The following is a press release from Howard Cox, Founder of the FairFuelUK Campaign:
Today every MP has received the following emailed letter on behalf of UK’s drivers as Brent crude oil hits $130 a barrel
Drivers are Crying Out for a Fuel Duty Cut Now & for the Treasury to Urgently Implement PumpWatch
Dear MP
Please support more than 2000+ drivers in your constituency, who have signed up to back FairFuelUK’s call to the Chancellor for an urgent cut in Fuel Duty of at least 5p per litre.
Will you also support Robert Halfon’s EDM call for an independent pump pricing monitoring body to stop the serial fleecing of drivers at the pumps.
FairFuelUK also backs the Road Haulage Association’s call for an essential user rebate of 15p per litre.
All three of these requests of you, to support, are vital to alleviate the increasing pain in ALL our costs of living. When implemented, they will slow inflation, keep businesses viable, secure jobs and protect the economy, without reducing income to the Exchequer
Record Pump Prices are Hurting 37m Drivers and the Economy
We are reliably informed petrol and diesel prices are to rocket even further by 10p to 20p per litre this coming week.
The extra VAT generated in the last year and the coming months because of the record prices at the pumps is more than enough to give drivers some respite, and cut Fuel Duty by 5p. This would bring pump prices in line with the average of Europe and make businesses more competitive and viable in a post Covid recovery phase.
Germany prices diesel 10p, France 7p, Italy 8p, Ireland 15p, Spain 29p, Slovakia 31p, USA 76p, Netherlands 8p ALL less than the UK, mainly due to these countries recognising that this fuel type drives the economy.
Even considering exchange rate changes since 2014 when the dollar price for a barrel of Brent Oil was similar to current prices, diesel and petrol are 10p to 14p per litre HIGHER NOW than necessary. For the driver of the average family car that is an eye watering £7.70 more than is both honest and fair.
Road Haulage Costs are Crippling
A fighting fit resilient road freight and logistics sector is essential too, not only to keep Britain moving, but to help build back better as we return to normality following the pandemic. Without your support through the introduction of an essential user rebate, we run the very real risk that as hauliers continue to be hit with sky high diesel prices during a cost-of-living crisis, the industry’s economic future will become ever more uncertain.
With over half of the cost of a litre of diesel accounted for by tax, we firmly believe that action should be taken to back UK hauliers and keep consumer prices under control through the introduction of an essential user rebate of 15p per litre. This step would mirror an approach taken by many other European nations including Spain, France and Italy which has proved successful.
PumpWatch
For over a decade of campaigning for FairFuelUK, I have witnessed the insidious unchecked fleecing of UK drivers. Our nation’s commercial, community, social heartbeat and our right of travel choice have been so relentlessly demonised and ruthlessly exploited, it has become an institutionalised commercial and fiscal fixation to implement a tsunami of anti-driver policies. And it seems, there are more to come.
The exploitation of drivers is running even more rampant, with businesses shameless without any compunction using the Ukrainian Conflict to line their pockets. THIS HAS TO STOP!
In Drumchapel, Glasgow, a BP garage (see image below) has just hiked diesel from 159.9p to 173.9p per litre. What is the basis for that increase and why yet again are diesel drivers being exploited more than petrol users?
There has to be transparency in the way petrol and diesel prices are reached as ‘global market commodity costs and exchange rates ‘legitimately’ fluctuate.
Why is the Treasury, and they know full well, not acting to check uncontrolled profiteering is damaging the economy, hitting the already highest taxed drivers in the world, and fuelling inflation?
Surely the lack of any monetary help for drivers, is not down to the £2bn gargantuan pile of extra VAT the Treasury has relished due to a fortunate high cost of filling up.
If gas, electricity, water and telecoms get price protection bodies, why shouldn’t motorists have one too? We need ‘PumpWatch’ now, to ensure pricing fairness for both consumers and hardworking fuel retailers too. Most of the profiteering is at wholesale level not by small independent retailers, who are also victims of the greedy fuel supply chain.
It really is time, the Government recognise that reducing the cost of living, should be their prime focus. Cutting Fuel Duty by at least 5p per litre, before pump prices become increasingly more un-affordable and even more debilitating for your constituents, it is the morally and fiscally, right thing to do.
Please will you call on the Treasury to cut Fuel Duty and implement PumpWatch immediately.
Robert Halfon’s PumpWatch EDM
