Chancellor Alistair Darling has taken the decision to scrap the planned 2p rise in fuel duty this October, prompting a series of experts to express their own opinions as to whether this move goes far enough.

The decision is expected to save UK industry around £280million per year, but, despite the dropped plans, the Chancellor still hopes to raise more than £2billion from motorists through changes to taxes and the VED announced in his Budget earlier this year.

The RAC Foundation has called for the Government to carry out a ‘root and branch’ review of motoring taxes. It believes the current system is failing motorists by charging them more and more for increasingly poor levels of service. According to its calculations, the Government now takes four times as much from motorists (£31.2bn) as it spends on the roads (£8.2bn).

Meanwhile, the Freight Transport Association (FTA) believes this should just be the first step in a major review of commercial vehicle taxation.

The FTA’s director of external affairs, Geoff Dossetter, said: “The Government must now engage with the industry in order to find a practical means of bringing UK duty more in line with continental competitors. Failure to do so will only result in higher costs for UK industry and higher prices for UK consumers.

“Given that almost everything we consume every day is the product of a lorry journey, then higher fuel prices contribute to price rises for everything else we buy. The Government cannot do much about the world price of oil, but it can reduce UK duty to bring it closer in line with the rest of Europe.”

What do you think of the current road tax structure? Leave a comment with your thoughts.