine on. And I think that's the correct way that fuel duties should be seen.

Not an option. NI increases are brought about by an ageing population starting to get ailments of all kinds increasing NHS waiting lists, and younger working people will have to subsidise them.

But from a purely financial perspective of balancing the Government books, it makes no difference either way. If the Government loses £X billion from slightly reducing NI or whether it loses the same £X billion from reducing duel duties, it has exactly the same impact on the country's ability to pay for things like NHS waiting lists.

The difference is that if you reduce fuel duties and thereby encourage more people to drive, you'll have a knock-on effect of slightly harming people's general health and thereby adding to NHS waiting list pressure in 10-20 year's time; reducing NI by an amount that gives the same financial impact won't have that adverse side-effect.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I don't personally see fuel duty as a tax: I see it as being part-payment to make up for the huge harm you do to the community and to everyone around you every time you get in a car and turn the engine on. And I think that's the correct way that fuel duties should be seen.

It's clearly a vice tax, but that's grossly hyperbolic. Either you're a very rare example of a non-car-owner who conducts their entire life without in any way benefitting from the use of an internal combustion engine (hope you never need the emergency services, or take a low-loaded bus which would have been better as a couple of petrol cars), or this sort of hyperbole is somewhat hypocritical.

 

[Mikey C]

This is the standard tabloid argument but I would rebut this by suggesting that very few people HAVE TO drive to work or school - if you've chosen to live far away from your workplace or kids' school with no access to public transport then you've chosen to rely on your car. I would also suggest that if you can afford to run your own private vehicle then by definition you are not poor!

That's a bit simplistic really, people's circumstances change. You change jobs, your children move school etc. And if everyone had to live near schools, that would make those houses unaffordable! It does depend on your job as well, modern factories and warehouses aren't located in the middle of towns anymore, people work shifts, and it's unlikely everyone in a household will work in the same place either.

And nobody is suggesting petrol should be dirt cheap or not still heavily taxed.

 

[RailWonderer]

This is the standard tabloid argument but I would rebut this by suggesting that very few people HAVE TO drive to work or school - if you've chosen to live far away from your workplace or kids' school with no access to public transport then you've chosen to rely on your car. I would also suggest that if you can afford to run your own private vehicle then by definition you are not poor!

A lot of schools are not near a station and too far to walk plus people drive to retail parks and business parks and areas where there are no pavements or rail stations.

Family and friends of mine have lifestyles where they have fishing rods, ice skates, sports bags and hockey gear and they drive about to get their kids to extracurricular activities. You can't lug that stuff in public transport. Driving is part of a lifestyle of being self dependant and not reliant on public transport. It means freedom to go anywhere, anytime. Freedom and flexibility is not a vice.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

It's clearly a vice tax, but that's grossly hyperbolic. Either you're a very rare example of a non-car-owner who conducts their entire life without in any way benefitting from the use of an internal combustion engine (hope you never need the emergency services, or take a low-loaded bus which would have been better as a couple of petrol cars), or this sort of hyperbole is somewhat hypocritical.

Why on Earth is what I'm saying hypocritical? As it happens, yes, I am a non-car owner. Like everyone else, I benefit indirectly from cars and lorries in the form of transport of goods that I ultimately consume, and I occasionally hire a car or get a taxi when I need to. And I would be perfectly prepared to pay the full costs of that transport, including paying a reasonable amount for the amortized environmental and societal damage so caused. I see it as somewhat regrettable that I am probably not being charged the full cost of the road transport that I indirectly benefit from - but that decision is in the Government's hands, not my hands. I see nothing hypocritical in that stance.

 

[Scott1]

A lot of schools are not near a station and too far to walk plus people drive to retail parks and business parks and areas where there are no pavements or rail stations.

Driving is part of a lifestyle of being self dependant and not reliant on public transport. It means freedom to go anywhere, anytime. Freedom and flexibility is not a vice.

Yes, but it is poisening people and has been since back in the days of lead in fuel. The freedom that you say is not a vice is shortening people's lives.

 

[stuu]

This is the standard tabloid argument but I would rebut this by suggesting that very few people HAVE TO drive to work or school - if you've chosen to live far away from your workplace or kids' school with no access to public transport then you've chosen to rely on your car. I would also suggest that if you can afford to run your own private vehicle then by definition you are not poor!

Cheaper housing is often in peripheral locations, so people on lower income have less choice about where to live. Moving is expensive, so again, it's harder if you are on a lower income. People on lower incomes can end up spending more both relative to income and absolutely than better off people on things like transport, keeping them poor. See Sam Vimes Boots theory of economics

 

[birchesgreen]

The days where factories and other work places were surrounded by rows and rows of terrace housing are long gone. Saying people should live close to their workplace/school is much easier said than done.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

A lot of schools are not near a station and too far to walk plus people drive to retail parks and business parks and areas where there are no pavements or rail stations.

Family and friends of mine have lifestyles where they have fishing rods, ice skates, sports bags and hockey gear and they drive about to get their kids to extracurricular activities. You can't lug that stuff in public transport. Driving is part of a lifestyle of being self dependant and not reliant on public transport.

Agreed to some extent. Ultimately the problem is that motorists have essentially never had to pay the full cost of driving, and as a result for many decades people have made decisions that are based on not having to pay the true cost of driving - such as living and working in places that are only accessible by car. And infrastructure and businesses have (quite naturally) followed those decisions, with the result that we now have masses of infrastructure designed for the car and inaccessible to public transport/walking/etc., inadequate public transport, as well as millions of people's lives arranged similarly - in a way that just would never have happened if people had from the start always been charged the true cost of driving. I get that you can't suddenly change things - once people's lives are arranged one way you can't expect everyone to change how they organise their lives overnight. But nevertheless if we are to live sustainably, it has to happen in the long term and petrol/etc. prices/road tax/etc. has to eventually rise to a level at which people are being fairly charged for the damage motoring does. In that context, reducing fuel duty does seem absolutely the wrong thing to do.

It means freedom to go anywhere, anytime. Freedom and flexibility is not a vice.

No, by itself it isn't a vice. Set in isolation freedom and flexibility are great things. The problem is that, if you rely on the car to achieve that freedom, then you're removing other people's freedom to do things like breathe clean air - and that is a problem!

 

[AndrewE]

Not going to happen. DfT want savings. DfT shall have savings.

...except that it's the Treasury driving cuts. They don't care about anything outside their own narrow Thatcherite/monetarist dogma. Environment, poverty? Tough.
With this situation we shall never make any real progress, if we do it's usually by accident and certainly not fast enough.
Time to give the Treasury rexsponsilbility for the carbon budget as an equally important objective.

 

[AndrewE]

Cars on motorways are, overall, the least damaging and most efficient ones. The emissions are typically through open space*, so the carbon matters but the rest of it doesn't have much effect on health.

Do you know anyone who walks, cycles or gets the bus to pick up their car at the motorway?
I've never even seen a car-share that doesn't leave a parked car (apart from when I used to pick a colleague up from his house, or when he walked to the street corner.)

In some light conditions it is very obvious that the motorway is an open-air tunnel of fumes in otherwise-clean countryside. My memory is of a calm clear morning driving / looking N along the M1 somewhere north of Hemel: a visible halo or tube of black filth we were driving through .

 

[RailWonderer]

No, by itself it isn't a vice. Set in isolation freedom and flexibility are great things. The problem is that, if you rely on the car to achieve that freedom, then you're removing other people's freedom to do things like breathe clean air - and that is a problem!

It's quite interesting that drivers are being seen similarly to smokers, where smoking on planes, trains, cinemas and even in hospitals was tolerated until all the bans came in, but for years we saw nothing wrong in inhaling second hand smoke everywhere we went. Is pollution as bad? Smokers hurth themselves more than other people but drivers hurt others more than themselves as carbon emissions make more of an impact than smoking in open spaces.