Starmer warns fuel duty freeze is a ‘budget-by-budget issue’

The Labour leader said he supports freezing fuel duty but stopped short of guaranteeing a parliament-long freeze.

Sir Keir Starmer described fuel duty as a budget-by-budget issue (Peter Byrne/PA) (PA Archive)

The “working people” to whom Sir Keir Starmer has referred many times in his election campaign “broadly speaking don’t have the wherewithal to write a big cheque when they get into trouble financially”.

Speaking in Harlow, Essex, the Labour leader said he supports freezing fuel duty but stopped short of guaranteeing a parliament-long freeze as a “budget-by-budget issue”.

When asked about who the “working people” are, Sir Keir told GB News: “Working people are people who work for a living, they pay their national insurance, they pay their income tax and they broadly speaking don’t have the wherewithal to write a big cheque when they get into trouble financially.

“Now that will be many millions of people who don’t have very much in savings.

I'll be very straight with you, I'm not going to write five years-worth of budget two or three weeks before the election

Sir Keir Starmer

“It now would actually cover quite a lot of people who do have savings, but, you know, as any working person knows who’s got savings, you work hard, you put those savings aside normally for a car, a holiday, possibly a house or a deposit for yourself or your children, you certainly don’t want to be using that money for energy bills or cost-of-living crises.

“It’s those people who rely on our public services and work for a living and that’s why I’ve said for working people no increase in income tax, in national insurance or VAT – I think they’re already paying too high a price under this Government.”

Sir Keir said his father, who was a toolmaker and worked in a factory, “did feel pretty well all of his life that people looked down on him”.

On council tax, Sir Keir ruled out reforming council tax bands, instead saying: “All of our plans are fully costed, fully funded.”

Council tax banding in England – across categories A to H – is based on property values at April 1, 1991.

It is set locally, based on councils’ revenue and spending plans.

In 2024, the highest value band H homes in Westminster, central London, pay a £1,946.32 bill, less than some of the below-average value homes in Blackpool (£2,024 for a band C bill)

Early in the General Election campaign, David Phillips of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) described council tax in England as being in an “increasingly absurd situation whereby the council tax that households pay is based on the value of their property relative to others in England on April 1 1991 – a third of a century ago, when Mikhail Gorbachev was president of the Soviet Union and Chesney Hawkes topped the charts with The One And Only”.

Sir Keir told broadcaster Christopher Hope: “I’ll be very straight with you, I’m not going to write five years-worth of budget two or three weeks before the election.”

On fuel duty, the Labour leader said: “We’re very sensitive to this because we know how impactful it is.

“Every year we’ve supported the position of keeping that frozen. It’s a budget-by-budget issue, but I would say to anyone who’s concerned on this, check our track record on this.”