Of course these prices make your eyes water if you are doing 10,000 miles per year in a family saloon at, what, 45 miles to the gallon?
You will certainly be counting the cost, driving more fuel efficiently, maybe not driving at all
if there is an alternative, which there may not be.

A lack of alternatives are also most frequently the case when you are delivering goods – supermarkets are not rail connected, nor are high streets, nor are the very vast majority of destinations served by the road freight industry every day of the week. Sadly, we can't beam it up yet!

But, of course, the lorry isn't doing 10,000 miles a year at 45 miles to the gallon. More like 75,000 miles at seven miles to the gallon. Now that really does make your eyes water.

The increase in the world price of oil is an economic phenomenon which, we are told, will be a feature of all our lives for the foreseeable future. Massive demand for the stuff by the boom economies of the Far East, notably India and China, production which is unable to keep pace, and continuing demand in the West all add up to the market for high
fuel prices.

In the UK we inherit this reality on the back of paying for the highest-taxed petrol and diesel in Europe. At present the product price is, say, 50p per litre (and going up every day) to which the Chancellor adds a massive 50p per litre duty, with consumers at the pump paying another 17.5 per cent in VAT, in fact a tax on a tax.

Thanks to the Fuel Duty Escalator, which the Tories introduced in 1993, and which was gratefully grasped by Chancellor Gordon Brown on his appointment in 1997, we have gone from having the cheapest fuel in Europe to the most expensive

And now that the price of the oil itself has gone into outer space, we are suffering the appalling consequences of having to pay a small fortune, in fact a large fortune, on a product that is absolutely essential to us every day of the week.

If you've got it, then it's been inside the back of a lorry and that lorry is fuelled by diesel.

Of course, we cannot expect the Government and Alistair Darling, the current Chancellor, to be responsible for the world price of oil. But he really is responsible for the tax he charges.

He increased fuel duty by 2p per litre from October 1, 2007. He wanted to put another 2p on from April 1 this year but we talked him out of it. At the time of writing, he is planning to put another 2p on from October 1 this year. Many of us think that with oil going the way it is then that would be unthinkable. But he's not said anything yet.

It is plain daft that we are punishing ourselves in this way – charging such a tax on everything that is delivered is, of itself, inflationary. An absolute own goal.

For over 10 years now, the Freight Transport Association has been calling for a change in the system of taxing fuel for commercial vehicles, to separate it from the way we tax fuel for cars.

We would like to see a new system which would allow the Chancellor flexibility to vary the rate of fuel duty on trucks dependent on other economic conditions.

It cannot be right that an individual 40 tonne lorry can be paying a fuel bill of more than £40,000 per year, half of which is tax. £40,000 per year for a single vehicle!

Our competitors from across the Channel laugh at us for such a mad policy. What's more, they come to the UK in ever larger numbers in order to work at lower costs due to their vastly cheaper fuel.

Charging so much tax on all road users will turn out to be a skewed economic policy which the Government will suffer from. No other country is so dependent on such an income from car drivers
and commercial vehicle operators. And it is not as if we have seen a dramatic and worthy investment in roads as a consequence. They've
got it wrong!

The Government simply must recognise and accept that the tax policy on the UK's freight transport operations is dead wrong, and must do something about it without delay. Firstly scrap the proposed 2p increase planned for October. Secondly change the system and cut the duty.

Diesel is the lifeblood of the UK economy. We are paying more than we should be for it.


Geoff Dossetter is director of external affairs at the Freight Transport Association.