Chancellor George Osbourne has revealed a plethora of motorist-aimed money-saving measures in today's budget, the key to which is a 1p cut in fuel duty.
Osbourne also revealed that the coalition is to scrap the fuel duty escalator originally brought in by Labour for the rest of the current parliament; instead, the government will introduce what it calls a 'fair fuel stabiliser'.
Instead of duty on fuel going up by inflation plus 1p from 1st April, a measure that would equate to around 5p per litre at the pumps, production profits for oil and gas will go up from 20 per cent to 32 per cent. This should raise around £2bn; enough to fund the planned fuel duty cuts.
Although the fuel cuts will be a great relief to motorists (the cost of fuelling an average fuel tank has gone up by £10 in the past six months) there is provision to re-introduce the escalator, should the barrel price of crude oil dip below $75 - although it is currently up around $105 per barrel.
Calls by Labour to reduce VAT on fuel ere dismissed by the chancellor, as the changes in legislation required would take six years.
Other measures intended to ease the burden on drivers include freezing vehicle excise duty and a jump in official business mileage allowance from 40p per mile to 45 (reps rejoice).
The final flourish is an extra £100 million for councils to deal with potholes. This is the same amount as doled out to councils last year, and we have to say that it doesn't seem to amount to all that much - if you assume £100 per pothole, that's only enough to deal with 1,000,000 holes. And we're pretty sure Blighty's roads have more than 1,000,000 potholes in them...
There's already plenty of Budget-related chat going on in this thread, so we shan't bother you with a whole new one...
