Storms prompt 'keep fuel tax' call

Storm prompts call to maintain fuel taxes

The government has been warned to resist calls to cut fuel duty in the wake of the violent storms sweeping the UK.

Green pressure group Friends of the Earth warned that Sunday's storms were a taste of weather to come, adding that they were part of a pattern of extreme climate conditions across the world.

That means the government must stick to a fuel price policy that discourages the use of cars

Roger Higman

According to FoE, extreme weather conditions have swept the globe in the past three month including storms, floods, fires and droughts.

FoE's senior climate change campaigner, Roger Higman, called on the government to stick to its guns over fuel tax and not give in to the threat of further fuel blockades.

As members of groups lobbying for lower fuel duty were preparing to meet in Manchester, Mr Higman said: "We desperately need cuts in the use of coal, oil and gas to prevent the worst forecasts coming true.

Stick to fuel policy

"That means the government must stick to a fuel price policy that discourages the use of cars."

Mr Higman's comments come ahead of next month's major international climate change talks in the Hague.

The world's politicians will come under pressure in the Hague to come to agreement over a complex set of rules for carbon trading in the hope of averting a climate change disaster.

Ever increasing car use and other human pollution is now widely accepted to have substantially contributed to global warming over the last 50 years.

Environment minister Michael Meacher, who will travel to the Hague conference alongside Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, warned that it would be wrong to assume every time there was bad weather that it was linked to global warning.

Although he did concede that the gales "almost certainly" had climate change as "contributory cause".

He told BBC Radio 4's World at One programme that "already it is the case that a lot of these climatic impacts are irreversible. We have to adapt to them."