Fair Fuel UK

Fair Fuel UK

Category: Campaign Group

Fair Fuel UK is a Kent-based lobbying group that campaigns to reduce charges on diesel and petrol powered vehicles, most notably fuel duty. It claims to have the support of 140 MPs and โ€œkey mediaโ€, as well as 1.7 million members of the public.

The group is led by political lobbyist Howard Cox, who regularly appears in the media and is becoming more involved in politics. On May 10, 2023, Cox announced that he would run as the Reform candidate in the 2023 London mayoral election.1Ryan Sabey. “Drivers hero takes on Sadiq Khan to be London Mayor โ€“ vowing to ditch hated ULEZ and keep fuel duty taxes down,” The Sun, May 9, 2023. Archived May 15, 2023. Archive URL: https://archive.ph/ZVWsV His platform included promises to scrap London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) scheme and remove Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) in the city.

The group has frequently cast doubt on the health impacts of air pollution and argues that diesel vehicles have been unfairly demonised. It strongly opposes charging Clean Air Zones (CAZ) and claims there are more effective solutions such as fuel additives and bioethanol, which campaigners have rejected as inadequate.

Fair Fuel says it has โ€œsaved drivers over ยฃ100bn in planned tax hikes in duty and VAT through constructive and objective campaigningโ€ since 2010. It opposes what it calls the โ€œperennial demonisation of van drivers, hauliers and motoristsโ€, according to its website.

Motoring journalist and former Top Gear presenter Quentin Willson co-led Fair Fuel UK with Cox until September 2021, when he cut ties with the group over its “lack of environmental sensibilities” and accused it spreading โ€œold urban mythsโ€ about electric vehicles.

The group’s high profile allies in parliament include former Conservative Home Secretary Priti Patel and Conservative MP Craig Mackinlay, who chairs the Net Zero Scrutiny Group. Another vocal supporter in parliament has been former Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party and Harlow MP Robert Halfon, who co-organised a petition against fuel duty rises with the group when it first launched in 2011.

In the 2019 general election, the group encouraged its supporters to vote for the Conservative Party, warning that a victory for Jeremy Corbynโ€™s Labour Party would bring in a โ€œpathologically anti-motorist political eraโ€.

APPG on Fair Fuel for Motorists and Hauliers

As of June 2023, Fair Fuel administers the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Fair Fuel for UK Motorists and UK Hauliers, which aimed to โ€œrepresent major issues that impact on UK drivers, from motorists to hauliersโ€. It lists examples including โ€œfuel taxation, congestion charges, ULEZ/CAZs, parking costs, roads investment, fairer treatment for carbon based fuelled vehicle owners, solutions to lower emissions, cleaner fuel incentives, alternative technology options and transparent pricing at the fuel pumpsโ€. Howard Cox is listed as the APPG’s public enquiry point.

The APPG is chaired by Conservative MP Craig Mackinlay, who also chairs the Net Zero Scrutiny Group in parliament. The vice chairs as of June 2023 are listed as Martin Vickers (Conservative), Graham Stringer (Labour), and Sammy Wilson (Democratic Unionist Party), and officers are listed as former Home Secretary Priti Patel (Conservative), Sir Greg Knight (Conservative), Julian Knight (Independent), Karl McCartney (Conservative), and Jonathan Gullis (Conservative).2Register of All-Party Parliamentary Groups, June 28 2023.

It called for the creation of a consumer watchdog to monitor fuel prices at petrol stations, according to Fair Fuelโ€™s website, which still promotes the campaign.

Funding

Fair Fuel is funded through donations from supporters, as well as from its โ€œfounding backersโ€ the Freight Transport Association (now Logistics UK) and the Road Haulage Association (RHA).

It also fundraises by selling vehicle stickers and has taken sponsorship from Ultimum5, a company that sells a fuel catalyst that it argues could be an โ€œemissions solutionโ€ for internal combustion engines.

The group has previously received funding from the RAC, haulage industry body the Association of Pallet Networks, and Liquid Gas UK, a trade association for liquified petroleum gas and biopropane renewable gas companies.

The RAC told DeSmog it terminated its relationship with Fair Fuel โ€œaround four years agoโ€ after it found its โ€œviews were not always alignedโ€.

Air Pollution Lobbying

Fair Fuel has frequently expressed doubt about the impacts of both air pollution and climate change.

It says on its website that โ€œemotive and dubious air quality claimsโ€ are causing vehicles to lose resale value and describes emissions charging zones as being โ€œbased on flawed health dataโ€, listing air quality policy as one of its three main campaigning areas.

A page on its website titled “Air Pollution Lies” claims that “the effect of air pollution is literally un-measurable as a health factor. As such, while reducing pollution is desirable for many reasons, the unmitigated attack on road users is not validly based on any health data.”3“the effect of air pollution is literally un-measurable as a health factor. As such, while reducing pollution is desirable for many reasons, the unmitigated attack on road users is not validly based on any health data.” Air Pollution Lies page on FairFuelUK.com. Archive URL: https://web.archive.org/web/20230803172105/http://www.fairfueluk.com/Air-Polution-Lies.html

Fair Fuelโ€™s Quentin Willson has claimed air pollution is responsible for shortening life expectancy by only half a day per year in Europe, despite a recent study estimating the figure to be three years globally, and one and a half in the UK.

The group has also shared reports by the climate science-denying Global Warming Policy Foundation, while its founder Howard Cox has criticised the BBC for โ€œworshipping at the altar of Greta Thunbergโ€, stating that the public needs to โ€œhear both sides of the climate change argumentโ€.

Clean Air Zones

Fair Fuel opposes policies that involve charging high-polluting vehicles for entering certain parts of cities, including the expansion of Londonโ€™s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) and what it calls โ€œunnecessaryโ€ congestion zones.

It has also criticised clean air campaigners, calling the environmental law charity ClientEarth โ€œrichโ€ and โ€œcelebrity backedโ€, the activist group Extinction Rebellion โ€œfanaticalโ€, and the UKโ€™s Green Party โ€œuncompromisingโ€.

Fair Fuel strongly criticised plans by Boris Johnson’s government to increase walking and cycling in cities amid the coronavirus pandemic, claiming they would create โ€œno go zones for the internal combustion engineโ€.

In a 2017 interview with ITV News, Fair Fuel UK founder Howard Cox claimed CAZs would have no effect on pollution levels.

He said nine out of ten respondents to polls conducted by the group โ€œsaid theyโ€™ve got no choice but to continue driving. Theyโ€™ve got to take this on the chin. Whatโ€™s going to change? They will have to go to work and theyโ€™ll keep on doing that. So it wonโ€™t reduce emissions at all.โ€

Cox argued that diesel drivers were being โ€œunfairly demonisedโ€ and โ€œpotentially being asked to take the tax burden for emissions in our cities, which is unwarranted.โ€ He claimed โ€œonly 11% of NOx emissions come from diesel cars.โ€

Later in the news segment, Cox claimed that modern diesel vehicles were โ€œvery clean indeedโ€ and that the latest Euro 6 standards were โ€œvery clean compared to the Euro 4sโ€. Research has found the latest diesel models still produce significant levels of pollution when tested in real-world conditions.

Fair Fuel says it supports โ€œeffective ways to lower emissionsโ€ but โ€œnot through tax hikesโ€.

It has recommended โ€œalternative solutionsโ€ such as fuel additives, diesel particulate filters and bioethanol. These have been rejected as inadequate by clean transport campaigners and compared to โ€œalchemists trying to turn lead into goldโ€.

Low Traffic Neighbourhoods

Fair Fuel UK and its founder Howard Cox have made a number of statements opposing the roll-out of low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs), many of which were implemented by local authorities after the government introduced an Emergency Active Travel Fund during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

In March 2021, Cox tweeted in support of Consevative councillors in Greenwich calling for a halt to the roll-out of additional LTNs and other traffic measures across the borough, adding that โ€œit seems there is no national LTN consistent policyโ€.

In January 2021, Craig MacKinlay MP, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Fair Fuel for UK Motorists and Hauliers, told BBC Radio 4 that low traffic schemes had been implemented in โ€œridiculous placesโ€ and that he was โ€œnot convincedโ€ that the ยฃ250 million allocated to the schemes was โ€œmoney well spentโ€. MacKinlay also commented on a judgeโ€™s ruling against Transport for Londonโ€™s (TfL) Streetspace scheme, which introduced LTNs among other measures designed to promote active travel during the COVID-19 pandemic, saying: โ€œI think the judgement in London has highlighted very well some of the things that are going wrongโ€. 

In December 2020, Fair Fuel UK was accused by campaign group Cycling UK of including leading questions about cycling and low traffic neighbourhoods in its โ€œAnnual Road User Opinion Surveyโ€. Cycling UK said the Fair Fuel UK survey was designed around a number of โ€œleading questionsโ€ about the introduction of cycle lanes during the pandemic and whether respondents approved of low traffic neighbourhoods.

In November 2020, Fair Fuel UK, along with the Alliance of British Drivers, the Road Haulage Association, and the APPG for Fair Fuel for UK Motorists and Hauliers, wrote to Transport Secretary Grant Shapps calling on him to halt and roll back active transport measures – including LTNs – that had been introduced in response to the pandemic. 

The letter, which was co-signed by APPG Chair Craig Mackinlay, Vice Chair Robert Halfon, and twelve other Conservative MPs including Sir David Amess, Steve Baker, and Andrew Bridgen,  said: โ€œUKโ€™s 37m drivers, the millions of constituents across the country are feeling victimised by draconian charges and road restrictions initiated by local authorities and funded it seems, by the Department of Transport. The anger out there is palpableโ€. 

Fair Fuel UK and Cox have appeared a number of times in the UK media criticising low traffic neighbourhoods. 

In November 2020, Cox told Gloucestershire Live that the government was implementing โ€œanti-driverโ€ policies. He said that while drivers support cycling, they do not support โ€œvirtue signalling road blocks or new cycle lanes eating into existing roadsโ€, arguing that such measures increase congestion, emissions and โ€œeconomic damage to white vans and hauliers in particularโ€. That same month, in an interview with The Daily Express, Cox said that LTNs and businesses โ€œcannot work alongside each otherโ€.

Also in November 2020, Cox tweeted regarding the May 2021 London Mayoral race that Conservative candidate Shaun Bailey โ€œmust be elected to stop the [sic] @SadiqKhan’s insanityโ€. In the same tweet, Cox said that Transport Secretary Grant Shapps was going to announce โ€œyet more millions for more UK LTN/Cycle lanesโ€ and that the Conservatives were โ€œpromoting more congestion/emissions & economic ruinโ€.

In a September 2020 Daily Mail article about cycle lanes introduced in London as part of the governmentโ€™s Emergency Active Travel Fund, Cox said that most transport political advisers are โ€œyoung, fit, well-off, urban-based Lycra-wearing cyclistsโ€ and that โ€no pro-motoring groups are included in any discussionsโ€. He added: โ€œEvery single driver wants to breathe clean air too, but there is no need to hit them in the pocket, ban them or block their freedom to drive by narrowing the roads for the benefit of a minority of road users who do not pay any [vehicle] taxโ€.

Cox also signed and shared a petition against the Arlington Road LTN, introduced in September 2020 in the London borough of Camden, and has actively opposed LTNs on social media.

In July 2020, Cox was quoted in The Daily Express saying:  โ€œThis Government’s ignorance will decimate businesses and the economies of our major towns and cities and is a naive knee jerk response to those emotive driven, well financed, so called environmental groups based in the London bubbleโ€. 

Fuel Duty

Fair Fuelโ€™s campaign against fuel duty increases, through which it claims to have saved drivers ยฃ100bn, has been described by the Guardian as โ€œone of the most successful lobbying campaigns in modern political history, successfully diverting billions from the Treasury with barely a squeakโ€.

The campaign has been frequently covered by The Sun alongside the newspaperโ€™s own โ€œKeep it Downโ€ campaign, which has similar aims. In 2020, it claimed credit for pressuring the government into cancelling a planned fuel duty rise in the upcoming Budget.

Fair Fuel claims that UK drivers are the โ€œhighest taxed motorists in the worldโ€ and has commissioned reports from the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) into the impacts of fuel duty on the economy. A 2016 report claimed that a 3p cut in fuel duty would lead to a ยฃ1 billion boost to the economy and the creation of 8,000 jobs. CEBR describes itself as an independent economics consultancy, despite its founder and deputy chairman Douglas McWilliams congratulating FairFuel in March 2020 on keeping fuel duty frozen for the tenth consecutive year.

Key Arguments in Order of Prominence

  1. Car drivers are being unfairly targeted and only cause a small proportion of emissions
  2. Cutting fuel duty will create a boost for the economy and thousands of jobs
  3. The link between air pollution and health is exaggerated and being used to justify charging zones
  4. Diesel is being unfairly demonised
  5. The latest Euro 6 diesel vehicles are far cleaner than previous models
  6. Clean Air Zones will have no effect on pollution because people have to continue driving
  7. Alternative solutions such as fuel additives and bioethanol should be used instead of emissions charging
  8. The increase in the London congestion charge will destroy many small and medium sized businesses

Areas Active

Bath: Fair Fuel wrote a joint letter to the council opposing plans for a CAZ, together with the Road Haulage Association, the Alliance of British Drivers and the TaxPayersโ€™ Alliance. The letter argued a CAZ could cause a decline in tourism and increase costs for taxis, coach companies and hauliers, leading to job losses and businesses โ€œgoing bustโ€. It also stated that CAZs had been โ€œshown to be ineffective, economically damaging and regressiveโ€ and suggested a tram system could be a better solution to tackling air pollution.

Leeds: Fair Fuel tweeted in 2018 that a planned CAZ in Leeds could โ€œput Leeds hauliers out of businessโ€.

London: Quoted in The Sun, Fair Fuelโ€™s Howard Cox criticised Mayor of London Sadiq Khanโ€™s decision to increase the congestion charge following the easing of coronavirus lockdown rules in May 2020.

Cox described the move as a โ€œchronic anti-driver policyโ€ that would โ€œkill off many of Londonโ€™s struggling small and medium sized businesses, the haulage industry, van distributors and hardworking motoristsโ€.

Fair Fuelโ€™s Quentin Willson has previously argued that private car drivers are being unfairly targeted in London, describing them as a โ€œrelatively narrow band of polluters at 11 percent of NOx [nitrogen oxides]โ€. Official figures show more than three quarters of roadside NOx concentrations, where most people come into contact with poor air quality, are caused by road transport.

Fair Fuelโ€™s Howard Cox has also been a vocal critic of low traffic neighbourhoods, calling them โ€œanti-driverโ€. Cox has been supportive of efforts to roll back or prevent LTNs in Camden and Greenwich, and signalled that LTNs were a key issue in the London Mayoral race.

APPG for Fair Fuel for UK Motorists and Hauliers Chair Craig MacKinlay has criticised the widespread rollout of LTNs during the COVID-19 pandemic and said that a judgment in London regarding the Mayorโ€™s Streetspace scheme, which introduced active travel measures including LTNs in response to the pandemic, โ€œhighlighted very well some of the things that are going wrongโ€ with low traffic neighbourhoods.

Key Actions

January 16, 2023

In response to a consultation about the extension of the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) scheme in London, almost 5,000 responses were thrown out after it was discovered they were โ€œso-called โ€˜copy and pasteโ€™ email responses opposed to the ULEZ extension – organised by the pro-motorist Fair Fuel campaign groupโ€. 

The BBC reported that when the copy-pasted responses from Fair Fuel UK supporters and a survey by YouGov were factored into the tally, the percentage of respondents opposed to the ULEZ extension reduced from 67 percent to 59 percent.4Tim Donovan. โ€œLondon ULEZ: Mayor’s officials accused of manipulating plans,โ€ BBC News, January 17, 2023. Archived January 24, 2023. Archive URL: https://archive.ph/7y2pd

Speaking to the Telegraph about the exclusion of Fair Fuel responses to the consultation, Howard Cox, head of Fair Fuel UK, claimed that โ€œexcluding his groupโ€™s votes โ€˜is not only contemptible, but also possibly unlawfulโ€™โ€, and that London mayor Sadiq Khan โ€œmust be subject to an immediate independent public enquiry as to his immoral behaviour in the way he has implemented the Ulez expansion.โ€5Oliver Gill. โ€œSadiq Khan accused of manipulating Ulez poll after excluding thousands of votes,โ€ the Telegraph, January 16, 2023. Archived January 23, 2023. Archive URL: https://archive.ph/9vq0d 

Cox continued: โ€œHe deceitfully and consciously excluded 5,000 supporters of FairFuelUK, and their legitimate responses to the Ulez consultation because they objected.โ€  

Cox also appeared on TalkTV to speak to host Julia Hartley-Brewer about the consultation.6โ€œLondon mayor Sadiq Khan is accused of manipulating ULEZ information after a consultation showed most respondents opposed the scheme. FairFuelUK founder Howard Cox calls on Keir Starmer “to suspend him from the Labour party” for “contemptible” behaviour.,โ€ tweet from user @TalkTV, January 17, 2023. Archived February 3, 2023. Archive URL: https://archive.ph/8IpKr 7โ€œToday I have written to @Keir_Starmer politely requesting he suspend @SadiqKhan from the @UKLabour Party. A proud party should not have a member flouting democracy and unlawfully manipulating a public consultation process to suit his personal political agenda @Councillorsuzie,โ€ tweet from user @HowardCCox, January 17, 2023. Retrieved from twitter.com. Archived February 3, 2023. Archive URL: https://archive.ph/I45k5

September 2022

After the closure of a public consultation on London’s new Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ), Lewisham East MP Janet Daby accused Fair Fuel UK of attempting to “undermine the integrity of this consultation and consign more Londoners to a lifetime of health issues”.

Fair Fuel UK said that more than 5,000 people responded to the public consultation with a template the organisation had pre-filled, asking London Mayor Sadiq Khan to cancel the ULEZ expansion.

In response to Daby’s comments, Fair Fuel UK founder Howard Cox said:

“Over 5,000 in a matter of hours showed their opposition to this cash-grabbing, anti-driver administration in London.

“This is not dirty tricks; this is democracy representing honesty not idealism.”

August 2021

Fair Fuel produced and paid for a report published by the APPG for Fair Fuel for UK Motorists and Hauliers which opposed the UK governmentโ€™s ban on new petrol and diesel cars from 2030. The report attacked cost of the ban, questioned the science behind it, and warned of public unrest if it the ban were to go ahead.  

The report featured an article and quotes from Fair Fuel UK founder Howard Cox, the APPGโ€™s public enquiry point, and quoted Steve Baker MP and APPG vice-chair Graham Stringer MP, both trustees of the climate science-denying Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), and Lord Peter Lilley, a former GWPF trustee.

November 2020

Fair Fuel, alongside the APPG for Fair Fuel for UK Motorists and Hauliers, the RHA, and the ABD, wrote a letter to Transport Secretary Grant Shapps calling for him to halt the roll-out of low traffic measures designed to promote active travel during the COVID-19 pandemic. The letter also called on Shapps to reverse the planned expansion of Londonโ€™s Congestion Charge Zone to the North and South Circular roads. 

March 5, 2020

Fair Fuel released a poll, covered by The Sun, showing that nearly half of drivers who voted Conservative at the 2019 general election would abandon the party at the next election if fuel duty was increased at the upcoming Budget.

June 28, 2017

Fair Fuelโ€™s Quentin Willson wrote an article for Londonโ€™s Evening Standard arguing that car drivers were being targeted despite only being a โ€œrelatively narrow band of polluters at 11% of NOxโ€. He also called for an โ€œAir Quality Working Party, free from vested interests, to scientifically determine where the greatest levels of particulate and nitrogen dioxide pollutants really come from and how to reduce them in the short to medium termโ€.

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