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EndS This Tax
Page 43
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NEXT Monday Mr. Selwyn Lloyd will reveal his Budget intentions for the current year. One presumes that he will not need a second bite at the 1962 cherry, but can one presume that, at long last, the recurrent theme of protest at the unjust burden of fuel tax has been successful? It would be nice to think so. . . .
Should the issue seem slightly clouded in the Chancellor's mind because he has received protests from various sources, some representing all road transport operators and others representing sectional interests, lef it be clearly understood that there is no confusion among hauliers, C-licensees or busmen. They may put the case a different way; they may seek various solutions; they may even on occasion seem to be pleading their own interests above those of the whole industry, but they . all agree that this tax is vicious and unfair. It adds to the country's high cost of living by forcing up transport costs, whether they be reflected in bus fares or in the price of half a pound of butter.
The case for a reduction in—or, better still, abolition of—the 2s. 9d. per gallon duty payable by operators of goods and passenger vehicles is unanswerable. Indeed, the Government never seems to attempt to answer it. But, so far, the only reaction has been to add 10 per cent. to this tax, as was done last July. As a result, one more pressure' is exerted and up go bus fares and haulage costs. How well does Mr. Lloyd understand the simple arithmetic involved in stating that fuel taxation—over which the operator has absolutely no control—now represents some 121 per cent. of a bus operator's running costs?
Countless Millions Hauliers look at the railways, into whose seemingly bottomless purse the Government pours countless millions. The railways enjoy increasing use of untaxed fuel oil, whilst hauliers pay the full-rate tax of 2s. 9d. a gallon. It is bad enough to be hampered by inadequate roads, on which the Treasury .refuses to spend -enoughmoney, at the same time that the railways are receiving this mammoth injeetion of finance. But it is far worse, in fact it is blatantlyAmfair that on top of all this the railways should enjoy such a vast differential on fuel costs, which, in effect, finances their commercial activities.
The present time is a particularly difficult one for long-distance hauliers carrying general traffics. Rates have been going lower, and lower, there is less traffic available, and thereis little doubt that BritiSh Railways are making a dead set at certain traffics they particularly want. To get these traffics they are quoting (if what hauliers are saying is true) rather unrealistic rates. Small wonder that hauliers—British Road Services managers, too—are questioning this, which seems to be tacit approval by the Government of unfair practices.
Mr. T. W. Jackson, national chairman of the National Conference of Road Transport Clearing Houses, voiced the industry's fears in his annual report recently when he said: "We would like an answer to these questions, 'Are these traffics being subsidized by us and the rest of the nation as taxpayers, and is it the policy of the railways and waterways now to obtain traffic at any price?'" These, incidentally, are the same railways who will soon be shedding their cumbrous "common carrier" responsibilities and will then be at liberty only to carry such traffic from this country's industries as they choose to carry. The rest will have to go by road—the operators in which sphere are being forced nearer and nearer to the danger point by the railways' heavily subsidized rate-cutting