This week’s 2017 UK budget delivered very little news to grab the headlines, especially for motorists. As we heard on the BBC News straight after the budget, those used to seeing previous Chancellor George Osborne “pull rabbits out of hats” at these events saw “no rabbits” from Philip Hammond on this occasion.
So what news can we report for UK motorists?
Perhaps the biggest news was the distinct lack of news. We were surprised not to see anything announced that would directly affect drivers, particularly diesel drivers. However, there was no fuel duty increase, no official news of a scrappage scheme, and no changes to Vehicle Excise Duty (road tax) beyond those already announced (with the exception of the unsurprising fact that this tax on existing cars will rise with inflation). Anyone interested in the VED changes that take effect from April will find further information in this previous article.
Trouble ahead?
It’s not at all cynical to assume that the government is storing up some of the above changes for the autumn, when the UK will have its first full Autumn Budget, rather than an Autumn Statement, the last of which took place in 2016. It still seems likely that diesel drivers will be hit in some way when this takes place.
A hint that the government hasn’t forgotten about the need to tackle diesel use is tucked away in the detail of the written budget, where it states that the government will be investigating the use of “red diesel” in the coming months. This far cheaper diesel is identical but dyed red, and used by some vehicles working in construction and agricultural industries. This pending investigation suggests there’s a clampdown on the use of this cheaper fuel on the way, especially where these vehicles are used in urban areas.
Whatever happens, the country’s dreadful performance against pollution targets means that something will have to be done soon, so the silence on this issue in the budget should probably be treated more as a reprieve than as a case of “no news is good news.”
Road spending
Spending on the UK’s struggling road network was announced in the budget, confirming some promises made in last year’s Autumn Statement. According to The BBC, this includes a commitment to £90 Million of spending for the north, £230 Million for the Midlands, and £690 Million to be doled out by local councils to “tackle urban congestion.” Totalling just over £1 Billion, these commitments seem something of a drop in the ocean given the traffic levels our roads have to deal with on a daily basis.
Brexit
The one big thing that could change everything is the impact of the impending declaration of Article 50 and the commencement of Britain’s departure from the EU. While some pundits feel that this has been factored into financial forecasts, history has shown that it’s almost impossible to predict how the markets (and the general financial health of the country) will be impacted by political events. However much anyone tries to predict what may happen in the next six months, the only certainty in the current climate is uncertainty.
The next budget in the autumn will take place against a backdrop of major transition. That, coupled with the fact that this budget has been far from revolutionary, truly seems to indicate that the next one will be a big one.
Labour has described this budget as one of “utter complacency.” Do you agree? Share your views in the comments below.
IMAGE CREDIT: Pixabay (Public Domain).
Pleasing to see no increase in petrol duty, and vehicle tax.
Unfortunately Labour still have this mentality that you can spend money you haven’t got, and at the moment, I for one am glad to see Teresa May’s no nonsense approach to Brexit. Labour under Corbyn would be a disaster for the UK.
Sorry to disappoint you but have a look at the yougov website on VED, it has most defiantly gone up for ALL vehicles.
When the Conservatives were elected they immediately removed the fuel inflation triggers that Labour had put in place, it’s anybody’s guess how much petrol/diesel would be now if we hadn’t got rid of Labour and of course there would have been the usual ritual increases year on year……
i can see what has been done, but not spending on NHS and social care is wrong, but added that how business tax is paid or warehouse vs shop on high street, needs to look in to warehouse pay less needs to looked into should go down a pay as go business tax one stop with no difference of warehouse or shop on high street?
I have to agree. We have had 50 years of the worst politicians ever pushing there responsibilities under the carpet.
The industrial / tax base of the UK is too small to support the revenues needed to provide the services demanded from it. When was any money spent on infrastructure or technology. The Tories as the scoundrals they are sold anything that could move and Labour borrowed for schools, hospitals and benifits that we cannot pay back. Long are gone the more honest and patriotic politics 60 years ago.
If we went back to 60 years ago we would hear the screams and whines of all those who would be the losers. We think we have austerity now? – Go back 60 years and it would feel like austerity to end our lives! We have got used to politicians pandering to us and buying our votes.
Sell the silver, take out a loan – what is the difference? It comes to the same in the end – living beyond our means.
Financially no-one can do this for ever despite creative accounting – there is nemesis.
Unfortunately Labour are yesterdays people & are an irrelevance now because who in their right mind would vote for Corbyn & his militant union accolites who seek to impose their Marxist ideology at every opportunity? That is a very dangerous situation because you have to have a credible opposition in a healthy democracy to keep the current government on its toes & poor old Liberal have disappeared into the ether as no one knew who they were batting for anyway!
K Simpson is wrong.
There is always money available.
It’s just a matter of choices.
My priorities are probably different from K Simpsons.
Would I spend billions on High Speed rail? No
Would I spend billions on Trident? No
Would I give tax cuts to the richest? No
Would I subsidise private companies who are failing? No
Would I give a sweetheart deal to Surrey County Council? No
Would I give a lot more money to the NHS? Yes
Would I find a way to tax multi-National companies who are avoiding tax? Yes
Choices,choices, choices!!
True – money has to come from somewhere, it is a matter of choices –
Would I agree to fund ever-increasing government – no!
Would I agree to fund Trident – no! –
But do we need a military force to help others less blessed with stable government than we are?
Would I agree to fund High Speed Rail – yes!
Like electric cars it removes pollution from the worst areas and can use renewable electricity rather than coal and oil fired power stations. Properly used it will remove diesels from the roads.
Would I give tax cuts to the richest? no!
But then I would want to do something about those who pay people hundreds of pounds an hour, or demand hundreds of pounds an hour.
Would I subsidise public companies who are failing? Perhaps.
If I do then, to be authentic, I have to subsidise private ones as well.
Would I give more money to the NHS?
Not without a radical rethink on what it is for – is it for good basic healthcare for all, or is it to prolong life at any (and every) cost?
Would I find a way to tax multi-national companies who avoid tax? Yes, yes, yes!
Who has a solution to this problem? These companies are more powerful than governments and are accountable to no-one including the shareholders who are not bothered as long as they get a dividend.
Come on! Let’s balance our books, restructure our geography so people do not have to travel miles to work, to shop, for recreation; let’s build energy efficient houses by joining them together to reduce the number of outside walls. The answers to pollution are not hard to find, they just need joined up thinking and determination in a country which is so overdrawn we all ought to be scared stiff.
I can’t believe how everyone keeps thinking that the answer to the NHS is to give it more money. It is a bottomless pit and will always absorb all the money it’s given. They need to manage the huge amounts given to them much better than they are doing an dlearn to do more with less just like our Police Forces have. Okay, they are now so short of officers that it’s embarrassing and unsafe for officers who are leaving in droves, but they are still just about coping. The Police budgets have been cut, so that more money can be thrown at the bottomless pit of the NHS. This should be reversed immediately.
It’s not strictly true about no increase in VED. This year’s VED has increased – See https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/spring-budget-2017-overview-of-tax-legislation-and-rates-ootlar/annex-a-rates-and-allowances.
The increase is meant to be the same as RPI, which at January stood at 2.6% (From ONS). However, I checked the VED increases, and from 1st April 2017 for motorcycles the increase ranges from 3.33% to 5.88%, and for my car it is 3.44%.
Nice to see the comments from people who still think about what goes on rather than follow blinkered party political dogma, everyone would spend their money differently, we are all individuals after all, what the vast majority of people are just realizing is that the money that government spends is not the governments money, it`s ours!, and as individuals who have to live within a finite fiscal budget we know that you must live within your means, uncontrolled borrowing that we saw under the Labour government, and Gordon Browns “Big Government” are not sustainable in the long term, nor is high taxation when the wages for the man in the street are stagnant, I voted Conservative at the last election for the first time in my life after spending the last fifty years voting Labour, would I vote Labour again? NEVER.
I was unaware that this group was largely composed of members of the right wing of the Tory (selfish) party….who are unwilling to pay for the benefits they receive from society or for the damage they do to society.
The benefits we motorists receive are not cheap – building and maintaining roads and infrastructure, police and emergency services in the event of accidents and health care in the event of illness or disability as a consequence of these accidents.
There is also the harm we do in driving: pollution causes illness and even death – see the latest controversy about diesel. Motor vehicle accidents cause significant illness, permanent disability and death and the costs of accidents to services including health and legal services is vast. Who pays?
We also have to acknowledge that motor vehicle use is a major cause of global warming and we have a responsibility, both ethically and in terms of international agreements, to do something about this and the harm that it is doing to our world. Motoring should, therefore, be made more expensive to deter car and other vehicle use and for the money raised to be used to support public transport and repairing the damage that unlimited vehicle use causes.
Thanks to Terry Birchmore for telling us all how we should think. You are obviously the enlightened one, spouting your opinions like they were accepted facts. No point in putting alternative ideas to you since you obviously know better.
What the diesel-basher brigade tends to forget is that the economy runs upon it – every lorry on our roads, carrying all the goods we need to our local shops, uses that fuel. Diesel was touted for its lower CO2 emissions per driven mile and diesel engines are more efficient than petrol engines anyway (Rudolf Diesel’s objective over a century ago, was to devise an engine that was more efficient). If you ignore all the fearmongering about global warming (it happens anyway – although we’ve had a hiatus for the last 20 years – atmospheric water vapour is the greatest contributor to any greenhouse effect; methane from livestock and rubbish dumps is also quite potent) and the effect of higher atmospheric CO2 levels (negligible impact upon temperature, for one thing; greater plant growth potential for another), we can make a case for getting rid of the CO2-based VED bands and return to the simple premise that people who drive thirstier vehicles pay more (at the pump). That doesn’t get away from the fact that HM Government introdued that CO2-based VED banding and planted the seeds of greater diesel uptake by ordinary motorists. It would be disgraceful to punish those who responded positively to Government policy. On a purely aesthetic note, I’ve driven diesels for nearly a decade and if I ever get back behind the wheel of a petrol-fuelled car, the first thing I notice is how much more effort it takes to get anywhere – a weaker engine having to run harder, consuming more fuel and – all other things being equal – probably not lasting as long as a diesel. Boy racers may love their thrashy motors, but give me a decent cruise any day.
Having set aside the CO2 fraud, the government’s next useful target is nitrogen oxide emissions and – what do you know – diesels are a bad offender. There is no good answer to this round-and-round problem of emissions; CO2 emissions increased when catalytic converters were mandated, for instance – the catalyst reduces an engine’s efficiency (hence greater fuel consumption) and converts unburnt fuel and carbon monoxide into… CO2. Then they said CO2 is bad,, so we must tax emissions (how useful). Now the latest diesels have to have extra emissions treatment (another catalyst…) because of nitrogen oxides – but have you smelt a modern diesel exhaust and noted a certain nappy odour? Ammonia produced by the conversion of nitrogen oxides…. Ammonia is pretty toxic as well. Ah, but what about electric vehicles – the answer to all our woes? How long do the batteries last (answer – not long) and how expensive (in energy consumption and raw material consumption) are they? It’s a massive fraud. Also, how is that electricity being generated? Ignore so-called renewables – so much fossil-fuel-derived energy goes into manufacturing the hardware, for one thing, not to mention that you can’t switch the wind and sun on or off to meet demand, nor does solar answer the matter of greatest electricity demand occurring during the hours of darkness. Ever since HM government lost its spine and stopped the further development and updating of our nuclear power generation capabilty in the 1990s, we have become ever more reliant upon fossil fuels for electricity generation.
The bottom line is simply government revenue. Ignore all the emissions rubbish – that’s just a smokescreen (pardon the pun). While we have (socialist-implemented) welfare programmes that voters are loath to sacrifice, we have government needing to spend ever more money. Balancing the budget used to be a cyclical objective – over the space of an economic cycle (roughly 11 years) government would seek to net out years of overspending during recessions with years of underspending during the bounce-back years. Then Gordon Brown declared that ‘boom-and-bust’ was over and it would be jam every day – but financed this by governmental overspending during years of economic upswing, blowing away the old idea of trying to balance the books. To ease into this era of abandonment of common sense. he even moved the start date of an economic cycle – real economic sleight-of-hand – to disguise the fact that he was breaking the rule about balancing the budget. We have a choice between austerity or higher taxes – the middle way does not work because it is stacking up national debt that future generations must attempt to deal with. Do the selfish people of today really want to burden their children and THEIR children and THEIR children with the bill for today’s comfort?
Totally agree with you. I switched from petrol to diesel in a car 5 years ago. Diesel goes double the mileage for a few p more than petrol. The downside was going through a shallow flood and ending up with a buggered engine through hydro lock. I’ve gone back to petrol in the car but my van will remain diesel because of the benefits.
The problem is the revenues the government gets are not spent on the roads and because a lot of people were encouraged to scrap their petrol vehicles they’ve now a shortfall in cash. So now diesel is bad and petrol is good.
I’d love to see someone run an artic on petrol and still get cheap transport. When the MP’s find their caviare sarnies have gone up by 300% they may start taking notice.
Pleasing to see no increase in petrol duty, and vehicle tax.
Unfortunately Labour still have this mentality that you can spend money you haven’t got, and at the moment, I for one am glad to see Teresa May’s no nonsense approach to Brexit. Labour under Corbyn would be a disaster for the UK.
Sorry to disappoint you but have a look at the yougov website on VED, it has most defiantly gone up for ALL vehicles.
When the Conservatives were elected they immediately removed the fuel inflation triggers that Labour had put in place, it’s anybody’s guess how much petrol/diesel would be now if we hadn’t got rid of Labour and of course there would have been the usual ritual increases year on year……
i can see what has been done, but not spending on NHS and social care is wrong, but added that how business tax is paid or warehouse vs shop on high street, needs to look in to warehouse pay less needs to looked into should go down a pay as go business tax one stop with no difference of warehouse or shop on high street?
I have to agree. We have had 50 years of the worst politicians ever pushing there responsibilities under the carpet.
The industrial / tax base of the UK is too small to support the revenues needed to provide the services demanded from it. When was any money spent on infrastructure or technology. The Tories as the scoundrals they are sold anything that could move and Labour borrowed for schools, hospitals and benifits that we cannot pay back. Long are gone the more honest and patriotic politics 60 years ago.
If we went back to 60 years ago we would hear the screams and whines of all those who would be the losers. We think we have austerity now? – Go back 60 years and it would feel like austerity to end our lives! We have got used to politicians pandering to us and buying our votes.
Sell the silver, take out a loan – what is the difference? It comes to the same in the end – living beyond our means.
Financially no-one can do this for ever despite creative accounting – there is nemesis.
Unfortunately Labour are yesterdays people & are an irrelevance now because who in their right mind would vote for Corbyn & his militant union accolites who seek to impose their Marxist ideology at every opportunity? That is a very dangerous situation because you have to have a credible opposition in a healthy democracy to keep the current government on its toes & poor old Liberal have disappeared into the ether as no one knew who they were batting for anyway!
K Simpson is wrong.
There is always money available.
It’s just a matter of choices.
My priorities are probably different from K Simpsons.
Would I spend billions on High Speed rail? No
Would I spend billions on Trident? No
Would I give tax cuts to the richest? No
Would I subsidise private companies who are failing? No
Would I give a sweetheart deal to Surrey County Council? No
Would I give a lot more money to the NHS? Yes
Would I find a way to tax multi-National companies who are avoiding tax? Yes
Choices,choices, choices!!
True – money has to come from somewhere, it is a matter of choices –
Would I agree to fund ever-increasing government – no!
Would I agree to fund Trident – no! –
But do we need a military force to help others less blessed with stable government than we are?
Would I agree to fund High Speed Rail – yes!
Like electric cars it removes pollution from the worst areas and can use renewable electricity rather than coal and oil fired power stations. Properly used it will remove diesels from the roads.
Would I give tax cuts to the richest? no!
But then I would want to do something about those who pay people hundreds of pounds an hour, or demand hundreds of pounds an hour.
Would I subsidise public companies who are failing? Perhaps.
If I do then, to be authentic, I have to subsidise private ones as well.
Would I give more money to the NHS?
Not without a radical rethink on what it is for – is it for good basic healthcare for all, or is it to prolong life at any (and every) cost?
Would I find a way to tax multi-national companies who avoid tax? Yes, yes, yes!
Who has a solution to this problem? These companies are more powerful than governments and are accountable to no-one including the shareholders who are not bothered as long as they get a dividend.
Come on! Let’s balance our books, restructure our geography so people do not have to travel miles to work, to shop, for recreation; let’s build energy efficient houses by joining them together to reduce the number of outside walls. The answers to pollution are not hard to find, they just need joined up thinking and determination in a country which is so overdrawn we all ought to be scared stiff.
I can’t believe how everyone keeps thinking that the answer to the NHS is to give it more money. It is a bottomless pit and will always absorb all the money it’s given. They need to manage the huge amounts given to them much better than they are doing an dlearn to do more with less just like our Police Forces have. Okay, they are now so short of officers that it’s embarrassing and unsafe for officers who are leaving in droves, but they are still just about coping. The Police budgets have been cut, so that more money can be thrown at the bottomless pit of the NHS. This should be reversed immediately.
It’s not strictly true about no increase in VED. This year’s VED has increased – See https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/spring-budget-2017-overview-of-tax-legislation-and-rates-ootlar/annex-a-rates-and-allowances.
The increase is meant to be the same as RPI, which at January stood at 2.6% (From ONS). However, I checked the VED increases, and from 1st April 2017 for motorcycles the increase ranges from 3.33% to 5.88%, and for my car it is 3.44%.
Nice to see the comments from people who still think about what goes on rather than follow blinkered party political dogma, everyone would spend their money differently, we are all individuals after all, what the vast majority of people are just realizing is that the money that government spends is not the governments money, it`s ours!, and as individuals who have to live within a finite fiscal budget we know that you must live within your means, uncontrolled borrowing that we saw under the Labour government, and Gordon Browns “Big Government” are not sustainable in the long term, nor is high taxation when the wages for the man in the street are stagnant, I voted Conservative at the last election for the first time in my life after spending the last fifty years voting Labour, would I vote Labour again? NEVER.
I was unaware that this group was largely composed of members of the right wing of the Tory (selfish) party….who are unwilling to pay for the benefits they receive from society or for the damage they do to society.
The benefits we motorists receive are not cheap – building and maintaining roads and infrastructure, police and emergency services in the event of accidents and health care in the event of illness or disability as a consequence of these accidents.
There is also the harm we do in driving: pollution causes illness and even death – see the latest controversy about diesel. Motor vehicle accidents cause significant illness, permanent disability and death and the costs of accidents to services including health and legal services is vast. Who pays?
We also have to acknowledge that motor vehicle use is a major cause of global warming and we have a responsibility, both ethically and in terms of international agreements, to do something about this and the harm that it is doing to our world. Motoring should, therefore, be made more expensive to deter car and other vehicle use and for the money raised to be used to support public transport and repairing the damage that unlimited vehicle use causes.
Thanks to Terry Birchmore for telling us all how we should think. You are obviously the enlightened one, spouting your opinions like they were accepted facts. No point in putting alternative ideas to you since you obviously know better.
What the diesel-basher brigade tends to forget is that the economy runs upon it – every lorry on our roads, carrying all the goods we need to our local shops, uses that fuel. Diesel was touted for its lower CO2 emissions per driven mile and diesel engines are more efficient than petrol engines anyway (Rudolf Diesel’s objective over a century ago, was to devise an engine that was more efficient). If you ignore all the fearmongering about global warming (it happens anyway – although we’ve had a hiatus for the last 20 years – atmospheric water vapour is the greatest contributor to any greenhouse effect; methane from livestock and rubbish dumps is also quite potent) and the effect of higher atmospheric CO2 levels (negligible impact upon temperature, for one thing; greater plant growth potential for another), we can make a case for getting rid of the CO2-based VED bands and return to the simple premise that people who drive thirstier vehicles pay more (at the pump). That doesn’t get away from the fact that HM Government introdued that CO2-based VED banding and planted the seeds of greater diesel uptake by ordinary motorists. It would be disgraceful to punish those who responded positively to Government policy. On a purely aesthetic note, I’ve driven diesels for nearly a decade and if I ever get back behind the wheel of a petrol-fuelled car, the first thing I notice is how much more effort it takes to get anywhere – a weaker engine having to run harder, consuming more fuel and – all other things being equal – probably not lasting as long as a diesel. Boy racers may love their thrashy motors, but give me a decent cruise any day.
Having set aside the CO2 fraud, the government’s next useful target is nitrogen oxide emissions and – what do you know – diesels are a bad offender. There is no good answer to this round-and-round problem of emissions; CO2 emissions increased when catalytic converters were mandated, for instance – the catalyst reduces an engine’s efficiency (hence greater fuel consumption) and converts unburnt fuel and carbon monoxide into… CO2. Then they said CO2 is bad,, so we must tax emissions (how useful). Now the latest diesels have to have extra emissions treatment (another catalyst…) because of nitrogen oxides – but have you smelt a modern diesel exhaust and noted a certain nappy odour? Ammonia produced by the conversion of nitrogen oxides…. Ammonia is pretty toxic as well. Ah, but what about electric vehicles – the answer to all our woes? How long do the batteries last (answer – not long) and how expensive (in energy consumption and raw material consumption) are they? It’s a massive fraud. Also, how is that electricity being generated? Ignore so-called renewables – so much fossil-fuel-derived energy goes into manufacturing the hardware, for one thing, not to mention that you can’t switch the wind and sun on or off to meet demand, nor does solar answer the matter of greatest electricity demand occurring during the hours of darkness. Ever since HM government lost its spine and stopped the further development and updating of our nuclear power generation capabilty in the 1990s, we have become ever more reliant upon fossil fuels for electricity generation.
The bottom line is simply government revenue. Ignore all the emissions rubbish – that’s just a smokescreen (pardon the pun). While we have (socialist-implemented) welfare programmes that voters are loath to sacrifice, we have government needing to spend ever more money. Balancing the budget used to be a cyclical objective – over the space of an economic cycle (roughly 11 years) government would seek to net out years of overspending during recessions with years of underspending during the bounce-back years. Then Gordon Brown declared that ‘boom-and-bust’ was over and it would be jam every day – but financed this by governmental overspending during years of economic upswing, blowing away the old idea of trying to balance the books. To ease into this era of abandonment of common sense. he even moved the start date of an economic cycle – real economic sleight-of-hand – to disguise the fact that he was breaking the rule about balancing the budget. We have a choice between austerity or higher taxes – the middle way does not work because it is stacking up national debt that future generations must attempt to deal with. Do the selfish people of today really want to burden their children and THEIR children and THEIR children with the bill for today’s comfort?
Totally agree with you. I switched from petrol to diesel in a car 5 years ago. Diesel goes double the mileage for a few p more than petrol. The downside was going through a shallow flood and ending up with a buggered engine through hydro lock. I’ve gone back to petrol in the car but my van will remain diesel because of the benefits.
The problem is the revenues the government gets are not spent on the roads and because a lot of people were encouraged to scrap their petrol vehicles they’ve now a shortfall in cash. So now diesel is bad and petrol is good.
I’d love to see someone run an artic on petrol and still get cheap transport. When the MP’s find their caviare sarnies have gone up by 300% they may start taking notice.