FUELLING CHANGE
Fuel duty is frozen AGAIN as Hunt hails The Sun’s historic campaign in Spring Budget 2024
Today's announcement means motorists will be saving £16.50 each time they fill up
FUEL duty has been frozen for a 14th historic year in a massive win for drivers and The Sun's Keep It Down campaign.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt used today's Budget to stop petrol prices rising with inflation, while also extending the temporary 5p cut.
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Hailing the The Sun's campaign in his Budget speech, Mr Hunt said the move will save motorists an average of £50 next year.
He told the Commons: "I have listened again to my right honourable friends for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), Dudley North (Marco Longhi), Witham (Priti Patel) and others, as well as the Sun Newspaper’s 'Keep it Down' campaign.
"I have as a result decided to maintain the 5p cut and freeze fuel duty for a further 12 months.
"This will save the average car driver £50 next year and bring total savings since the 5p cut was introduced to around £250."
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Spring Budget at a glance
- Fuel duty will be frozen and the 5p cut extended for a year
- Alcohol duty will be frozen until February next year
- National insurance was cut by an additional 2p
- An extension of the Household Support Fund for the fifth time
- Households on Universal Credit will get an extra year to repay emergency loans from the Government
- A new tax on vapes, which will cause prices to rise
- A one-off new tax on fags to ensure they are more expensive than the electronic alternative
- The high income child benefit charge was raised from £50,000 to £60,000
Motorists have enjoyed frozen rates since 2011 thanks to our peerless crusade to protect people at the pump.
Today's announcement means they will be saving £16.50 each time they fill up.
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) says the continuing policy has kept £80billion out the taxman’s hands — with independent experts putting it at nearer £90billion when today’s changes are taken into account.
If the duty had been allowed to rise in line with inflation since 2010, Britain’s drivers would now be paying 93.47p on a litre of fuel rather than the current 52.95p once VAT is included.
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The Centre for Economics and Business Research calculates that would have been around 47 per cent higher representing 30p more a litre — a saving of around £16.50 when filling up an average 55-litre family car.
The 5p duty freeze announced by PM Rishi Sunak in the wake of the war in Ukraine was due to come to an end this month.
Budget highlights: Brits boosted by £450 tax cut & child benefit overhaul as Hunt freezes alcohol and fuel duties in giveaway Budget
But Mr Hunt — who spared drivers a 12p a litre fuel hike in his first full Budget last year — extended it for another year in his make-or-break pre-election update on UK finances.
The announcement follows another tough month for drivers after the price of unleaded rose from 140.75p a litre to 144.76p in February — adding around £2 to the cost of filling up, says the .
Analysis from The Sun's Political Editor Harry Cole
SO Jeremy Hunt has fired the starting gun on the election campaign with a highly political Budget.
There was lots of shouting, but with the cupboard bare, not as many giveaways as a Chancellor would have liked on the eve of battle.
As he delivered what will likely be the last Budget before Britain goes to the polls this autumn, the glum faces behind him would suggest Tory MPs did not think it would be enough to turn around the Conservatives bleak numbers.
Even with some tax cuts, the problem the Government has is the tax burden still remains at the highest level since 1947.
And nobody really thinks that will be going down rather than up under Labour.
On top of that, the cold hard numbers are hard to spin.
The small print of the Budget shows an extra £186.6 billion in stealth taxes over the next five years: more than double what the combined £105.4 billion savings from the combined tax cuts last November and today.
Also painful is the OBR’s prediction that net migration is going to stay at around 300,000 indefinitely and Tory tax changes have actually made Britain’s workshy issues worse.
With more people being dragged into higher tax bands, it turns out fewer people are bothering to work harder.
But the shape of the Tory manifesto is coming into sight, with the abolition of National Insurance clearly going to feature as a flagship election issue.
The dual taxation of wages through NICS and Income Tax has been a long running quirk of our complex tax system, but abolishing it completely would be eye-wateringly expensive.
That said, Hunt has reduced it by 4p, down to 8p in the pound on earnings in just six months, hence why he is dangling the prospect of phasing it out completely over the five years.
But given there are huge bills coming down the path for national security, massive compensation payouts, and sustainable public spending, is that loss of Treasury revenue really credible?
I suspect we will spend a large part of the election campaign arguing about that.
Hunt peppered his hour-long speech with attacks on the opposition parties, and countless name checks - and real cheques - for key marginal seats the Government hope to save at the election.
Given how many times he mentioned his own seat in Surrey and the vicious pop at the Liberal Democrats who could oust him, its clear the Chancellor is as worried about his own seat as he is about anyone else's.
It was the tetchiest Budget I can remember, with countless interventions from the Deputy Speaker needed after Labour heckled their way through the measures.
If this is the shape of the election campaign to come, it's going to be a very long year…
Diesel went from 148.53p to 153.22p a litre. Filling a 55-litre tank would cost £84.27, a £2.60 rise.
There are fears March could be worse after oil-rich members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) agreed to cut output to push up prices.
But dozens of Tory MPs wrote to Mr Hunt to say it would be “catastrophic” for the public and business if fuel duty rose in line with inflation.
FairFuelUK founder Howard Cox and Tory MP Jonathan Gullis marched to No10 to deliver a petition on the matter signed by 126,000 drivers.
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The Sun's 14-year campaign to freeze fuel duty
The Sun has backed drivers as part of the Keep It Down campaign with rates of fuel duty not rising since the start of 2011.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt thanked Sun readers for helping him to make the case to freeze fuel duty in his last Budget.
The freeze meant drivers would not have to face a potential £100 rise in motoring costs as a result of a 12p per litre duty hike.
Our decade-long campaign fights on behalf of readers to freeze duty on petrol and diesel to help deal with rising living costs.
Mr Hunt said: "I know how much Sun readers are feeling the pinch right now.
"Whether you drive a van, a hatchback or a people carrier I know how much you need to be on the road.
"Keeping it down means hard-working people will have an extra £100 this year without having to cut down using their vehicle."