Drivers and drinkers benefit from fuel and beer duty freeze

HOUSEHOLDS will benefit from freezes on beer and fuel duty aimed at keeping down inflation.

A freeze on alcohol duty implemented in last year’s Autumn Statement was due to expire in August, but has now been extended until February next year.

Alongside the freeze to alcohol duty, which would have risen by 3 per cent otherwise, the Chancellor has also delayed increasing duty on petrol and diesel. Fuel duty was due to rise by 13 per cent, but Jeremy Hunt announced that this, too, would be frozen for another 12 months. Doing so, he said, would help bring down the headline rate of inflation.

Mark Kent, of the Scotch Whisky Association, said freezing the duty would provide “some much-needed certainty and stability for the year ahead,” but that the tax system still left whisky vendors at a disadvantage.

He said: “With today’s freeze, cider is still taxed four times less than a spirit like Scotch whisky and responsible consumers who enjoy a Scotch are paying too much tax compared with a beer or cider.” Alcohol duty rates are supposed to rise each year with inflation. But in the past decade, Budgets and Autumn Statements have seen chancellors opt to either cut or freeze the rises.

Rishi Sunak is also due to visit two pubs in different parts of the country this week. Announcing the freeze the Chancellor said the move would benefit “38,000 pubs all across the UK”, and came on top of “the £13,000 saving a typical pub will get from the 75pc busi- ness rates discount I announced in the autumn.”

Meanwhile, car makers complained that Mr Hunt had helped petrol car owners while failing to support electric vehicles. Leading companies including Jaguar Land Rover and Stellantis, the owner of Vauxhall, Fiat and Peugeot, had called on Mr Hunt to slash VAT charges levied on drivers who use public chargers from 20 per cent to 5 per cent.

The Society for Motor Manufacturers and Traders also called for VAT on electric car purchases to be cut from 20 per cent to 10 per cent, in a move it said would take £4,000 off the average cost of an electric car.

James Taylor, managing director of Vauxhall, said: “Today’s Budget has not delivered the acceleration needed to stop the UK’S transition to electric vehicles from stalling.”

‘With today’s freeze, cider is still taxed four times less than a spirit like Scotch whisky’