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Reported “diesel tax” right move for health – says Friends of the Earth

news release

Newspaper articles suggest there will be a new tax on diesel vehicles announced in the Autumn budget.

Responding to reports that the forthcoming Autumn budget will contain a “diesel tax”, Friends of the Earth Clean Air campaigner Oliver Hayes said:

“Diesel vehicles cause unacceptable damage to people’s health, and for too long tax breaks on diesels have encouraged people to keep buying them. It’s right for the Chancellor to reverse this incentive.

“Car companies are irresponsibly clinging to the lie that diesel is ‘clean’, in a desperate bid to shift vast stocks of a toxic product consumers are rightly turning away from.

“Much more needs doing to fix our pollution crisis, and the chancellor should go further and announce a Clean Air Fund sufficient to implement effective Clean Air Zones in all of the UK’s dangerously polluted towns and cities.

“The good news for drivers is that electric vehicles are increasingly affordable, long range, and great to drive. The quicker they replace the internal combustion engine – and the sooner public transport receives the boost it so desperately needs – the better for all our health.”

 

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