MSE News: Labour calls for fuel duty rise postponement

patman99

As we are in the EU, we cannot cut fuel duty without incurring a massive fine.
As for who to blame for the UK's deficit. Let's start with the squandering of the North Sea oil reserve money then move-on to the sell-off of all of our utilities to the private sector rather than streamlining them to make them profitable, then using the profits to invest in other markets elsewhere. Add to this, the mega-overspend on projects such as the Millenium Dome, National ID card, Olympics and a central database for the NHS when they already had one in operation.

As long as the sheeple vote Tory/Lab/Lib-Dem we will always be in deficit, have high taxes and struggle to put food on the table.

Right. Lets bring the thread back on track.
If the Tories had implemented the proposed rise, the drop in car use would more than likely have cost them a lot more then £500m in lost Tax. A fairer way (because it sticks 2 fingers up at the EU) would have been to increase the fuel duty (brings-in extra revenue to HMG) but at the same time reduce the VAT to 15% (cuts the price of fuel without affecting the Govt. coffers as this is our 'donation' to the EU, so only they would loose-out).

scottishperson2

patman99 wrote: »

As we are in the EU, we cannot cut fuel duty without incurring a massive fine.

Utter Garbage.

EU lower limit is (last time I looked) 359 euro per 1000 litres = 0.359 euro per liter. UK currently charge (last time I looked) 0.674 euro per liter

UK would have to cut excise duty by nearly 50 percent and bring it lower than the level of Romania and Cyprus before the EU would move an eyelid. So don't blame the EU on this one. UK tax nearly double the rate the EU set.

mickstottuk

Someone correct me if I’m wrong but hasn’t fuel gone up by about 20p in the past year? And don’t we pay VAT on fuel? The VAT on this 20p increase is about 3p so Osbourne has already got his 3p from VAT rather than duty.

dshelton

dggar wrote: »

Delaying the rise until January means the increase will not now be reflected in the September CPI/RPI figures.

And what calculations are based on the September figures ????

well spotted, how much will George Osbourne gain in the long term from the reduction in pension payments based on a cleverly manufactured lower CPI measured against the short term loss of revenue on fuel duty.

Navvy

Seems to me that this announcement takes the pressure off the fuel companies to reduce their prices. If the price remains high then we pay more tax on it, so the government is already getting their extra money. They didn't need to put the price up any further so long as prices remain at their current high levels, so they announce a failure to increase the price so that we feel good without getting any reduction.

What controls the price of fuel - not the cost of getting it out the ground, but 'market forces' which means whatever we are prepared to pay.

Prices remained high when the government started the rumour about fuel shortages at Easter and caused panic buying.

Refineries are being closed to avoid an over-supply that might allow prices to drop.

If everyone stopped overtaking me they'd buy less fuel and force the prices down. I'm getting 55mpg average when I keep to the speed limits. (10 year old 2.0 HDi)