Today’s ill-informed report in The Guardian from the self-proclaimed Liberal Conservative think tank ‘Bright Blue’ maintains the fashion for demonising, attacking and grabbing easy cash from 37m UK drivers. It is riddled with inaccuracies and emotive statements. The author of the report too, is unavailable for discussion as he has ‘jetted’ away on holiday. How’s that for hypocrisy in improving air quality?
- Chancellor, Sajid Javid has promised in his leadership campaign to continue the freeze in fuel duty in the lifetime of this Parliament.
- There is no evidence higher fuel taxes improve air quality.
- There is no evidence that 40,000 deaths per year are caused by vehicle emissions.
- Pay to Pollute policies do not lower emissions.
- Had the fuel duty freeze not been in place since 2011, the fuel duty escalator’s impact on CPI would have reached 6.7%. It is now 2.4%!
- Had the fuel duty escalator continued as planned from 2011 onwards, fuel duty today would be 83.33p per litre rather than 57.95p per litre, 43.8% higher.
- The CEBR estimated that this would translate in overall fuel prices being 24.0% higher, circa £1.65 to £1.75 per litre. Combining this with their statistical analysis between fuel prices and various general price indices, they find that this would translate into the following:
- * 6.66% higher consumer prices
* 5.22% higher output producer prices
* 20.33% higher input producer prices
* 5.14% higher prices for road freight - The yearly impact of higher inflation across all of this, would have eventually reached £14.5 billion per year, in funding all UK’s outstanding government debt. That’s over £116bn in cumulative debt funding costs over 8 years.
- The CEBR estimate that household expenditure is £24.2 billion higher per year due to fuel duty being frozen. This equates to approximately 1.21% of total GDP.
The Fair Fuel All-Party Parliamentary Group has just completed a landmark report for to be published in the next few weeks. Press Release to follow. The report is called ‘There’s a better way: sustainable, effective ways to lower vehicle emissions without punitive ineffective pay to pollute charges.’ It focuses on the evidence, sourced from TfL’s own data that shows NOx emissions were in decline all on their own, without the ULEZ tax.
Amazingly, since the toxic charge and ULEZ were introduced, DPM emissions have increased – for the first time in decades. ‘It’s hard to know why this has happened,’ observes FairFuelUK’s founder Howard Cox. ‘But it proves that punishing drivers simply isn’t working. They’ve merely levied a toxic charge that’s poisoning the good will of motorists, truckers and motorcyclists, for no benefit to the environment or health.
Howard Cox challenges the eco-lobby to either ‘put up or shut up. If they can’t even agree to help reduce emissions by making existing engines cleaner, they blow their own credibility out of the water,’ he says, clearly exasperated at the lack of engagement. ‘You’re not going to save many polar bears if you aren’t even willing to take a baby step in the right direction with technology that exists now. Your out of touch multi millionaire rock star backers, should understand that increasing tax, hits the low income consumers and workers the hardest. But what do they care, as they jump on their private jets.’
‘For now, we continue to face an out-of-control environmental agenda driven by Left Wing media, with no joined-up thinking and scant regard for technical and practical realities.’
