North Yorkshire taxi drivers fear petrol price increase
An increase in fuel duty could be announced in the budget
Rachel Reeves will present her first Budget as Chancellor to the House of Commons today amid reports of the tax rises and spending cuts it could contain.
The Government said after entering office that it needed to fill a ÂŁ22 billion "black hole" in the public finances.
Ms Reeves is said to have since identified a far larger ÂŁ40 billion funding gap which she will seek to plug to protect key departments from real-terms cuts and put the economy on a firmer footing.
Fuel duty tax, which is included in the price motorists pay for petrol at the pump, could be raised for the first time for more than a decade. The tax on motor fuels was frozen by the Tories between 2010 and 2022, and then cut by 5p to 52.95p per litre, where it remains.
But taxi drivers in Selby tell us any rise would hit them hard. John Richards runs squash toad taxis and has this message for the Chancellor: "Don't do it. It's simple. Don't do it because it's going to put more people out of work. They've already caused a lot of problems with the small businesses. So definitely don't do it because there'll be more people that will be out of work as a result."
"Even now, a lot of the new starters, they can't survive. They have another job. That's why there's no taxis at certain times because they've got school runs in the morning or they've got another job."
"You can't pass it on to the customer because the customer is getting fewer and fewer on the ground. You know people just can't afford to do it, and they're walking past in droves, not getting taxis when they can hardly walk."