A fuel duty freeze doesn’t distract from a Budget that ultimately hits motorists’ pockets

The Budget statement from Chancellor Rachel Reeves felt like a beautiful example of using a big shiny thing to distract from some other bits and pieces you’re trying to sneak through unnoticed. 

Keeping fuel duty frozen for another year was the shiny surprise, and went counter to pre-Budget predictions that the government was planning to hit drivers at the pumps by raising duty that had been frozen for more than a decade. But that headline-grabbing flourish, incredibly welcome as it was, hid some less good news and deflected away from things that were left out completely. 

Firstly, not mentioned in the speech and only to be found in the accompanying Treasury documentation, was the big hike on first-year VED for any car that’s not electric. Hybrids are less affected, but anything over 75g/km sees the Vehicle Excise Duty on first registration double from next April - which is an extra cost of almost £2,500 on the highest CO2 banding. 

Then there’s the hike in company car tax for plug-in hybrids. The tech had recently seen a bit of a resurgence as a result of higher range figures from bigger batteries making it a real bridging tech to full electric, but anyone running a company car will need to be in an electric one by April 2028 if they want to avoid big chunks of their paycheck heading to the Government every month. The same goes for anyone running a double-cab pick-up as a company vehicle. That’s not going to be financially sensible from next April.

And then there are other things that weren’t mentioned. The only incentives to help electric car adoption were not increasing first-year VED and company car tax rates on electric cars at the same rate as internal combustion engine models, so not a lot of stimulus there. 

It would have been great to see something to help reduce the cost of public charging, too, amid mounting calls for the VAT on roadside electricity to be cut to match the level drivers pay on their home electricity. 

Anything in that vein would have sent a positive message to counter the negative – fair or unfair – views about the state of the charging network. 

There was a lot of crowing about taking a penny off the cost of a pint of beer, which isn’t exactly going to encourage hard-up drinkers back to the pub, but still created positive vibes. Even a marginal drop in public charging costs would have given the sector a much-needed positive narrative, which would help give more people the confidence to make the move to electric if and when it’s right for them. 

Do you agree with Paul? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section...