Ps lend all-party support to hauliers' diesel protests
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• by Karen Miles and Charles Young
Hard-hit hauliers are to receive strong support in Parliament this week with the Conservatives voting against the latest diesel price hikes and a growing number of Labour backbenchers voicing their sympathies with the hauliers' plight.
Next Tuesday MPs will vote to ratify the Governments fuel duty increases; yesterday (21 April) the Tories were using an "opposition day" to promote their vignette proposal for reducing vehicle excise duty for UK operators. The Conservatives are urging hauliers and trade associations to lobby their MPs in time for next weeks vote, although they say they are "not encouraging truckers to jam up London again".
Tuesday's all-day debate on fuel duties will end with a vote, but with only 25% of MPs coming from Conservative ranks the Government is expected to survive with its Budget's Finance Bill intact. Yesterday the Tories were expected to argue for their BRIT (British Road Infrastructure Toll) disc proposal—a vignette which would be paid by all hauliers in or entering the UK, with a compensatory amount lopped off UK hauliers' VED.
Ian Pearson, a former Treasury aide and Labour MP for Dudley South, was reported this week as being sceptical of the fuel duty escalator, as was Gwyneth Dunwoody, MP for Crewe and Nantwich and chair of the Transport Select Committee. "There is sympathy among Labour backbenchers regarding the effects of the fuel duty escalator," she says. "I am also sympathetic but I do not support the end to the escalator. It is an issue which will be discussed before the Select Committee in the future."
As CMwent to press the FTA was also calling on the Committee to investigate Government claims that operating the fuel duty escalator produces a reduction in lorry mileage and environmental benefits.
Meanwhile Shadow Transport Minister Bernard Jenkin admits: "British hauliers are in crisis. Our proposal for a BRIT disc will be the first step towards a fairer deal for truckers."
A spokesman for the Department of Transport says the Government is not looking at vignettes, but might be once the industry forum has agreed on a set of statistics. He says the Conservative Government had considered but rejected vignettes.