Mike
Weatherley – Champion’s Motorist’s concerns on petrol prices
Mike
Weatherley, Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Brighton Pavilion, has
stepped up the pressure on Gordon Brown to abandon plans for a 2p rise in fuel
duty in September.
As
protests grow at the rising pump price of petrol, Mike said the Labour
Chancellor could alleviate the situation by making clear now that he will not
proceed with the revalorisation of duty rates. Conservatives
have pledged that they would scrap the rise. Mike
said: “It is clear that the Government’s vendetta to tax the motorist off
the road has not worked. My message
to Gordon Brown is please don’t put up the fuel duty in September. He put it
off last year, and the cost of petrol is higher today than last year, and more
volatile. I am extremely pleased
that Michael Howard has made it clear that we would reverse this extremely
unfair tax. Driving a car for a lot
of people is a necessity not a luxury. This
is a real life tax that effects people in their car every day.”
However
Mike stressed that public protests against rising fuel costs should be peaceful
and legal, and should not prevent people going about their normal business. He
said: “People are entitled to protest peacefully and within the law. It is
wrong to disrupt things and inconvenience other people and I hope none of it
will happen.”
Crude
oil prices have risen by about 25% this year to levels not seen since the early
1980s. The latest rises are causing
worries in importing countries about the economic cost of higher energy prices.
Higher fuel prices can cause unwelcome rises in inflation, restrict
economic growth and are unpopular with voters.
Major oil exporters are divided between those such as Saudi Arabia and
Kuwait that favour lifting output in an attempt to ease prices, and those such
as Venezuela that argue against conciliatory moves towards big consumers,
principally the US. The price of US-traded light, sweet crude rose on 1 June to
as much as $42 a barrel while UK-traded Brent crude from the North Sea reached
about $39 a barrel.
However,
what is really hurting British motorist is the 75% duty and VAT that they have
to pay at the pumps. The
Chancellor, Gordon Brown, raises nearly £23bn a year from duty on petrol and
other fuels. Duty on ultra- low sulphur petrol and diesel, found on most service
station forecourts, is at a flat rate of 47.1p a litre, over half of the average
82.82p a litre for petrol. On
top of the fuel duties Mr Brown also charges VAT at 17.5 per cent on pump
prices, taking tax to around 75 per cent of the cost of a litre of fuel,
although there are no figures are on additional income produced by VAT on fuel.
Charges on ordinary petrol and diesel make up the bulk of the £22.8bn income
from fuel duty. There are substantial discounts for green and commercial fuels
used in agriculture and construction.
Mike
said: “I welcome the deal by OPEC members will
raise output quotas by 2 million barrels a day from 1 July and a further 500,000
b/d from 1 August. But the British
Government cannot escape their role in the growing anger over rising petrol
prices.”
At
a time of soaring fuel prices, Mike warns of a new assault on local motorists,
via Government plans to push out congestion taxes and workplace parking taxes
across the country.
The
new anti-car taxes are being rolled out via regional assemblies through their
‘regional transport strategies’ which councils are being obliged to follow.
New research has revealed that The South East Regional Assembly’s draft
Regional Transport Strategy advocates that local authorities introduce new
anti-car taxes.
‘Local
transport authorities should make appropriate use of the powers available under
the Transport Act 2000 to introduce new charging initiatives where they consider
these are required in order to support delivery of the regional spatial and
transport policy frameworks’ (South East England Regional Assembly, From Crisis to Cutting Edge: Draft Regional Transport Strategy,
January 2003, Policy T12).
http://www.southeast-ra.gov.uk/publications/strategies/transport/index.html
‘The
outputs from the multi-modal studies, in particular South Coast Corridor
Multi-Modal Study and ORBIT, have confirmed the significant, and potentially
crucial, role that charging can play as part of a comprehensive package of
measures designed to achieve a rebalancing of the transport system. While the proposed
area-wide charging scheme put forward by ORBIT requires a revision to national
legislation, the proposals put forward as part of the overall package of
measures by South Coast Corridor Multi-Modal Study are capable of being
implemented under the terms of Transport Act 2000. In preparing their Local
Transport Plans for submission to Government in 2005 local transport authorities
in the South Hampshire and Isle of Wight and Sussex Coast and Towns sub-regions
should consider in greater detail the potential role of the charging initiatives
identified by the multimodal study. Any variation from the agreed strategy for
the south coast corridor will need to demonstrate the ability to deliver a
similar level of restraint’ (ibid.,
p.18).
Mike
said,
“At
a time of soaring fuel prices, the last thing we need is even higher taxes on Brighton
and Hove’s motorists. Conservatives have already called on Gordon Brown
not to introduce the planned fuel tax hike in the autumn.
“Yet
the Labour Government has already brought in new laws to allow local authorities
to levy additional anti-car taxes. Most local councils are fearful of the strong
opposition of local residents to these taxes.
“But
Labour, supported by the Liberal Democrats, is intending to sidestep this local
opposition, by transferring powers to the so-called regional assemblies, who
intend to force councils to levy them.
“Labour
and the Liberal Democrats fail to understand that there aren’t viable enough
public transport alternatives in Brighton
and Hove and that extra taxes will hit the vulnerable the hardest –
like the elderly, the less well-off and those in isolated areas.
Only Conservatives have pledged to oppose these new taxes.”
Mike
added: “This government’s obsession with waging war on the motorist has got
to stop. The public need government to lead by building a workable integrated
plan – encouraging the use of alternatives by providing choice, not just
forcing people out of their cars through ever higher taxation.”
Regional
Transport Strategies
The
Labour Government have introduced a series of ‘Regional Transport
Strategies’ as part of the process of transferring powers away from local
councils to regional assemblies. These strategies are part of ‘Regional
Planning Guidances’ published by the self-styled, unelected ‘regional
assemblies’ and Government Offices for the Regions. Following the passage of
the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, the Strategies will become part
of binding ‘Regional Spatial Strategies’ drawn up by the ‘regional
assemblies’.
Regionalisation
of transport planning
These
regional strategies marginalise the role of local councils, making it easier to
introduce new taxes. A document from the Department for Transport explains,
http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_science/documents/downloadable/dft_science_027959.pdf
‘Government
should require policy to be handled at a similar, strategic, level across all
regional policy documents. This would increase the level of mutual understanding
between agencies about broad policy positions, provide a sound basis for
collaboration on action programmes and be more robust in the face of
uncertainty… The Regional Transport Strategy should provide a common framework
for the actions of Government agencies (such as the Highways Agency and the
Strategic Rail Authority) and the local authorities. This would improve the
prospects for coherence of different transport modes at regional level and for
integration of action programmes between national and local agencies’ (DfT, The
Integration of Regional Transport Strategies with Spatial Planning Policies,
March 2004, p.9).
Local
authorities who try to obstruct regional bodies will have their funding cut.
‘LTP
[Local Transport Plan] allocations should be used to reward collaboration and to
strengthen sanctions against local authorities that breach regional policies’
(ibid. p.10).
These
regional bodies are clearly intended to be the driving forces for introducing
new anti-tax taxes. As John Prescott’s national planning guidance asserts,
‘Regional planning bodies should consider including in their transport
strategies, as part of draft RPG… guidance on the strategic context for demand
management measures such as congestion charging and levies on private
non-residential car parking’ (PPG11, Planning
Policy Guidance 11: Regional Planning, 2000, para 6.3).
http://www.odpm.gov.uk/stellent/groups/odpm_planning/documents/page/odpm_plan_606926-07.hcsp#P233_72848
The
Department for Transport notes how the regional bodies will help the
introduction of these taxes.
http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_science/documents/downloadable/dft_science_027959.pdf
‘Policies
for transport charging are crucial to RPG/RTS integration in two ways: first, as
a component of demand management, reconciling the economic need for
accessibility with the environmental and social need to limit transport-driven
dispersion… and secondly, because the resources generated are a necessary
component of a realistic approach to regional transport resourcing’ (DfT, The
Integration of Regional Transport Strategies with Spatial Planning Policies,
March 2004, c.4.3.4).
‘The
failure to deploy the strategic potential of transport charges is because local
authorities that are in a position to make significant money from local charges
are concerned about (a) losing development to neighbouring areas, and (b) losing
conventional funding. Locating responsibility at regional level could powerfully
further the Government's devolution agenda’ (ibid., c.4.3.5).