Incentive for a different Euro
Page 14
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HAVING READ THE CM cover story last week (10 March) regarding the magnitude of the £26bn fuel tax bill for UK road users, I would like to put this further into context.
The 470,100 HGVs registered to operate at more than six tonnes represent just 2% of the 34.1 million total of UK-registered vehicles. Put another way, 98% of road us ers are not a truck. Yet this 2% of road users collect and pay an estimated £5bn a year in fuel tax – around 20% of the estimated £26bn road tax bill.
Call me a cynic, but perhaps the real reason governments past and present have not provided assistance to the road haulage industry is that it is such a cash cow that any rebate could seriously damage a government’s health and wealth. Is it more politically damaging to raise the tax for the voting car-user as opposed to assisting the haulage industry, which can of course pass this cost on – or so it is assumed.
This naïve view that fuel costs are passed on or easily accepted in the transport sector is a myth, especially when foreign vehicles can enter the UK without charge and operate with both lower fuel and driver costs.
The Chancellor must understand that the cash cow of the UK transport industry will soon be dead if assistance is not forthcoming – and soon.
So here is a radical idea: rebate the UK haulier with 10% of its annual fuel tax (£500m) spread over the next three years (£166m per year).
Rebate it in the form of a £10,000 grant per new Euro 5 tractor unit purchased to update the UK tractor unit fleet of 130,000 tractors of which 50,000 are gas-guzzling, inefficient, highmaintenance units.
This would significantly boost the truck operator and the truck supply business, and save thousands of jobs.
Go on Mr Osborne, I dare you to enact the EURO (Essential User Rebate Offer) in the form of a £10,000 a unit grant to scrap the estimated 50,000 tractor units that are 10 years old or more. I can assure you this is one EURO we will all accept.
Des Evans CEO, MAN Truck and Bus UK
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