Beating fuel poverty

ollie

The days of inexpensive fuel are gone forever - and pressurising governments won't make a jot of difference.

The green lobby has won this battle.

2trueblue

You can't beat fuel poverty. Everything in our daily lives is affected by the price of fuel, going to work, food, clothing, everything in the shops, etc. There must be a debate on this matter as it affect all of us, not that our MPs suffer, just another item to add to their expenses, which we cover.

DavidDP

Sounds like perfect market circumstances for a new innovations in fuel efficiency and alternative fuels/power.

Go the market!

Magnolia

There is such a thing as being taxed to death quite literally.
Another issue with petrol and diesel is the loss of independents as the supermarkets use petrol as a loss leader to destroy local competition and to entice (yes that is the right word) shopers in to buy the rest.
My spouse could do a lot of work at home because of advances in technology but has to keep going with a very long commute, which uses a lot of energy, because they are not allowed to take 'confidential patient data' home due to management/admin security regulations.
Imagine how much more productive we could all be if issues like these could be resolved.

In2minds

"Given the growing pressures on people’s income" -

Would any of these pressures be down to gormless Dave and his climate change mania?

normanc

Motorists = cash cow mugs for politicians.

Before signing up remember that global warming models have shown that for every 4p off a litre of fuel we kill a dozen baby polar bears and raise the temperature of Tooting by 1.763849 degrees.

Why do we need commissions or to be hassling oil companies? I'm sure you realise how much of a litre the government takes and how much the greedy oil companies, who actually explore for, extract, ship, refine and distribute the stuff take.

It's not rocket science, the leviathan needs to take less. There, I've saved you millions of £ to consultants and thousands of man-hours.

normanc

While I'm ranting incoherently may as well mention how much tax the government takes at source for the stuff - over 80% in some fields.

I don't know how any politician can castigate 'big oil' and electricity / gas companies with a straight face.

Ahmed Khan

For goodness sake give our politicians some credit. For the last 6 months they have been trying (and almost succeeded) in colonizing a oil rich country, so that we the public do not suffer from ‘Fuel Poverty’

wrinkled weasel

63% of the cost of each litre of fuel for your vehicle goes to the Treasury. On a standard fill of say, 40 litres, that is about £30. Of course, you are taxed not once, but three times on your petrol or diesel. First, you pay income tax. Then you pay fuel duty. Then you pay VAT on the fuel duty.

Diesel costs more at the forecourt than petrol. This is the only country in Europe where diesel fuel costs more than petrol. In some countries the differences are huge; Denmark has nearly a 20p difference, Norway 10p, Germany 20 pence and Holland, a staggering 30 pence. All these countries pay this amount less for Diesel.

Some say, vehicle fuel is a luxury, a choice. I say it is a necessity. In fact it is a tax on life. Even if you don't drive yourself, you are utterly dependent upon those who do, people who deliver everything you need. If you use a car to travel to work, you are being taxed to work. If you then have to pay to park at your place of work, an increasing phenomenon, especially in PFI funded workplaces, you have the pleasure of being taxed four times in order to work, to pay your taxes...

As always, the working poor get shat on from a great height, and this Government is not about to demolish one of its easiest revenue streams.

Heartlessly Hard Romantic Perry

My prescription is too ruthless to ever be implemented - but here goes:

1. Cut the price of fuel – I care not how, - at a stroke, - by 20p to start with, then continue. If it’s taken from tax, - fine, the H2B only wastes it on pointless aid, the EUSSR, Wind Farms, and other rubbish.

2. Get rid of stupid young idiots who drive like maniacs between traffic lights in crappy cars, and waste fuel, - probably paid for by us in benefits.

3. therefore cut benefits

4. Ditto older idiots in fast bigger cars, this time paid for by credit cards they can barely service.

5. therefore up credit card interest even more

6. Scrap any favours to MPs in the form of subsidised food and drinks in Westminster, severely cut all travel perks, and other dainty morsels of entitlement.

7. stop wind farms

8. Stop ridiculous quotas and subsidies for ‘green’ fuels – they distort agricultural production and waste money and effort.

9. Replace the H2B in favour of a true conservative with verve and nerve.

PayDirt

We’ll soon be seeing the Salvation Army doling out petrol in small plastic fuel cans.

oldtimer

The high cost of fuel is mostly down to successive governments thinking up more and more ways to add taxes, both directly and indirectly, be it on exploration, corporation taxes, fuel duties, VAT, feed in tariffs, carbon taxes to name but a few. One way or another they all impact the cost of fuel.

The (deliberate?) weaknesses of your petition are that
(a) it seeks to deflect attention from the government and the green lobby onto the oil companies and
(b) it proposes a commission when none is needed; what is needed is a tax cut and the repeal of the Climate Change Act.

alexsandr

People need to learn to conserve energy. at home turn stuff off, and turn the cent heat down a little.
and when driving drive as if there are eggs attached to the accelerator and brake pedals. and slow down a bit. Not rocket science.

Olaf

alexandr - You assume we are not already driving more slowly and turning down the heating. We started driving more economically when petrol hit £1.00 a litre and turned down the heating when prices shot up teh first time. You can't continually drive slower or let the house get colder. Not by 20% a year every year.
You can't change your car because the prices are ramped up by VAT and inflation, you can't put in Solar or new boilers because they cost so much you'll never recoup the outlay. So what are those of us already struggling supposed to do? Benefits have never looked to appealing.

Frederick de Fossard

Speed up development of hydrogen fuel cells and especially ways of storing hydrogen fuel. This should be hideously profitable as really, fuel prices are just going to get higher.

JohnOfEnfield

70% of the price of petrol is tax (tax on tax!). The retail price of petrol is therefore determined by taxation policy.

Some 15% to 20% of today's domestic fuel price is determined by tax. Huhne has put in place a plan to double the price of domestic fuels by 2020. So we will end up with 70% of the price of domestic fuels consisting of tax.

So "fuel poverty" is entirely determined by taxation policy. It is clearly untenable that a significant proportion of the populace is driven into poverty by taxation policy. If 20% of us are already in "fuel poverty" then taxation policy must be changed.

Carbon reduction policies cannot be used to drive us back into the stone age. Especially when they have no basis in science (show ME the proof).

toni

The cost of fuel must be bearable otherwise there'd be heavy goods wagons, agricultural machinery, and white vans all blocking the motorways - wouldn't there?

ndm

Robert Halfon writes:

-- For example, in my constituency of Harlow, figures show that the average motorist is now paying something like £1,700 a year just to fill up the family car. This is a tenth of the average income in our town. Experts have ruled that spending a tenth of your income to keep warm is classed as fuel poverty. But what about paying a tenth of your income just to drive to work? If you can’t drive to work, how can you get off benefits and into a job?

There is no God-given right to be able to drive around cheaply. The obvious answer is to improve shared transit. Over the last few years the biggest transit change where I live is that large companies have started providing luxury buses which
sweep in to pick up employees. These have been accompanied by the bus operators offering similar, but non-tied, services. This is all in addition to the existing public transit infrastructure which is pretty much working at capacity during rush hour.

But now we get to the rub or, more clearly, the piece where Halfon demonstrates his ignorance of oil-industry profits and where they come from. He writes:

-- Given the growing pressures on people’s income, cutting fuel duties must be a priority for the government. That’s why I have teamed up with the FairFuelUK campaign to launch an e-petition for cheaper petrol and diesel on the Government’s new website.

It is pretty well accepted that the oil industry WILL capture any reduction in duties - and NOT pass them on to the consumer. This is why so many economists criticized similar calls during the last Presidential election - and is precisely what occurred a month ago when the US Federal Aviation Administration stopped collecting fees a month or so ago.

Furthermore, Halfon's call for "radical ways of cutting fuel taxes in the longer term" is little more than a call to pass these taxes on to oil-producing nations since they would capture the profits from any increased consumption.

If Halfon is really concerned about the economy being crippled perhaps he should call for the government to invest in Britain by borrowing money at today's cheap rates and use it to improve the infrastructure of the country.

Rhoda Klapp

F de Fossard, if cars were invented powered by sunbemas extracted from cucumbers, the government would tax salad. They do not care what the fuel is. If it were hydrogen, we would have to pay for a new infrastructure and then pay just as much tax on every kg, even though it escapes from any method of storage. The treasury cannot give up any tax, booze, cigarettes, petrol, they will always tax it so as to maiximise revenue, whilst telling you it is to minimise 'sin'.

Rhoda Klapp

Oh, and if Mr Halfon is a tory MP, what the bloody hell is he asking US for? Didn't the good people of Harlow elect him to parliament? Is that not where taxes are decided? Can he not explain to a tory government why the tax needs to be reduced? (Not because it is 'not fair' but because it is a tax on every economic activity, a recovery killer.)

Cjamesk

Tackle and inject some common sense into the Green pseudo science lobby and look at the multiple taxes we pay on fuel at the forecourt.

With all due respect you seem to be shielding the Religion of Climate change and the Governments method of taxation in relation to this issue and shoving it onto the shoulders of the oil companies.

Paul Danon

Fuel-poverty isn't about petrol. It's about domestic heating. If you can afford a car, you're not poor. Maybe the prices are sending a message to drivers: stop polluting the country with your noisy, smelly cars and take public transport like the rest of us.

FvH

Halfon will change his tune once the whips get their teeth into him - mind you by then he'll have got his picture for the front of his constituency newsletter (at petrol pumps with a few "outraged local motorists")

TomTom

Countries without Welfare have low petrol prices. High petrol prices are necessary to give high living standards to unemployables and unskilled. Nowhere on earth rewards unskilled and unworking as well as Western Europe making it attractive to unskilled immigrants.

Petrol taxes are essential to fund a Leisured Class

NICK Wilson

A petition to reduce the price of petrol? _That'll_ work well. Better to work within the ConDem coalition to reduce the tax burden - except that the LibDims won't sign up to it, and neither will the Treasury, who would tax the air that we breathe if they could get away with it.

Jon Stack

As well as reducing fuel taxes, the government needs to stop the ludicrous dash for wind, which is costing, and will cost us a fortune for years to come. The kind of fuel poverty this produces takes lives and causes misery.

Martin Alexander

Dear Mr Halfron...Take away the Government tax (some of it tax on tax) and petrol would be cheaper than milk..By all means try to have it debated in the House but please stop blaming big oil and refiners..They are not the culprits.

Martin

Viv Evans

Fuel poverty means the amount spent on heating etc, not on petrol.

While I agree that petrol prices must come down, I do so not simply because of the motorists, but because these costs impact on everyday items like food which we all need. Thus lower taxes on petrol would help against inflation.

However - why only petition for lower taxes on petrol?
Why don't you petition to scrap the climate change act altogether?
That would lower the price we pay for our energy quite considerably - and would 'lift' many a pensioner out of fuel poverty.

Aleksandr wrote above:i>
Yep - excellent advice for the elderly and pensioners who are infirm and can;t move around much.
Do try and sit all day in a room/house where the temperature is down to 16 degrees Celsius. Your local NHS will be very happy to shell out for the bed you need once you get pneumonia.

Mind - a nice gentle cull by hypothermia of lots of us oldies is just what the economy needs: savings for the DWP, savings for the NHS, savings for the local council who doesn't need to provide carers ... and the heirs will be happy as well.

Save the planet - cull the pensioners, right?

WIlliam Blakes Ghost

I signed the petition weeks ago. The Coalition's fuel and energy policies make a complete joke of their economic policy as it is these policies that are strangling any growth at birth.

Sack Huhne and Cable and make Osborne slash fuel prices (else sack him too)!

Ruby Duck

Paul Danon : "If you can afford a car, you're not poor."

Don't be silly.

You can get a decent car with an MOT for £500 or less. Mine cost £100, four years ago.

If you can afford public transport, you're not poor.

Sir Everard Digby

But this attack on the electorate has been going on for years. The Tories introduced the fuel escalator in 1993 and within 6 years the price of fuel went from being one of the lowest in Europe to the highest. Labour continued this assault.

Even during the recession the VAT rate cut was offset by an equivalent rise in fuel duty.

The political classes could not sustain this without a powerful vindication. Enter Climate change. Opens up a whole new range of tax gathering possibilities.

Shut up and pay because otherwise we all die.

However,we don't need new technology necessarily - after all Herr Diesel designed his original engines to run on coal dust and experimented with peanut oil as a fuel.

alexsandr

Frederick de Fossard @August 23rd, 2011 4:50pm
Oh dear. How do you make hydrogen to run fuel cells? electrolosys of water usually. what do you need to do electrolosys? electricity. back to fossil fuels again. that works.

starfish

@alexsandr
"Oh dear. How do you make hydrogen to run fuel cells? electrolosys of water usually. what do you need to do electrolosys? electricity. back to fossil fuels again. that works."

Er, nuclear?

Maybe if we weren't wasting a fortune on developing a dead end technology (electric cars) we could get to fuel cell powered cars more quickly - and the infrastructure to support it.

Honda already has a perfectly viable prototype

A pensioner

"If you can’t drive to work, how can you get off benefits and into a job?" I suppose there's no chance you could consider using shanks' pony or public transport if you live in a town? I used to walk to work (half a mile) even before diesel prices were as high as they are now.

papagray

i think the real picture is to make it so expensive that the rich will be the only people able to afford it..
reduces the amount of cars on the road