Fuel Duty

Peter Fortune Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Peter Fortune (Bromley and Biggin Hill) (Con)]

My constituents have borne the brunt of Labour’s slew of anti-motorist policies. The impending rise in fuel duty is yet another attack on Bromley motorists. Some 80% of households in Bromley and Biggin Hill have at least one car or van—significantly higher than the Greater London average—and driving is often a necessity for my constituents, particularly in Biggin Hill, where public transport is unreliable.

Driving charges in London can now cost up to £40 a day, but it is even more for van drivers. That is a direct result of the policies of the Labour Government and Sadiq Khan. A rise in fuel duty will increase that cost further. In April last year, Sadiq Khan imposed a new toll on the Blackwall tunnel. For car drivers using it at peak times, the toll is £8 a day for a trip across the river and back. For van drivers, the bill is £13. The toll also means that there is now only one free crossing east of Tower bridge, at Rotherhithe. That comes on top of Labour’s expansion of the ultra low emissions zone, and the congestion charge, fuel costs and parking charges. It is becoming simply impossible for people to drive to work in London. That affects everyone who needs to drive, from tradesmen to NHS shift workers.

When I was a London Assembly member, I worked to expose Mayor Khan’s preparations for road pricing in London, which London Centric fully exposed late last year. Under Labour’s plans, motorists could be charged 40p per mile for driving in outer London, 60p per mile in inner London, and £2 per mile, with a £5 fee, for central London. The mayor has repeatedly denied that he plans to introduce such pay-per-mile pricing, but the Government’s decision to introduce a pay-per-mile tax on electric vehicles is exactly the sort of cover that he needs to introduce it. I can reassure my constituents that I remain steadfastly against pay-per-mile pricing.

Naturally, my constituents were furious to hear the Chancellor announce that, from April 2027, the fuel duty freeze, which has been in place for 16 years, will be scrapped—along with the 5p cut that the previous Government put in place—and that fuel duty will begin to rise with the retail prices index. As prices at the pump spike as a result of the conflict in Iran, the argument for retaining the fuel duty relief introduced by the previous Government, to support cash-strapped motorists, is even stronger.

In Bromley and Biggin Hill we do not have the London underground or the docklands light railway, and Biggin Hill does not even have a railway station, so people are highly reliant on cars. The Labour party, here and in City Hall, needs to understand that. The Government and the Mayor of London must end their war on motorists, and scrap their fuel duty rise and any plans for further attacks on motorists, before it is too late.