We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive all cookies on the Business Car website. However, if you would like to, you can change your cookies at any time
The start point for the best source of fleet information |
Should one set of road users obstruct other road users to achieve their ends?
That has become a pertinent question, now that a repeat of the 2000 fuel protest is apparently on the cards.
Monday's newspapers reported that a lobby group, FairFuelUK, is planning mass rallies of vehicles to press for lower fuel duty and the rapid introduction of a fuel duty stabiliser. It's fair to speculate that these rallies will take place on motorways and close to oil distribution centres.
The Government should take FairFuelUK seriously: it's run by Peter Carroll, a former local politician who got involved with the Gurkha Justice Campaign and has since channelled his experience into a business called Why Not Campaign?.
Carroll certainly has a nose for a popular cause and a talent for whipping up publicity. Bringing Joanna Lumley into the Gurkha campaign, which was his idea, generated enormous public sympathy and swathes of press coverage.
But road fuels are a very different kettle of fish. Affordable petrol is a popular cause but there's a wide gulf between setting up a picturesque Himalayan photo-op with Purdy from the New Avengers and arranging a blockade of the UK's road and fuel networks. The first merely derailed a manifestly unfair Government policy but the second could disrupt the lives and businesses of millions of people.
As they did in 2000, the road haulage lobby is leading the call for a 'fair' deal on fuel prices. However, they should be more open about the fact that they can reclaim VAT on fuel and offset fuel costs against profits, while private motorists must pay the full cost out of already-taxed income.
As for the fuel price stabiliser, I've already blogged here about the probability that it would do more harm than good. The slope from tinkering with duty rates to imposing full-on price controls is short, slippery and steep. Price controls would lead to widespread shortages because refiners would send product overseas to more profitable markets.
So forcing-through a fuel price stabiliser might easily prove to be a Pyhrric victory for the fair fuel lobbyists.
On the other hand, there are strong reasons for the Government to call a halt to further rises in fuel duty. Ministers can no longer claim that escalating taxes on fuel are a painful necessity in the face of climbing greenhouse gas emissions from transport.
That is because transport emissions are not climbing. In fact, they're falling. The amount of road fuel used in the UK fell by 7% between 2007 and 2009 because, as I discussed in my last blog, high fuel prices are curtailing vehicle use and encouraging efficiency.
Allowing for inflation, the price of oil has more than doubled since the last fuel protest. The cost of diesel has risen by 32% by the same measure. But fuel duty is now 2.5% lower in real terms than it was 10 years ago.
Neither the Government nor the fair fuel lobby, it turns out, has much of a case. It's easy to see what's driving fuel prices up and emissions down - and it certainly isn't fuel duty.
The only remaining argument is over whether the UK should continue to charge the highest fuel duty in Europe. That's actually an argument about where the Government gets the economy's fast-circulating cash from: we get it from fuel duty while most European countries get it by having fewer exemptions from VAT. You pay your money and make your choice.
Holding another showdown over fuel prices would really only be having a pointless battle over two things; one which the protesters have already gained (lower duty) and one which the Government can do nothing about (oil prices).
For the organisers it is doubtless very exciting to unleash all that campaigning fervour, apparently with the aim of bringing the country to a standstill. But at a time when the economy is barely out of recession, Fuel Protest II is likely to produce no winners but a raft of losers - including many car and van fleet operators whose businesses will be hit.
Follow BusinessCar on TWITTER
BusinessCar magazine ©2019
Business Car Magazine © 2020 | Business Car is part of NS Media Group.
