The Freight Transport Association (FTA), which represents the supply chain interests of companies moving goods by road, rail, sea and air, will be running a Budget Desk on March 12, providing information, analysis and reaction to the chancellor’s statement and its effect on industry’s transport operations.

Chancellor Alistair Darling has announced plans to increase fuel duty on diesel by 2p per litre from April 1, but when FTA representatives met with him in February, he suggested that any announcement regarding fuel duty would be made in his Budget speech.

In advance of the Budget, the FTA has called for the proposed fuel-duty increase to be scrapped; consideration of the option to decouple duty on fuel used in heavy lorries from that for other road users; abandonment of plans for above inflation increases in gas oil duty; a commitment to extend the freeze in lorry vehicle excise duty for 2009; the introduction of a time-based charge on foreign lorries operating in the UK and abandonment of plans for an aviation tax on airfreight.

The Government collects £41 billion in tax each year from all road users but, in contrast, it spends just £8.3bn a year on national and local roads infrastructure.

The proposed 2p per litre increase in fuel duty would cost the industry an extra £280 million per year. UK diesel duty is still double that of the rest of Europe and it would need to fall by 18 per cent a litre to achieve parity with France, according to the FTA.