Ending the fuel duty freeze makes sense

Twenty years ago this month Britain briefly endured a different sort of lockdown, as fuel protesters picketed oil refineries and petrol stations ran dry. Supermarket shelves emptied due to panic-buying and some motorists who had failed to fill their tanks found themselves stranded. For the only time during Tony Blair’s premiership the Conservatives very briefly ran ahead of Labour in the polls. The Labour lead was restored, however, when Gordon Brown cut duty and announced he was abandoning the ‘fuel duty escalator’ which had been introduced by Kenneth Clarke.

Memories of those few days in September 2000 explain why governments ever since have been reluctant to raise fuel duties. For the past decade duty on road fuel has been frozen. When Philip Hammond floated the idea of suspending the freeze there was such outrage from Tory backbenchers that in the event he retreated and left it untouched.