Ministers 'to ignore' green tax ambition

摘要

Ministers look set to ignore calls to divert fuel duty revenues to local transport improvements to encourage motorists to use low-carbon alternatives. The environmental audit committee made the recommendation last year, suggesting ministers were undermining support for green taxes by making them too complex. But the Treasury this week responded by claiming fuel duty was not an environmental tax because it was not introduced to change behaviour. That position contradicts the Office for National Statistics, which stated last June that the Treasury had received 4i.4bn in environmental taxes in 2010.