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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Business
Nils Pratley

Ignore the howls around pay-per-mile, chancellor. We can’t afford not to tax electric cars

An electric car being charged
Fuel duty revenues are expected to halve by the 2030s, and be close to zero by 2050 as electric vehicles become the norm. Photograph: John Walton/PA

If you want a document to give you sleepless nights, the Office for Budget Responsibility’s biennial Fiscal Risks and Sustainability report is a go-to publication. This is the one that looks to the horizon and covers everything from demographic trends to state pension promises to the climate crisis.

The headline finding in this July’s version was a true jaw-dropper. The UK’s public finances are on an unsustainable long-term trajectory because government debt would rise to a remarkable 270% of GDP by the early 2070s – up from almost 100% today – if current policies were left unchanged.

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