Budget 2021: Let’s stop fighting the last war
Just two days after rail fares went up, the Government froze fuel duty.
They’ve been rightly criticised by pro-public transport groups.
It’s a nonsense, obviously.
But did you seriously expect anything different?
This map shows an index of the proportion of household income consumed by fuel duty:
Areas in red have the highest proportion of income consumed by fuel; areas in blue the lowest
And this map shows the results of the 2019 election:
Do you notice the symmetry?
There is a reason why the Tory Government has not increased fuel prices a single time since coming to power in 2010, despite churning through three different Prime Ministers in that time.
By contrast, London (Lab: 49, Tory: 21) accounts for 47% of rail journeys but just 14% of the population. Much less difficult to put up train fares!
A lobbying approach that consists of waiting for the Conservatives to not increase fuel duty and then complain about it afterwards while the cost of motoring gradually falls, and the cost of public transport gradually rises, turns out to be ineffective.
Follow the money
The crazy thing is that fuel duty isn’t even a particularly effective tax from our perspective.
Discouraging people in rural areas with few alternatives from driving is pointless. It is journeys that could be made by public transport that we want to discourage. Often these are two-mile trips made slowly along congested roads. The fuel duty impact of these is low. A two-mile round trip in a Citroen C3 would currently cost 16p in fuel. If fuel duty went up by 1p, that would become 16.2p! But someone who lives 20 miles out of the nearest town driving a bigger car will pay a fiver per round trip: they will notice a fuel duty rise but are much less likely to have an alternative.
Why are we pushing political water uphill to increase a tax that penalises precisely the wrong people?
Tax the right people, not the wrong ones
The answer is road pricing.
Why?
1) Because from our perspective, it means that the cost of driving on congested urban streets can be priced appropriately. If the 16p for a two-mile round trip became a fiver, it becomes worth looking into the alternatives.
2) Because from the Tories’ perspective, it is great politics. If the fiver currently being paid by a rural resident to drive 20 miles becomes zero, they get credit in Tory constituencies.
3) Because as taxpayers, it is essential that we wean ourselves off fuel duty before electric cars cause fuel to be a thing of the past
Road pricing is a policy that makes sense. I’ve written more about it here, so I won’t repeat myself. Except to remind you that it is not unachievable. There is a small, vocal minority that is opposed.
But many previous policies, from the NHS via Sunday Trading to gay marriage, was bitterly opposed by a minority, and then became established fact as soon as it became law. Road pricing will be no different.
Let’s now set ourselves a vow, as a transport and mobility community, that we will make the 2022 budget the one in which road pricing is announced.
Do you Tweet? Here’s one ready-made
