FARMERS MAKE AN HONEST LIVING • I refer to your
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news headline (CM 7-13 January) in which the RHA states that: "hauliers have reached the end of their tether watching farmers profit dishonestly from carrying goods for hire or reward with red diesel and cheap tax discs".
I note that the RHA has made a submission to the Chancellor to scrap rebated fuel, abandon reduced excise duty rates on farm vehicles and rate farm buildings.
I can understand their wish to remove concessions on excise duty, although the present system is probably very fair since most farmer's lorries do only a fraction of the annual mileage of full-time hauliers. The difference between heavy goods and farmer's goods excise duty has been reducing annually and the effect of this is that many farmers, like myself who previously only did my own work, now pay the extra The farmer and the haulier should be friends Heavy Goods excise and do some outside work.
With regard to the RHA comments on red diesel and rating of farm buildings, this could have come straight out of a political party manifesto. Try farming for a profit with tractors, grain driers, irrigation pumps and the like running on non-rebated road fuel.
Rates on farm buildings is another tax, but not one which farmers could pass on to the customer.
I, like most farmers, think I have excellent relations with the hauliers which collect and deliver to my farm — always atempting to load and unload as quickly as possible. I wonder if the RHA submission to the Chancellor represents its members' views, or indeed does the RHA membership represent . only a small section of the haulage industry?
A .1 W Ryman
The Pipe Place Farm Wall, Staffordshire PS I note on the same page of Commercial Motor that the RHA has changed the venue of its conference from Majorca to Portugal!