55% of the petrol price at the pump is tax. If any of the oil used to make the petrol is still allowed to come from a UK field then the total tax rate is much higher given the near penal levels of tax on oil production.
The surging oil price on world markets will put our petrol prices up more. As it does so the government tax take goes up, as VAT is charged on petrol and profits tax on oil production will also rise.
Motor fuels affect us all and put up our cost of living. All our food, drinks and many other items are delivered by truck and van. Most of us use a car or bus or diesel train to get to work, to shops, to schools.
The government tells us it will get the cost of living down. Once again with fuels it turns out they are main price gougers. Today they plan to collect a lot more tax from oil and fuel, whilst pretending to share our pain.
Cut the petrol tax all the time oil prices stay high.
March 12, 2026
No chance John. Only yesterday our mad Energy Minister said it vindicated his stance on Net Stupid.
When you have such criminally Stupid people in charge we have no chance.
We’re sitting on a sea of energy, gas, oil and coal but importing is seen as environmentally friendly.
Coupled with Drax burning whole forests which priduced twice the emissions of coal highlits the hypocrisy of the scam
March 12, 2026
Most MPs, both labour, tory & libdem, still advocate doubling down on net-zero ….utter madness
ReplyNot Tory. Conservatives have a cheap energy get our own oil and gas out policy.
March 12, 2026
Agreed. ‘No chance’.
Meanwhile, I wonder how Starmer is getting on. A couple of months to the local elections. Will he be gone immediately after?
March 12, 2026
“The government tells us it will get the cost of living down.”
Yet everything they do puts it up Net Zero, NI increases, tax increases, frozen and reduced allowances, ever more red tape, the new workers rights bill, train price increases, the war on landlords and the self employed, making tax digital, the wars on motorists, the failure to fix pot holes, the fuel tax increases, council tax increases, minimum wage increases…
A survey in the Sun says 98% want to drill and frack in the North Sea! So much more sensible than Miliband, Cameron, May, Boris, Sunak, Starmer… this is also why we need jury trials retained 12 people a random mix people rather than one establishment blob appointed, lawyer/judge with an eye on promotion!
March 12, 2026
+1
Someone on ITV suggests David Attenborough would be a good and an uncontroversial choice to Replace Churchill on the £5 note.
Well he has a nice narration voice on his beautifully shot nature programmes but he is totally deluded on climate alarmism but then at the BBC you have to be or are fired it seems. So very controversial indeed and wrong.
These Geology and Zoology grads. All science is physics or it is stamp collecting as Rutherford (allegedly) put it!
March 12, 2026
Red Ed says no.
Nothing to say about the Mandelson Report and the Prime Liar “misleading” Parliament when he claimed he knew very little about how close his relationship was with Epstein when he appointed him US Ambassador?
March 12, 2026
Ed would like to tax the car completely off the roads ….and he’s winning
March 12, 2026
A Heath today:-
It’s double or quits for the civilised world, for the cause of human flourishing, freedom and democracy. Either Donald Trump holds his nerve, crushes the Iranian regime, rides out the oil shock and reopens the Strait of Hormuz, or he and America are finished, exposed as unserious, fickle and incapable of forward planning, a superpower manquée felled by drone-wielding barbarians.
March 12, 2026
LL,
Another Allister reference. This is one of his more melodramatic opinion pieces. It can be ignored.
March 12, 2026
Only about 7% of total energy used by humans in the UK comes from solar (1%) and wind (6%) so virtually irrelevant. In fact less than this if you adjust for the back up needed that makes fossil fuel generators far less efficient to run and for a vast amount of fossil fuels needed to manufacture, fit, maintain, backup and connect these inefficient wind and solar collectors!
Still as UK energy is, thanks to May and Miliband, already 4 times what it should be the % increase might be less than elsewhere. Rather cold comfort!
March 12, 2026
Energy can easily be 20% of the total costs of many goods and services so a 50% increase in energy costs might add 10% to inflation. Even higher for concrete, fertiliser… The good news is coal prices will not rise much and many of out product are made in China using mainly coal energy. Things like wind turbines, solar panels, lithium batteries… As much as 35% of the cost of EV lithium batteries can be the fossil fuels needed to mine, purify & extract materials, manufacture, test and deliver them. Plus you have all the energy used by the workers to leave and get to work. So perhaps a 20% jump in EV car battery costs.
Buying a new EV rather than keeping your old diesel or petrol car rarely saves any world emissions of CO2 in reality. Despite all the government/BBC propaganda and anyway man made CO2 plant, crop and tree food is not causing a climate emergency anyway!
March 12, 2026
Good morning.
The fuel in the large underground tanks was the same fuel before the US / Iran conflict as it is now. Same too at the refinery. So why the sudden jump.
Price gouging should be made illegal.
March 12, 2026
Fuel is double taxed: VAT is charged at 20% on the duty already levied at approx 52.5 p per litre
March 12, 2026
The cost of fuel and energy in the UK are a product of the Uni-Party who have governed the UK since Margaret Thatcher. We now suffer unnecessarily the highest energy costs in the developed World. It will remain so until Reform are elected to power. The alternative is that we become with certainty a third world country.
March 12, 2026
Ah! makes little difference soon there’ll be no petrol for anyone – this war is going to last a long time maybe years.
March 12, 2026
55% of the price is tax. Of which the money you had to earn to pay it was taxed at what 40 %
So for every 100 quid you earn pre tax you can afford to buy about 30 quids worth of petrol, the rest goes to the tax man.
Then of course fuel prices would be lower if the state was not artificially restricting the amount of work the oil companies can do here, state constrained supply forcing price up.
George Harrison was correct with his song tax man.
Nobody would mind if we had world leading public services, but we dont they are all pretty rubbish, with the very rare exception, which is usually accidental and little to do wth the public sector.
March 12, 2026
The simple and sensible thing to do is cut government costs and cut all taxes.
Taxation of all kinds is killing our Country, as too many people now see no point in making a real effort to invest, save, or work harder, smarter and longer for such little personal reward.
Mp’s get a £5,000 rise, Pensioners get £500, yet both still have to pay council tax, energy bills, house and car insurance, and fuel costs all of which are un escapable.
March 12, 2026
Forecourts should state how much tax is charged on fuel. Indeed, it would be good if price tickets for everything included a tax breakdown by law.
March 12, 2026
The government won’t reduce hydrocarbon taxes at the pumps; Reeves is coining it with the extra VAT.
However, the fossil fuel cartel is rubbing its hands together with glee as UK forecourts ramp up the price of diesel to £1.63/l – with every prospect of £2.00 shortly. Followed by the inevitable petrol rationing, panic buying of food/bottled water and yet more government subsidies for everyone’s energy bills. Straight from British taxpayers to the oil companies’ bottom line
As big oil holds the world to ransom with crude at $200/barrel, this war will be the death knell of their cartel. When the war eventually concludes, the world will rapidly move away from fossil fuels to EV’s, renewable energy and battery storage. At last
March 12, 2026
Those EVs still need fossil fuels to generate the electricity to charge them; more so when the wind don’t blow and the sun don’t shine.
Battery storage is very expensive and the degradation in the charge/discharge cycle costs as much as the electricity they transfer. Only good for emergency backup.
Happily my cycle to work this morning required no fossil fuels, but I still rely on delivery drivers to get things where they are needed.
March 12, 2026
No, under your scenario, the “World” woud be so broke, it won’t be even be able to eat, let alone buy “cheap” Chinese EVs SG. We need cheap energy – and renewables are not the solution.
March 12, 2026
Your suggestion of cutting the fuel duty is unfortunately much too sensible to be implemented by the people currently in charge. The chance of a socialist government cutting tax is next to nil, as that would be anathema to them. Roll on the next general election, can’t come soon enough.
March 12, 2026
Indeed cut the petrol tax, cut net zero, cut all taxes, cut the size of the state and cut 90% of red tape. The importance of cheap reliable energy to enable an economy to compete and for living standards is huge. So many of the UK’s problems would be solved by energy at US prices about 1/4 of the UKs. As they could so easily be without the Net Zero May, Miliband, BBC delusions/religion!
See the:- Are we heading for a constitutional crisis? | Starkey & Mogg You tube video on the humble address and Starmer’s appalling refusal to release everything hiding behind the ruse of a police inquiry. This the man who blatantly interfered with the justice system after the protests about the Southport murders by that Welsh Choirboy! 31 months not manifestly excessive for a silly tweet said the thre dire appeal court judges judges! Who seemed to know who might butter their toast!
March 12, 2026
VAT is an insidious, end user cost based tax.
For every 10p the base price of petrol rises the government collects a further 2p.
When petrol prices rise, the fuel duty escalator does not need to as VAT is already doing the heavy lifting.
Fuel duty is currently levied at a flat rate of 52.95p per litre for both petrol and diesel, while VAT at 20% is then charged on both the product price and the duty. So the government is collecting VAT totaling 10p just on the duty.
March 12, 2026
I seem to remember that VAT was a European tax taken over by the UK in the seventies. We used to have purchase tax but not on everything.
March 12, 2026
Yesterday at PMQs, this cll for lower fuel price was the main theme of Kemi Badenoch’s questions to the PM.
His response was we are not increasing petrol prices and went on to accuse Kemi B of u turning on her Iran War position simply to distract the audience from the actual fuel price reality.
Labour once again are being economic with the truth, about the ony thing they know how to be economic about.
The Mandelson embarrassment continues to keep their ability to present lies as truth in the public eye which was perhaps why the files forced into the public by the humble address demand by Parliament was not released until after PMQs to save the PM obvious embarrassment.
We now know Starmer was repeatedly warned not to engage Mandelson yet he ignored that advice and gave his political friend the top job.
What more needs to be said about this government than that. They simply don’t know how to behave responsibly in any field of public office.