You don't fix poverty by making the poorest pay more
This post began as a twitter response but it was clear that it was just better to write a short piece, than a number of tweets. The tweet exchange was broadly about why increasing fuel duty harms the poorest and when done to encourage drivers to switch to electric vehicles, sees wealthier drivers most likely to switch and the less well off, paying more on one of their highest vehicle outgoings. Firstly, some data. For the 58 million of us not living in London, 77% of us commute to work by car . Driving is most popular in our rural communities, where 6% of the 11million population and 14% in rural towns/fringes have no access to a vehicle. In London, 45% do not have access and in England the total number is 20%. In recent years, apart from London, only the East Midlands has seen an increase in no car access. It's therefore clear that car access plays a major role in many peoples lives but while many people use statistics about the poorest to justify why we need to invest in mo...