Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what estimate his Department has made of the total sum of revenue that it has forgone due to the successive freezes to fuel duty since 2011.
Based on the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) published policy costings, we estimate the cumulative loss to the Exchequer from the successive fuel duty freezes from financial year 2011-12 to the current financial year 2017-18 to be around £37.2bn.
The annual impacts on the Exchequer are reported in the table below.
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| 2011-12 | 2012-13 | 2013-14 | 2014-15 | 2015-16 | 2016-17 | 2017-18 |
Exchequer impact (£m) | -2,275 | -3,465 | -4,645 | -5,800 | -6,375 | -6,805 | -7,825 |
Past decisions on freezes will also incur future losses to the Exchequer in years beyond 2017-18. The OBR’s costings of previously announced policies currently extend to 2021-22, and the future impact of these announced freezes in fuel duty to that year is estimated to be around £34.2bn.
The future annual impacts are set out in the table below.
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| 2018-19 | 2019-20 | 2020-21 | 2021-22 |
Exchequer impact (£m) | -8,095 | -8,370 | -8,685 | -9,030 |
The OBR’s policy costings are available at the following link:
http://budgetresponsibility.org.uk/download/policy-measures-database/