RHA plea to Osborne, “don’t hike fuel duty”
The Road Haulage Association will be holding its breath on Wednesday when the Chancellor delivers his 2016 Spring Budget.
Commenting, RHA chief executive Richard Burnett said: “The Chancellor must hold his nerve on fuel duty. Diesel duty is a tax on the economy. Hiking it now threatens to slam the breaks on the hard economic recovery. UK fuel duty is by far the highest anywhere in the EU. It is double of that which some of our competitors pay, and a 2 pence per litre increase will add nearly £1,000 pa to the cost of operating a truck and that will inevitably have to be passed onto consumers. Hiking fuel duty will be a triple tax whammy. It will hit UK competitiveness, put up prices in the shops, and hurt the environment as hauliers will have less money to invest in clean Euro 6 trucks.”
Concluding, Richard Burnett said: “Instead of raising fuel duty, we hope that the Chancellor will instead heed our calls for an emergency investment of £150 million to tackling the chronic driver shortage that is a major threat to UK economic growth.”
