Fuel duty: Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling signal that planned 2p increase will be dropped

By Rosa Prince, Political Correspondent, and Andrew Porter, Political Editor Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, have both dropped strong hints that the planned 2p-a-litre increase in fuel duty due in the autumn would be postponed. The Prime Minister said that he understood the increased pressure on families of the rising cost of oil, along with rising food prices in the supermarkets. But he showed less sympathy to complaints by hauliers who have staged a series of protests in recent weeks about the cost at the pump. At one of his twice-yearly appearances before the chairmen of all the House of Common committees, the Prime Minister denied British hauliers were worse off than their Continental counterparts. Warning that rising demand for oil from Asia meant that the current pressure on prices could continue for... [read full story]