Budget 2011: Fuel duty CUT & tuppence for potholes

Motorists Budget 2011

No once expected huge give-aways in George Osborne’s second budget – especially as we now have cruise missiles to pay for in Libya – but the hope was that the Chancellor would at least address the inexcorable rise in the cost of fuel. Which he has – sort of.

Fuel was due to increase by around 5p a litre next week if he’d left Labour’s fuel duty escalator in place. Which could well have caused real civil unrest. Which sounds like an exagerration, but really isn’t.

It’s now acknowledged that the UK came within hours of troops hitting the streets and hospitals closing when the fuel protests happened a few years ago. The Con-Dems have enough on their plate without that sort of grief.

So there will be no 5p a litre increase next week, but there will be a 1p a litre CUT from 6pm today. All of which is being paid for by fiddling with tax on oil and gas profits, which will go up to 32%. Although if oil drops back to $75 a barrel it might all change.

In other budget news for motorists, the Government is chipping in £100 million to fill in potholes – the same as Labour did after the 2009/2010 Winter. Which when you consider the AA reckons it will take £11 billion to fix our broken roads is a drop in the ocean.

VED will increase by inflation – unless you have a 95g/km car and then its frozen – and you can now claim 45p a mile mileage allowance (first increase for nearly a decade). There’s waffle about promoting Eco cars – but no substance – as part of the ”green energy revolution”. God help us all.

And, we think, that covers the Budget News for Motorists for 2011.

And it could have been worse.

By Cars UK