Fuel Duty

Tom Hayes Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)]

I come here today with a mission. Unfortunately, for the past two years I have not followed closely enough the Labour party’s position on what the Government want to deliver. I have lost track of whether we are talking about pillars, aims, priorities, staging points, milestones or foundations, but at the start of the year the latest reinvention was a mission focused on the cost of living.

That was a slight change from when the Government first took office, because their main aim and their No. 1 priority at that point was to go for growth. Alas, as we have seen, that is not happening—the last figures say growth is 0%. What is more, it was evident that all the Government policies that were being put in place were actually anti-growth, as we are starting to see.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

In a pithy sentence, will the hon. Gentleman describe the mission of the Conservative party?

[Dr Evans]

To win the next election, because then we can deliver the change that we are talking about.

On reducing the cost of living—the Government’s No. 1 aim for January—it seems bizarre that the measures that are being put in place have done nothing to support that. The Prime Minister went on the news on Monday with a five-point plan to deal with what is going on. He said energy bills would be capped, but we already knew that because it was announced in the Budget and the cap is in place until July. He said the fuel duty cap would be extended until September, but we knew that because it was in the Budget and then it is set to rise.

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[Robbie Moore]

My firm view is that the Government should be supporting all of those individuals to drive economic growth across the country. By removing the two-child cap, the Government are saying to those families who have worked out what their household spending power will be over a long period of time, “If you want to have more than two children, the Government will step in and pay for you.” That negatively impacts hard-working families that have made those hard fiscal decisions throughout. The reality is that increasing the level of welfare spending by taxing businesses such as those across my constituency—those involved in the haulage industry and the logistics sector that will now see a hike in the price of fuel—negatively impacts those who are driving economic growth, and therefore impacts everybody.

[Tom Hayes]

I think the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward) was making is that, contrary to what the hon. Member said, the majority of parents of children who are disadvantaged by the two-child benefit cap are working. They are grafters; they are the hon. Member’s constituents, who are often working multiple jobs just to make ends meet in the difficult cost of living crisis that we inherited. Surely he is not calling the parents who will benefit from the lifting of the two-child benefit cap, including his constituents, workshy.

[Robbie Moore]

It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman has not turned up to this debate—a debate on an incredibly important issue that is impacting all of our constituents, including his—in good enough time to make a speech on the fuel duty increase, but wants to turn the debate back to a point that I answered in my response to the hon. Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward). That point still stands. If the Government increase taxes on the hard-working businesses and individuals across the country who want to drive economic growth in order to benefit only a very few people, they are not providing opportunity for many young people and hard-working families across all our communities.

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[Robbie Moore]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I will come on to the additional challenges in rural areas, but he makes a clear and concise point: if people have to travel further for a job opportunity, they are going to be taxed more by this Labour Government. That is on top of the Labour Government removing the rural services delivery grant that was providing additional support to many local authorities operating in rural communities. We clearly have a Government who are not interested in supporting our rural communities. Of course, this fuel duty hike comes on top of the increase in employer national insurance contributions and business rates. It will impact our care workers, our district nurses and our hospice sector, all of which are also impacted by the rise in employer national insurance contributions.

At a local level across the Bradford district, we face an additional tax burden: the clean air zone, which was rolled out several years ago. A taxi driver with a non-compliant vehicle who wants to travel into Bradford—an area that we all want to see grow and thrive economically—faces a daily charge of £7 to do so. A white van driver is charged £9 daily to go into Bradford, and someone operating a bus or a heavy goods vehicle is charged £50 a day to do so, as a result of the choices that Labour-run Bradford council has made.

Labour-run Bradford council has received £20 million from collecting this additional tax from our hard-working businesses over the period that the clean air zone has been in force across Bradford. It is something that I am firmly opposed to. Bradford council will say that it is going to spend this money wisely across the district, but based on a freedom of information request that I submitted to Bradford council, I can contradict that narrative. As of 2023, just £4.1 million of all highways spending was spent within the Keighley and Ilkley constituency over a six-year period. To put that in context, the spending in Bradford East, Bradford West and Bradford South was £19.2 million, £17.4 million and £13.1 million respectively. That illustrates that there is no fairness in how Bradford council spends the money it is collecting from my hard-working constituents across Keighley and Ilkley.

[Tom Hayes]

Which of the five recent Conservative Prime Ministers gave Bradford council the right to introduce a clean air zone?

[Robbie Moore]

The right to roll out a clean air zone was given to local authorities, enabling them to make that decision, but some local authorities have refused to do so. The Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, decided not to roll out a clean air zone—that is an example of a Labour administration at a local level making the right decision on this issue. Labour-run Bradford council, however, decided to impose an additional tax on hard-working motorists across the Bradford district. As a result, places in my constituency such as East Morton face increased traffic congestion, road usage and speeding in the areas outside the clean air zone, where motorists try to take different roads to avoid any additional charge.

Rural communities will also be hard hit, as has been rightly pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont). Many of those businesses are in our farming community, which has already been hit by additional cash-flow implications. One point that has not been raised in this debate so far is the increase in red diesel prices, which have spiked by 60% in the last month alone, as supplies remain tight. From the research I have done, red diesel has increased up to an average of 109p a litre in March, up from 67p a litre in February. Farming businesses are reporting being quoted a variety of prices in the past month, ranging from 100p a litre to 135p a litre. That is a significant increase from the 67p a litre we saw just last month.

Several farmers are rightly querying why red diesel prices appear to have increased much more rapidly than road diesel and petrol prices. What meetings is the Minister having with Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Ministers specifically on red diesel, which is having an impact right now on the cash flow of many of our hard-working farmers? That is in addition to delinked payments dramatically dropping, the chop and change over the sustainable farming incentive, and the uncertainty that this Government are creating for many of those working within our farming community, and that is on top of fertiliser prices going up.

The Prime Minister said earlier this week that he will always support working people, but what does that say to those hard-working people across the country and across Keighley and Ilkley, such as Lesley O’Brien, who I mentioned earlier? Businesses and employers face bigger and bigger hurdles the longer this Labour Government are in power. Three consecutive rises in fuel duty is an insult to hard-working people across this country. The Prime Minister and this Government need to get a grip, back our hard-working businesses and show some empathy to those concerns consistently being raised by Opposition Members. It is disappointing, although perhaps not surprising, that we have not heard one Labour Back Bencher contribution in an incredibly important debate on fuel duty.