article_snippet.sent: Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said Mr Osborne’s freeze in fuel duty, which has been extended for four and a-half years, had saved the average motorist £680 and was one of the Coalition Government’s biggest achievements.
article_snippet.sent: Fuel duty has been frozen for a fifth year in succession, allowing ’ Chancellor George Osborne to boast that motorists have had ‘£10 off a tank with the Tories’.
article_snippet.sent: Mr Osborne’s announcement in the Budget last month means a 0.54p-per-litre duty rise planned for September 1 will not go ahead.
article_snippet.sent: And the freezing of duty over the five years of the Coalition means the average driver spends £10 less per fill-up than if the controversial ‘fuel-price escalator’ had been implemented in full.
article_snippet.sent: Between 2011 and 2016, a typical motorist will have saved £680675, the Treasury calculated.
article_snippet.sent: The planned fuel duty rise by the RPI rate of inflation on September 2015 would have increased the current duty rate by 0.54p per litre – from the current 57.95p to 58.49p.
article_snippet.sent: For an average family car fill-up of 55 litres, this would have increased the cost by 30p.
article_snippet.sent: ‘is the primary reason that we now pay nearly 70 per cent in tax on every litre of fuel we buy at the pumps’.