More Brown lies and denials

handful

http://www.petrolprices.com/blog/duty-rise-set-to-bring-fuel-tax-to-in-weeks-110.html

Fuel duty is set to rise by roughly 2 pence per litre on April 1st meaning that 66 pence of the average litre of fuel goes directly to the Treasury.

Fuel tax goes into a central government tax pot. It's not necessarily allocated back out to motoring, so fuel tax can be spent on anything – the NHS, housing, pensions or even banking bailouts.

At the height of soaring pump prices Brown made a promise during Prime Minister's Questions on July 16th 2008 not to raise fuel duty for a year.

He stated: "In recognition of the problem people face with petrol, we are freezing duty on petrol for the full year."

Brown broke this promise in December 2008 when he added 2 pence per litre to fuel duty to offset the reduction of VAT to 15% - a move which angered UK hauliers who are able to claim fuel VAT back, but not fuel duty.

He is set to break the promise for a second time on April 1st when fuel duty on unleaded and diesel will rise 1.84 pence per litre. Including the additional 15% VAT on top this will make the rise at the pumps around 2 pence per litre.

The Treasury have said that the only time further changes to fuel duty can take place are at the next Budget – which has been postponed from March until April 22nd, after the duty rise comes in.

JasonLVC

In fairness to Brown/Darling, they never said they would freeze fuel duty for a full year from July 2008.

They had already frozen an intended rise due in October 2008 (announced at the April 08 budget) and the announcement in July 2008 was to confirm the freeze would be for the remainder of (or a full) financial year (to end of March 2009).

So they've not broken their promise per se. The fuel duty has been frozen quite a few times over the years and with fuel prices dipping slightly recently, the need for the duty to remain frozen looks weak now.

However, when they made this announcement in July 2008, everyone had jobs and big wads of cash to burn.....now nobody has anything.

The dilema Darling faces is the GIGANTIC blackhole in the budget, freezing duty will make that hole only bigger, can the 3m (real) unemployed afford a hike in fuel, probably not. Will it happen, who knows.

oh, and for those readers who prefer to see 'real' evidence, here's a link (sorry it's the Guardian but it was the first hit on google) :-http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/jul/16/economy.alistairdarling