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

Fuel duty freeze “just tinkering around the edges” of necessary transport changes and “disproportionately” benefits wealthiest motorists, says influential IPPR think tank, as Cycling UK slams short-term thinking on sustainable transport

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.”

After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.

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70 comments

Avatar
Hirsute | 9 months ago
1 like

It was a moveable shipping container rather than a lorry but would need a lorry to move it about!
Here's the page but you'll need to turn off java script or use incognito mode to see anything useful
https://www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/24137136.merville-barracks-trials-ne...

Hydrogen is taken into the fuel cell and converted into zero-emission electricity which is then transported through a wire to the charging port.

The facility can charge up to four electric vehicles at once, with the vehicle charging time depending on how many vehicles are plugged in.

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mattw | 9 months ago
11 likes

My view is that this is a budget for Shrodinger's Conservative Voter.

Benefits for Middle England, on salaries of approx 35k to 80k, paid for by the less rich and the very rich, and savings on public services paid for by service users.

The OBR predictions demonstrate that said Conservative voter will be bent over and porked from 2025.

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Rich_cb replied to mattw | 9 months ago
5 likes

It's a classic pre election trap setter. Brown/Darling played similar games in 2010.

They've simply spent the money Labour was going to raise from the Non Dom reform on the NI cut meaning Labour either have to change their policies or raise taxes in order to 'balance the books'.

The reality is that both parties are committed to big tax rises from 2025 onwards.

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Left_is_for_Losers | 9 months ago
1 like

Excellent news, benefits the normal people who need and use vehicles. 

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I love my bike replied to Left_is_for_Losers | 9 months ago
14 likes

Only the ones driving polluting engine powered ones  2

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Left_is_for_Losers replied to I love my bike | 9 months ago
0 likes

I love my bike wrote:

Only the ones driving polluting engine powered ones  2

Quite, my used diesel golf will produce many many times less emissions during the time I have it against buying a new electric car

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Rendel Harris replied to Left_is_for_Losers | 9 months ago
6 likes

Left_is_for_Losers wrote:

 

Quite, my used diesel golf will produce many many times less emissions during the time I have it against buying a new electric car

It takes roughly 13,000 miles of driving for the additional Co2 manufacturing emissions of a new electric car to break even against a traditional petrol car, so unless you are going to get rid of your car before you have driven 13,000 miles, your statement is untrue. Additionally, an electric car has no tailpipe PM2 or NoX emissions which your diesel Golf will have in spades, so your claim is absolute nonsense.

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wycombewheeler replied to Rendel Harris | 9 months ago
1 like

Rendel Harris wrote:

Left_is_for_Losers wrote:

 

Quite, my used diesel golf will produce many many times less emissions during the time I have it against buying a new electric car

It takes roughly 13,000 miles of driving for the additional Co2 manufacturing emissions of a new electric car to break even against a traditional petrol car, so unless you are going to get rid of your car before you have driven 13,000 miles, your statement is untrue. Additionally, an electric car has no tailpipe PM2 or NoX emissions your diesel Golf will have in spades, so your claim is absolute nonsense.

On the other hand if I keep running my existing 9 year old car. It might create more emissions as I drive than an electric car. BUT, unless I scrap the car, someone else would be driving my current creating emissions (and probably driving further than me each year too) while I am driving the new electric car.

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Rendel Harris replied to wycombewheeler | 9 months ago
1 like

Fair point and the reason why ultimately more ULEZ-type schemes will be required to remove the most polluting cars from the roads (not yours, obviously). But that's not the same as claiming that running a used car will create "many many times less emissions" than buying a new electric one, something that's only true if you plan to drive it less than 13,000 miles and then never buy another; even then that's only true for CO2 emissions and disregards particulate emissions, nitrous oxide etc.

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Sam_OT replied to Rendel Harris | 9 months ago
1 like

I appreciate that both you and wycombewheeler are making genuine points, but I think you're mistaken. The argument is, "If I sell my car, someone else drives it, so it makes no difference to that car. But, I've bought another."

This only makes a difference if there is more driving. Presumably, the person buying your car no longer drivers their older car.

Buying and selling a car doesn't increase the number of cars in the 'system'.

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Hirsute replied to Sam_OT | 9 months ago
0 likes

Or they buy them so everyone in the household has a car, including each child. Or they have more than one car per person.
I think we are the about the only house on our estate with one car.

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Left_is_for_Losers replied to Rendel Harris | 9 months ago
0 likes

Rendel Harris wrote:

Left_is_for_Losers wrote:

 

Quite, my used diesel golf will produce many many times less emissions during the time I have it against buying a new electric car

It takes roughly 13,000 miles of driving for the additional Co2 manufacturing emissions of a new electric car to break even against a traditional petrol car, so unless you are going to get rid of your car before you have driven 13,000 miles, your statement is untrue. Additionally, an electric car has no tailpipe PM2 or NoX emissions which your diesel Golf will have in spades, so your claim is absolute nonsense.

Rendel the liar. 

For one it's DIESEL not petrol

B) see report below disproving your lies

If we take those EEA report figures, then the production, transport and combustion of petrol in a 58mpg vehicle, and its maintenance, is responsible for some 0.23 tonnes of greenhouse gases per 1,000 miles. That’s excluding the emissions created in production, since the car already exists and is in use.

As we’ve mentioned, the same EEA report estimates the total CO2 burden of an EV produced and run in Europe to be just over 20 tonnes. However, without wishing to turn this into an elaborate GCSE maths scenario, the reality is that most EVs today use much bigger batteries than the 24kWh pack assumed in this data. So, we’ve doubled the four-tonne emissions burden of battery production stated in the EEA’s data, therefore assuming an eight tonne battery production burden for a 48kWh lithium-ion EV instead. This takes the total lifecycle emissions, including manufacturing, to run an EV over 150,000km (93,205 miles) on European mains grid electricity to 24.5 tonnes. That equates to 0.26 tonnes per 1,000 miles – slightly more than the used petrol car.

To put it another way: if the manufacturing alone of that 48kWh EV alone is accountable for 14 tonnes of CO2 emissions (as per the EEA report), that same emissions burden could cover over 60,000 miles of use in an existing, second-hand car, assuming it were doing 58mpg. After that point, an EV’s vastly lower running emissions makes it the greener car.

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Rendel Harris replied to Left_is_for_Losers | 9 months ago
4 likes

Diesel being significantly worse for the environment due to its PM2 and NOX emissions than petrol so I'm not sure why you think that's a win.

Well done for proving that you know how to copy and paste from the Internet, unfortunately you are clearly unable to copy and paste an unbiased report, hilariously it's from cargurus.co.uk, a site that exists for the buying and selling of secondhand cars. Well they are going to have no vested interest in promoting secondhand cars in their article entitled "What’s Greener: A Used Car Or A New Electric Vehicle?" are they? So, they've taken an EEA report and included the CO2 emissions involved in building an electric car, but not those involved in building a petrol car, then they've doubled the size of battery, but even with that jiggery-pokery they've only managed to come out with the emissions neck and neck. It should be noted also that the report's figures for a petrol vehicle assume that the petrol vehicle averages 58 mpg over its lifetime, a real world figure only achievable by the most economical brand-new cars on the market today, so not one to be expected from a secondhand car. Do you really expect a report to be taken seriously when it contains sentences such as "After all, [buying a secondhand car is an] instant win; you’re saving a huge portion of a car’s whole-life emissions by effectively cutting out the production burden."? The production burden still exists, it just so happens that somebody has paid for it before you. You could equally well buy a new electric car and then sell it after 20,000 miles and say that because you only owned it for maybe 5% of its lifetime it was incredibly green because you are only responsible for that percentage of the construction costs, the rest is down to subsequent owners. Ridiculous logic.

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Left_is_for_Losers replied to Rendel Harris | 9 months ago
1 like

Rendel Harris wrote:

Diesel being significantly worse for the environment due to its PM2 and NOX emissions than petrol so I'm not sure why you think that's a win.

Well done for proving that you know how to copy and paste from the Internet, unfortunately you are clearly unable to copy and paste an unbiased report, hilariously it's from cargurus.co.uk, a site that exists for the buying and selling of secondhand cars. Well they are going to have no vested interest in promoting secondhand cars in their article entitled "What’s Greener: A Used Car Or A New Electric Vehicle?" are they? So, they've taken an EEA report and included the CO2 emissions involved in building an electric car, but not those involved in building a petrol car, then they've doubled the size of battery, but even with that jiggery-pokery they've only managed to come out with the emissions neck and neck. Do you really expect a report to be taken seriously when it contains sentences such as "After all, [buying a secondhand car is an] instant win; you’re saving a huge portion of a car’s whole-life emissions by effectively cutting out the production burden."? The production burden still exists, it just so happens that somebody has paid for it before you. You could equally well buy a new electric car and then sell it after 20,000 miles and say that because you only owned it for maybe 5% of its lifetime it was incredibly green because you are only responsible for that percentage of the construction costs, the rest is down to subsequent owners. Ridiculous logic.

Dont be a dope, spinning it like usual

It's not meant to be a comparison of buying a new one, it's a used diesel vs a new electric

Get lost now kindly. 

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Rendel Harris replied to Left_is_for_Losers | 9 months ago
2 likes

Left_is_for_Losers wrote:

Dont be a dope, spinning it like usual

It's not meant to be a comparison of buying a new one, it's a used diesel vs a new electric

Get lost now kindly. 

Well down to your usual standard of intellectual argument when faced with facts, well done. By the way, why would you be bothered about emissions anyway? You informed us a few weeks ago that it was okay to produce as much CO2 as you want "because it's a natural gas", so why are you arguing the toss over which type of car produces most?

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Left_is_for_Losers replied to Rendel Harris | 9 months ago
0 likes

Rendel Harris wrote:

Left_is_for_Losers wrote:

Dont be a dope, spinning it like usual

It's not meant to be a comparison of buying a new one, it's a used diesel vs a new electric

Get lost now kindly. 

Well down to your usual standard of intellectual argument when faced with facts, well done. By the way, why would you be bothered about emissions anyway? You informed us a few weeks ago that it was okay to produce as much CO2 as you want "because it's a natural gas", so why are you arguing the toss over which type of car produces most?

I'm not bothered about CO2, that's the only thing you are and will ever be right about. 

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Rendel Harris replied to Left_is_for_Losers | 9 months ago
3 likes

Left_is_for_Losers wrote:

I'm not bothered about CO2, that's the only thing you are and will ever be right about. 

So you're not bothered about CO2 but have attempted, with multiple posts and going to search out an (incredibly biased) article to try to prove your case, to engage in an argument in order to prove that your car will be responsible for fewer CO2 emissions than an EV. Time weighing a bit heavily on your hands is it?

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Simon E replied to Left_is_for_Losers | 9 months ago
1 like

Left_is_for_Losers wrote:

To put it another way: if the manufacturing alone of that 48kWh EV alone is accountable for 14 tonnes of CO2 emissions (as per the EEA report), that same emissions burden could cover over 60,000 miles of use in an existing, second-hand car, assuming it were doing 58mpg. After that point, an EV’s vastly lower running emissions makes it the greener car.

Tailpipe emissions are just one part of it. Replacing fossil fuel cars with EVs does not address the many other issues arising from private car use.

Does the battery pack last the life of the car? Is the burden of disposal/recycling taken into consideration? And is the lifetime of an EV similar to a petrol/diesel vehicle?

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don simon fbpe replied to Left_is_for_Losers | 9 months ago
2 likes

It's almost impossible to state that as a fact, the whole debate is extremely complicated and due to manufacturers not being transparent you'd be a fool to state that EV is significantly more environmentally friendly than an ICE https://earth.org/environmental-impact-of-battery-production/, isn't it time someone brought Hydrogen motors to the table?

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Oldfatgit replied to don simon fbpe | 9 months ago
3 likes

Hydrogen powered vehicles have been around for ages ... other than Plant, don't expect them to spread - or at least not in the UK.

The UK government has stated that Hydrogen has no place in domestic heating, and extrapolating from that, other than specialist applications [such as plant], the infrastructure for hydrogen deployment will not exist.

Personally [and not just because I've worked in the gas industry for 20+ years and my job is designing gas systems], the car manufacturers have sold the dream of EV; it fits in quite nicely with the UKG plan of Net Zero and everyone becoming micro-generators through PV and battery installations... and to be cold in winter because of AS/GS heat pumps ... all while watching the digits spin on their electric meters.

[This can turn in to a major rant that I haven't got the energy to write and you haven't got the the time or willpower to read]

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don simon fbpe replied to Oldfatgit | 9 months ago
2 likes

And there we have the possible problem, UKG is the driving force here and given that the current cabal have hung their flag on the carbon fuel mast and the superficial benefits if EVs for their own personal gains. I would not be trusting the UKG on matters such as this.

I'm not a huge fan of heat pumps because of the capital costs vs benefits, but that may change. There are other, and IMHO, better solutions for reducing the energy demand for home heating in UK.

And as someone that runs a solar system, UK does not provide enough light in winter for PV to be sustainable (unless you have a football field sized garden that you're prepared to cover with panels).

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chrisonabike replied to don simon fbpe | 9 months ago
2 likes

Yup. If the issue is massive overuse at some point efficiency won't cut it and we are facing reduction in use. We can choose - either voluntary now or involuntary later*.

People rightly rail at governments but their actions can be rather limited - at least our less autocratic and dictatorial ones. It's clearly safer to refuse to make some things easy (eg. active travel); making some things difficult can be done - but like a weak parent they're very reluctant to say "No. Enough." to a large chunk of the population.

* In the past we've managed to sidestep this issue several times with technology and learning to exploit different resources - at the cost of *different* problems after decreasing periods of plenty.

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Hirsute replied to don simon fbpe | 9 months ago
1 like

I saw an article about an army lorry recently where hydrogen was in use. However, on reading the detail it became apparent that the lorry is used to burn hydrogen to turn into electric to recharge electric vehicles ! Not really seeing how that is green - the efficiency must be poor.

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don simon fbpe replied to Hirsute | 9 months ago
0 likes

That's not to far away from coal fired powered stations producing power for "green" EVs...

Is it possible that it was a testbed for hydrogen burning motors?

It does, on the surface, sound a bit silly. Link?

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Rendel Harris replied to Hirsute | 9 months ago
0 likes

This one? https://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/10/this-beast-of-a-chevy-colorado-is-h...

It does run off hydrogen but also carries a large battery that it charges from its fuel cells that can be put into anything else, presumably not just other vehicles but radar stations etc. The way things are going I expect to see a civilian version on the streets of London in the not too distant future…

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Oldfatgit replied to Hirsute | 9 months ago
0 likes

JCB have designed, tested and built hydrogen engines for plant that work the same way as current ICE.

They have also covered a number of Merc Vito vans with their hydrogen powerplant.

First Bus run hydrogen powered busses ... including double decker ... with busses in Aberdeen having clocked over a million miles.

As I said before... without the financial input driven by the domestic heating market, large scale infrastructure won't exist in the UK.

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TROOPER74 replied to Left_is_for_Losers | 9 months ago
0 likes

90%+ of those that post on here, and denigrate motorists, are motorists ... car to the start of the Save the Planet ride ....  food delivery to the local shop by big diesel trucks ... green electricity provided by wood pellets shipped across the Atlantic by ships burning bunker fuel ... .... less time pretending more time cycling.  👍

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chrisonabike replied to TROOPER74 | 9 months ago
3 likes

Butchering Orwell - we're all motorists!  But some are more motorists than others...

... and just for now, that may be quite helpful (as well as having benefits to the individual driving a bit less).

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Stephankernow | 9 months ago
2 likes

Alot of people are struggling and need to drive to work, Shift workers, nurses, essential servives , teachers, carers, people in rural areas etc etc.
Public transport is none existant for many people and cycling is not an option or practical. I have no problem and its NOT a give away its OUR money NOT the governments.
If this went on , Costs will rise people will charge for their services. People who work on low wages will be hit the hardest.
Why not tax cobalt battery powered cars? Cobalt cannot be recycled!

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Backladder replied to Stephankernow | 9 months ago
1 like

Stephankernow wrote:

I have no problem and its NOT a give away its OUR money NOT the governments.

Unless you have your own printing press I think you'l find that it is actually the government's money that they let you use, without it you would be back to the barter system.

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