Explainer-in-brief: Fuel duty cuts and road taxes will drive us forward
In 2011, then-Chancellor George Osborne cut fuel duty by 1p and froze it. It has stayed at 57.95p per litre ever since.
Now as motorists face the second petrol crisis in five months – after crucial shortages in October last year – Rishi Sunak is expected to cut fuel duty again in his spring statement.
But looking further ahead, No10 is finally set to look at plans to change how we charge road users as they push ahead with their ambitions to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030.
As it stands, fuel duty and vehicle excise duty are not levied on electric cars. Some kind of road charging – such as setting up tolls on the motorway network – could mean all motorists are treated more equally.
Otherwise it would mean those who are least able to afford electric cars are subsidising the Tesla drivers speeding to and fro across the country.
But plans for road taxes have been consistently met with public backlash and MPs concerned with ever-tighter household budgets would be hard to persuade