No cycling! (or walking) but Jeremy Hunt’s budget delivers £5 billion giveaway to drivers

Jeremy Hunt has been accused of “just tinkering around the edges” of the changes required to transform the UK’s transport system and benefit those on the lowest incomes, a leading think thank has said, after the Chancellor of the Exchequer opted to keep fuel duty frozen for the 14th year in a row.

As part of the final scheduled Budget before the next general election, Hunt claimed that he would save the average British household £50 a year by opting to once again extend the 5p cut in fuel duty introduced in 2022 as prices soared following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Announcing the measure, expected to cost the Treasury around £5bn, the Chancellor said: “The Labour mayor of London wants to punish motorists even more with his ULEZ plans but lots of families and sole traders depend on their car. If I did nothing fuel duty would increase by 13 per cent each month.”

> Rishi Sunak is “on the side” of drivers – What happened to Britain’s “golden age for cycling”?

However, the move has been criticised as a “missed opportunity” by both active travel campaigners and the Institute for Public Policy Research, who have claimed that this latest fuel duty freeze “disproportionately benefits the wealthiest drivers”, while locking those on lower incomes, and those who don’t drive, “into unaffordable transport costs”.

“The Chancellor spoke of helping families in the long term but decided to lock them into unaffordable transport costs,” Maya Singer-Hobbs, a senior research fellow in energy, climate, housing, and infrastructure at the London-based Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), said in a statement today.

“Maintaining the fuel duty freeze for another year at a cost of £5bn does nothing to help those who do not drive, who are likely to be on the lowest income, and disproportionately benefits the wealthiest drivers. 

“If the average driver is £50 better off at the end of this year as a result of this, the lowest earning motorists see a fraction of this benefit – just £22 according to the Social Market Foundation.”

> Rishi Sunak’s ‘Plan for Motorists’ will “rob people of choice” and force them to drive, say cycling and walking campaigners

As noted by the IPPR, new research by the Social Market Foundation (SMF) think tank has revealed that – despite Hunt’s headline of £50 savings for the average household – those who earn the least will save just £22 from this latest fuel duty freeze, while the wealthiest in society will save £60.

“Our own analysis found that drivers on the lowest income are spending more than a fifth of their income on running a car,” Singer-Hobbs continued.

“The fuel duty freeze is just tinkering around the edges of the costs our transport system places on households. It also drives up carbon dioxide emissions and makes meeting our climate commitments even harder.

“This budget has been a missed opportunity to invest in affordable alternatives to driving, despite the huge appetite across the country for investment in public transport and desire from many to travel more actively.”

> Cycling and walking targets “in tatters”: Damning report finds government almost certain to fail on active travel objectives in England

Despite the widespread desire to travel actively noted by the IPPR, today’s Budget contained no mention of either cycling or walking, a stark omission noted by Cycling UK, and one that’s particularly glaring coming in the wake of last year’s report by the government’s official spending watchdog, which claimed that the Department for Transport is highly unlikely to achieve any of its four key active travel goals by 2025.

“The Government is repeating its long-running mistake of under-funding and short-term thinking on sustainable transport,” Cycling UK’s director of external affairs, Sarah McMonagle said today.

“The National Audit Office (NAO) told the Government last year it wasn’t investing enough to meet its own 2025 targets for walking and cycling, even before it slashed dedicated funding for active travel by two thirds last March.

“This financial black hole, coupled with the stop-start nature of funding, is preventing local authorities from investing in cycling and walking schemes that we know create green jobs, boost economic growth and make our streets safer, in addition to the many health, wellbeing and environmental benefits.

“Instead, the Chancellor has made another short-term focused decision to extend the fuel duty freeze, a poor value for money policy that has been shown to disproportionately benefit the wealthiest in society.

“It’s time the Government took a long-term, integrated approach to transport policy, investing to give people more transport choice, including affordable, safe, and reliable alternatives to driving.”