Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they intend to increase fuel duty; and what assessment they have made of the impact of an increase in fuel duty on (1) the cost of living, and (2) working class families.

HM Treasury’s distributional analysis publication currently breaks down measures by tax, welfare, and spending on public services, and the freeze in fuel duty forms part of these published distributional impacts. However, more detailed breakdowns for individual measures are unlikely to be reliable as (1) many of the measures in this analysis are underpinned by small sample sizes; and (2) measures often interact with each other. For this reason, a cumulative assessment gives the best representation of the intended overall policy effect.

The Office for National Statistics’ ‘Effects of Tax and Benefits’ publication provides information on the costs of fuel duty to households across the income distribution.[1]

The Chancellor makes decisions on taxation as part of the Budget process.

[1] Effects of taxes and benefits on household income - table 2a, row 64

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/datasets/theeffectsoftaxesandbenefitsonhouseholdincomefinancialyearending2014