18th March 2004

OIL INDUSTRY WELCOMES PROPOSALS ON LORRY ROAD USER CHARGE

UKPIA, the trade association representing refiners and marketers of fuels in the UK, has welcomed the announcement by the Chancellor in the Budget yesterday that a repayment scheme rather than a duty rebated chemically marked diesel is the preferred option for delivering fuel duty reductions to road hauliers.

Chris Hunt, UKPIA’s Acting Director General, commented. “The Government has consulted widely on this issue within the oil and haulage industries. We expressed  serious concern about introducing another chemically marked duty rebated fuel  which we saw as potentially difficult to administer, costly for the oil industry but above all likely to exacerbate an already serious level of fraud on existing rebated diesel fuels. We are pleased that the Government has taken account of these concerns and now favours a repayment scheme which should provide more accurate cross referencing, less open to fraud and abuse.”