Fuel Duty

John Lamont Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Robbie Moore]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. By taxing families and individuals less, we provide them with more money in their pockets and we drive economic growth, as they have more of their own domestic spending power.

This Labour Government want to hit many businesses and individuals with three consecutive fuel duty hikes in a matter of months. If these proposals go ahead, motorists and haulage companies face being hit with the biggest tax burden in years. The road haulage industry is critical to our nation’s economic success: goods are moved around daily, and logistics are key to keeping our country moving. Everything we eat, drink, wear and consume depends on road haulage services—on companies such as Freightlink Europe. Road freight moves 81% of all goods, and 98% of all agricultural and food products are moved around the country by road haulage.

The Road Haulage Association estimates that a 5p rise in fuel duty will result in a typical motor vehicle-owning household spending an extra £100 each year and increase annual household spending by £1.9 billion, which is a whopping £7.3 billion over the rest of this Parliament. In my eyes, that is a significant additional tax burden for this Government to put on those households. At a time when the conflict in the middle east is pushing up inflation and the cost of petrol at the pump, it is beyond belief that Labour wants to push ahead with this fuel duty hike.

[John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. I want to highlight the choices that people living in rural constituencies such as mine are making. In Coldstream, the price of diesel per litre has gone up from £1.41 to £1.69 over the past few days. That is a huge increase, but because of the prospective tax rise that is coming down the line from the Labour Government, constituents tell me that they are looking at jobs and considering their alternatives, because they have to drive to get to work. A constituent who has been offered a new job that is further away, and who will have to drive further to get to it, is thinking about turning it down because once the 5p fuel duty increase comes in, he will not be able to get to his job.

[Robbie Moore]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I will come on to the additional challenges in rural areas, but he makes a clear and concise point: if people have to travel further for a job opportunity, they are going to be taxed more by this Labour Government. That is on top of the Labour Government removing the rural services delivery grant that was providing additional support to many local authorities operating in rural communities. We clearly have a Government who are not interested in supporting our rural communities. Of course, this fuel duty hike comes on top of the increase in employer national insurance contributions and business rates. It will impact our care workers, our district nurses and our hospice sector, all of which are also impacted by the rise in employer national insurance contributions.

At a local level across the Bradford district, we face an additional tax burden: the clean air zone, which was rolled out several years ago. A taxi driver with a non-compliant vehicle who wants to travel into Bradford—an area that we all want to see grow and thrive economically—faces a daily charge of £7 to do so. A white van driver is charged £9 daily to go into Bradford, and someone operating a bus or a heavy goods vehicle is charged £50 a day to do so, as a result of the choices that Labour-run Bradford council has made.

Labour-run Bradford council has received £20 million from collecting this additional tax from our hard-working businesses over the period that the clean air zone has been in force across Bradford. It is something that I am firmly opposed to. Bradford council will say that it is going to spend this money wisely across the district, but based on a freedom of information request that I submitted to Bradford council, I can contradict that narrative. As of 2023, just £4.1 million of all highways spending was spent within the Keighley and Ilkley constituency over a six-year period. To put that in context, the spending in Bradford East, Bradford West and Bradford South was £19.2 million, £17.4 million and £13.1 million respectively. That illustrates that there is no fairness in how Bradford council spends the money it is collecting from my hard-working constituents across Keighley and Ilkley.

--- Later in debate ---

[Graham Leadbitter (Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey) (SNP)]

Without getting into a fight about who has the biggest constituency, Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey is in the top five for geographic size, and my constituents grapple on a daily basis with energy costs across the whole suite of energy measures, whether that is road fuel, heating oil, tank gas, or the electricity prices that they pay. The issue for them is that the combination of all those things is totally disproportionate. The highest prices for road fuel are paid in rural areas such as those in my constituency. The highest price for heating oil is paid there, because there are high distribution costs. The highest price for electricity, because of high standing charges, is paid in my constituency and in constituencies in north Wales and Merseyside, which is the other high standing charge area.

The combination of all that means that my constituents are paying substantially more for their energy than constituents elsewhere in the country. Successive Conservative and Labour Governments have presided over discriminatory—I do not use that word lightly—energy charging for electricity. To have that compounded by the highest fuel charges and the highest oil charges is extremely painful for those households who, like everyone else, are suffering from the cost of living crisis. They also have the coldest temperatures in the UK, and these constituencies are producing the highest amount of energy per capita. The people who are using that energy hundreds of miles away are paying less to use it. The situation is utterly disgraceful and needs to change.

This Government have had nearly two years to make changes to standing charges and electricity prices, but they have not done it. They have not made a decision on it, and decisions are taking far too long to be made. Pace is everything in this. People are suffering every single day, but it is not just the individuals who suffer. Many Members have referred in this debate to the cost to businesses in these areas, generally from high transport costs. For businesses to get around and deliver their goods, to get their goods to market and to get their supply chain to deliver to them frequently involves travelling large mileages. Public services, including our emergency services, are paying vast amounts for fuel.

On Monday, while I was experiencing a very enjoyable walk to work on a bright spring day here in London, my constituents in Aviemore were contending with a temperature that felt like minus 5°, and the Highland council and the trunk road authority had gritters out for a considerable part of the day to keep the roads safe. Those gritters travel hundreds of miles on their routes because that is what they are required to do, which means that local authorities, the NHS boards and other public or emergency services are paying out vast and unpredictable amounts for fuel when budgets have already been set. Capital projects involve built-in risk to cover future price increases that are quite considerable, so they are protected to an extent, but that does not apply when it comes to public authorities’ day-to-day operational costs. The fuel price increases include increases in heating oil prices. Many primary and secondary schools in the Highlands, and Moray and Aberdeenshire and in other parts of Scotland—and, indeed, other rural areas in the rest of the UK—pay for their heating oil, and these increases will have a very detrimental impact on them.

The hon. Member for Gordon and Buchan (Harriet Cross) made many reasonable points about the impact of the energy profits levy and the fiscal regime that governs North sea production, and about the need for us to continue to produce oil and gas for as long as is required, while still making a transition. Let me gently point out to Conservative Members that while I agree with them that the EPL needs to be changed immediately—in fact, it is beyond time for it to be changed—they have drawn away from that transition to renewables because of the pulling away from climate change targets. I know that North sea companies agree with them about the EPL, but they were utterly dismayed about that pulling away from the transition, because the oil and gas majors are the same people who are investing in renewables. We need to get that transition right to avoid the job losses that the hon. Member mentioned.

A number of Members mentioned bus fare caps. Let me, again, gently point out that in my constituency in the north of Scotland, and across the highlands and islands, a pilot is being run for a £2 cap enabling people to travel, in some cases, for hundreds of miles for £2. That is progressive, because people in, for example, Inverness in the highlands who need access to services have to travel hundreds of miles to get it. The cap is about treating people with fairness, recognising that they are at the heart of our energy production and are still paying more for their energy, and giving them some services back for that. Peak rail fares have also been withdrawn.

Unfortunately, the hon. Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward), who mentioned heating oil support in Scotland, has left the Chamber, but I can tell the House that the Scottish Government have more than doubled the heating oil funding provided by the UK Government—although is still nowhere near enough, because the UK Government should be taking far more responsibility and putting in far more money. People will be able to apply for that support from 1 April, and it will be delivered through Advice Direct Scotland. there is a plan in place, and it is moving forward.

Red diesel used to be available to local authorities for gritting roads. Reinstating it would make a huge difference to the local authorities in the north of Scotland who have to spread grit for considerably longer than those in many other parts of the UK, and I urge the Minister to consider doing so, because it is essentially an emergency service. Our roads would not be safe in the depths of winter without being gritted, and making red diesel available to those vehicles again would not be a bad idea at all.

Finally, let me simply urge the Government to take account of what happens in rural areas—how people commute, how they get to work, and how services are delivered—and to consider that in the context of fuel duty. They have the power to fix fuel duty. Such certainty is important, especially to people who are planning and budgeting for a year ahead, and that applies to public services in particular.

[John Lamont]

To pick up the hon. Member’s point about fairness, he will be aware that the Institute for Fiscal Studies has highlighted that Scottish taxpayers are £710 on average worse off compared with taxpayers in England as a result of the Scottish Government’s higher rates of income tax. Does he think that is fair?

[Graham Leadbitter]

I have always believed that the tax we pay is part of a contract with the state, and that we should consider whether it is reasonable to pay that price for the services we get back. I would also observe that we have to look at tax in the round. Broadly speaking, council tax in Scotland is considerably lower than in the rest of the UK. The tax on the accommodation I use in London is certainly considerably dearer than that on my own property at home, which is larger, and that is pretty much the case throughout Scotland. The cost of living is generally cheaper in Scotland than it is in central London.

[John Lamont]

We pay more tax.

[Graham Leadbitter]

And the taxation being paid gives people back more services and better services. Things such as the removal of peak rail fares and the freeze on bus fares—the cap on bus fares has been put in place and is being tested in the north of Scotland—all really benefit people. Beyond that, however, more than half of taxpayers in Scotland do not pay more income tax than people do south of the border. That is a fact.

I urge the UK Government to consider many of these proposals. They could consider measures on bus fares and peak rail fares, but they also have the power over key taxation levers, including fuel duty. They need to make decisions quickly to give people more certainty and a little bit less risk about where things are going. Some things are not controllable, and I wish the Government did not have to consider them, because they are difficult, but the Government have levers that can make it a bit easier for people, and they should use those levers.