Tory MPs have vowed to battle any move to increase fuel duty for 37 million hard-pressed motorists in next month’s Budget.
Reports suggested new Chancellor Rishi Sunak might contemplate a 2p per litre rise in line with inflation, the first increase in a decade.
The move, said to have originated with No 10 chief aide Dominic Cummings, who wants £4billion to fund planned infrastructure projects.
But the suggestion – downplayed by the Treasury – prompted a warning that it could cost the Tories in former Labour seats it won for the first time at December’s election, especially in the North and Midlands.
‘This would hit people, particularly in rural communities, outside towns and cities and in many parts of the country where we won seats for the first time in the election,’ Filton & Bradley Stoke MP Jack Lopresti told the Times.
‘We all believe that we need to put significant investment in public transport infrastructure but until that happens we should not be considering raising duty.’
Reports suggested new Chancellor Rishi Sunak might contemplate a 2p per litre rise in line with inflation, the first increase in a decade
‘This would hit people, particularly in rural communities, outside towns and cities and in many parts of the country where we won seats for the first time in the election,’ said Filton & Bradley Stoke MP Jack Lopresti
The move is said to be being explored at the behest of Mr Johnson’s powerful chief aide Dominic Cummings
New chancellor Rishi Sunak is said to be ready to increase the level on petrol and diesel in the budget next month in line with inflation, potentially adding 2p to a litre
Freezing the duty instead of increasing it in line with inflation saves drivers around £1.50 every time they fill up.
But it also costs the Treasury billions in lost revenue and is also seen by some environmental campaigners as subsidising people responsible for damaging the planet.
In a pre-election speech on December 4 Mr Johnson announced that a fuel duty freeze which would financially benefit 37million motorists would be in the first post-Brexit budget.
But the plans is said to be one of the areas where he clashed with ex-chancellor Sajid Javid, who wanted to keep it in place, while Mr Johnson was happy to see it removed.
A Government source suggested an increase was unlikely to be in the March 11 Budget.
But campaigners fear that it could be introduced in 2021.
Dominic Cummings is a genius and ministers who don’t want to work with him should ‘shut up’ and ‘stop whingeing’ says Tory Lord
Ministers should ‘shut up’ and stop ‘whingeing’ about Dominic Cummings because he is a ‘mastermind’ and they owe their jobs to him, says a former Tory minister.
Lord Blencathra said ministers should ‘quit’ if they don’t want to work with Boris Johnson’s aide and instead make way for those who ‘see the bigger picture’.
Mr Cummings has been accused of operating like he is in charge of an ‘authoritarian regime’ as ministers were in growing revolt over his behaviour following the reshuffle.
Ministers should ‘shut up’ and stop ‘whingeing’ about Dominic Cummings because he is a ‘mastermind’ and they owe their jobs to him, says a former Tory minister
Special advisers past and present said Boris Johnson’s chief aide had created a toxic atmosphere in No 10 as he ‘ruled through fear rather than respect’.
And Sajid Javid’s decision to quit last week was the culmination of a bitter internal battle for control with Dominic Cummings – that the Chancellor ultimately lost.
The camps in No10 and No11 were in a barely-concealed state of war for months, with increasingly brutal briefing.
However, Lord Blencathra, who as David Maclean was a Home Office minister in John Major’s government, hailed Mr Cummings as a ‘mastermind’.
Mr Cummings has accused of operating like he was in charge of an ‘authoritarian regime’ as ministers were in growing revolt over his behaviour following the reshuffle
He told the The Telegraph: ‘Ministers should shut up about Cummings. Not a single one of those whingeing about him would be ministers without him.
‘We would not be out of the EU without him masterminding the Leave campaign, and we would not have won the General Election without his Get Brexit Done plan. He is a genius, and our majority is largely due to him.’
‘If they don’t want to work with him then they should quit their posts and let others, who see the bigger picture, do their jobs instead.’
It comes as Mr Cummings suggested the NHS should cover the cost of selecting babies to have higher IQs.
It comes as Mr Cummings suggested the NHS should cover the cost of selecting babies to have higher IQs, it emerged last night
Boris Johnson’s aide said rich would-be parents would inevitably select embryos with the ‘highest prediction for IQ’.
In a 2014 blog post on ‘designer babies’, he also floated the idea that a ‘national health system should fund everybody to do this’ to avoid creating an unfair advantage for the wealthiest in society.
His comments, uncovered by the Guardian, surfaced after a row over No 10’s decision to hire an adviser with eugenicist views after Mr Cummings put out an advert for ‘misfits and weirdos’.
Growing anger with Mr Cummings culminated this week in his new adviser Andrew Sabisky leaving.
Mr Sabisky, who once suggested enforcing the uptake of contraception to stop unplanned pregnancies from creating a ‘permanent underclass’, announced he was standing down on Monday evening.
He said he did not want to be a distraction to the government after previous comments made by him, including that black people had IQs that were ‘close to the typical boundary for mild mental retardation’, were unearthed.
Ministers said Mr Sabisky ‘jumped before he was pushed’ following a slew of ‘reprehensible’ past comments.