FairFuelUK has welcomed news that prime minister Boris Johnson has publicly committed to freezing fuel duty for the 10th successive year.

The pressure group represents small businesses and hauliers across the UK and reacted to the news with "a huge sigh of relief as there was no mention of this levy’s future in his manifesto".

However, it warned that operators would be "hit hard" with a tax hike of 16% if Jeremy Corbyn - "the anti-motorist's Sword of Damocles" - becomes the next PM.

"The cost of motoring on the world’s already highest taxed drivers under the Corbynistas, to help finance their trillion pound spending jamboree, will skyrocket and restrict our freedom of mobility and crash our post-Brexit economy," a FairFuelUK statement said.

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Since 2010, the organisation claims to have saved drivers over £100bn in planned tax hikes in duty and VAT through constructive and objective campaigning. The immediate focus now, it said, was on stopping unnecessary tax hikes based on a "good intentioned but flawed 'green' agenda".

"These include new taxes and bans on drivers entering our major cities and potentially adding more costs on diesel drivers by the Treasury. These are new taxes that will not improve air quality, but simply hit consumers and the economy. There are ways to improve air quality without hitting consumers’ pockets," the statement continued. "[Shadow chancellor] John McDonnell and his clueless cash fleecing band of left-wing reprobates just don’t get it.

"The freeze in duty has never been a cost to the economy. Far from it. Cutting fuel duty irrefutably generates more income to the Treasury, due to higher consumer spending, reduced distribution costs, more jobs, lower inflation and increased company profits. Without this intuitive Tory tax policy change to Labour’s escalator since 2011, the price of filling up at the pumps would now be a crippling £1.80 per litre."

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