Some very fair points. Your Reeves and you see tax revenue from fuel duty declining. What do you do?
You can’t whack up fuel duty as that impacts the poorest most. I’d imagine a large number of business use cars are electric so those who travel a lot would not be paying anything like the wear and tear they put on the roads (given how heavy these electric cars are). Annual car tax based on value at purchase is actually reasonable policy as it means electric cars pay more as they cost more - perhaps getting revenue from the hybrid/EV car owners that way? But then it discourages take up.
So you’re right it’s probably not great policy towards net zero. But I’m struggling to see what levers the government has.
Isn't it something that will happen over a reasonably long timeframe?
The average age of a scrapped car had reached 16 years in 2021 (latest figures I could find). That means there could still be millions of ICE cars on the road in 2051. You'd assume that the switch to electric will happen quicker, but it's still going to be gradual.
At some point you've also got health benefits of lowered pollution kicking in, and do we know what the economics of a net zero economy will be?
When you consider that Reeves managed to deal with £22bn worth of changes in her first statement, replacing a similar amount gradually over a couple of decades, when there will be plenty of benefits too, is probably not something she'd be having sleepless nights about right now.