The haulage industry gave a warm welcome this week to reports that prime minister Boris Johnson is planning to cut fuel duty for the first time in nine years.The fuel duty cut, which could be as much as 2ppl, is part of an emergency budget planned for 4 September, according to a report in The Sunday Times.

The team is also "war-gaming" a general election on 17 October, the report added.

Fuel duty has been frozen at 57.95ppl since 2010 and is estimated to bring the Treasury £9bn a year.

Responding to the report RHA chief executive Richard Burnett said: “It seems that the penny, quite literally, is beginning to drop. It’s apparent that the prime minister and the chancellor are listening to us.

"For years UK hauliers have been operating at a disadvantage to their European counterparts. A cut in fuel duty will go some way to levelling the playing field with the rest of Europe.”

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Christopher Snelling, the FTA’s policy director, said: “A cut would massively stimulate the UK economy whilst mostly paying for itself as government would get more tax from other sources as a result.

“Fuel duty is a blunt tax that does little for environmental purposes in haulage, as currently there is no alternative to diesel in the mass market and the goods still have to be delivered."

Howard Cox, founder of campaign group FairFuelUK, said the cut would “reduce inflation, prices in the shop, increase tax revenue to the Treasury and massively support hard pressed hauliers during this time of Brexit upheaval.”

Transport secretary Grant Schapps gave a more muted response to the report.  He told Sky News: "I’ll tell you what I would really like to see happen; 27% of all the country’s CO2 comes from transport and 90% of that is from vehicles so actually moving over to electric cars we will make the biggest difference.”

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