Duties up as Brown becomes environmental friend

21 March 2007

Fuel duty and road tax rates are set to increase over the next 12 months, chancellor Gordon Brown announced in his 11th and final Budget speech on Wednesday.
Transport accounted for one-quarter of the UK’s carbon emissions, Brown said, and it was the Government’s aim for Britain to use the lowest carbon cars with the least-polluting fuels. Road taxes would increase from £220 to £400 for the most polluting cars from April next year, while owners of the cleanest cars would receive reduced rates.
Brown is extending the bio-fuels duty differential, worth 20p per litre, to 2010, and the bio-gas incentive, worth 40p per litre, to 2012. The annual fuel duty will increase by 2p per litre from October 1 this year, in line with inflation. Brown also pre-announced the rates increase for the following two years – 2008 would also rise by 2p and 2009 by 1.8p.
The Government would also triple its funding for targeted enforcement against unfair competition from haulier companies from outside the UK. Also in the Budget’s ‘green measures’ was an increase in the standard rate of landfill tax by £8 per tonne from 1 April next year, to encourage recycling.
To reduce the environmental impact of quarrying, the aggregates levy – which has been frozen since its introduction – will rise in April 2008 from £1.60 to £1.95 per tonne. There would also be an inflation-only increase in the climate change levy from April next year. These measures will contribute towards an anticipated 16M tonnes of carbon reductions, Brown said. However, the Local Government Association has urged for the Government’s comprehensive spending review to provide councils with the money needed to manage waste against the increasing cost of disposal, which placed more pressure on council taxpayers. ‘Local authorities also need new powers to create incentives to encourage people to recycle, otherwise councils will be locked into an environmentally-unfriendly way of disposing waste, and will face a triple whammy of higher costs, higher landfill tax and fines,’ the LGA said.

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