With diesel prices at almost £11 per gallon, the Gov must lower the VAT rate at the pumps

It gives me great displeasure to reveal that the UK has just reached yet another maddening motoring milestone: the arrival of diesel at a soul-destroying, wallet-busting £10 or more per gallon.   

I’m not telling you this because I’ve been searching Britain, seeking to expose the highest prices. Instead, I simply stopped at a handful of the many forecourts I passed during a long driving day last week.

That’s where and when I soon discovered diesel at up to £2.37 per litre, which is equivalent to £10.77 a gallon. I believe there may be other filling stations charging closer to (or maybe even in excess of) £11.

Compare those prices with 2016, when I had my first full year as a volunteer driver of the Marcus Rutherford Foundation educational/cancer- awareness battle bus-cum-ambulance. Then (and every year since) I paid its diesel bills that were, 10 years ago, as low as £1.02 per litre.

A doubling of those retail fuel prices over the course of just one decade translates to a full tank that costs around £200 this autumn – even more if the diesel is peddled by the greediest oil giants operating from the most expensive forecourts. 

All this means that, for now, we’ve been forced to SORN the vehicle, although we’ve at least avoided paying the Government’s exorbitant fuel duties, VAT and road tax. Never mind that by being priced off the road like this, our foundation’s traditional practice of delivering thousands of pounds worth of gifts, furniture, medical and other equipment to innocent young adult cancer patients this Christmas will be severely compromised.

Figures suggest that some 38 per cent of the vehicles on UK roads use diesel. Motorists had their fingers burned when encouraged by airhead governments to buy diesel cars, but were then punished for doing so. Too many traditional operators of taxis, LCVs and HGVs are looking down the barrel of possible insolvency due to the price of diesel, which has rocketed due to the Russia-Ukraine and US-Iran wars, plus Treasury greed. 

Other vulnerable businesses are farms and construction firms, who invested so heavily in derv vehicles. It’s far easier said than done to swap them for alternatives such as electric cars.

If you think that the price of diesel doesn’t affect you because you never touch the stuff, you’re very much mistaken. Fact is, rarely does a day go by when diesel-powered vehicles aren’t doing the vast majority of the hard miles as they bring, for example, food from the farms and processing plants to your table. Even that new EV in your driveway was probably delivered from factory to dealership by a car transporter running on derv.

The fuel is so essential to the effective mass delivery of goods and people that it desperately needs a helping hand. This the UK Government can immediately give – by lowering the rate of VAT on currently massively overpriced diesel.

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