In brief: Jersey’s Environment Minister, Senator Mary Le Hegarat, has publicly declared she will oppose any reduction in fuel duty, describing it as the financial backbone of the island’s net-zero programme. She has also acknowledged that Jersey will not meet its 2030 climate targets, repeating an admission that key targets for 2022, 2023 and 2024 were already missed.
No cuts on her watch
Speaking to the Environment, Housing and Infrastructure Scrutiny Panel on Monday, Senator Le Hegarat was refreshingly blunt. “I’ll publicly say that when people ask for a reduction in fuel, I say no,” she told scrutineers, “because that to me is the income that I’m getting in order that we can continue with the net-zero programme.”
The Climate Emergency Fund currently receives 9p per litre of petrol, along with a proportion of the vehicle emissions duty charged on new car purchases. Senator Le Hegarat said she hoped that income would remain stable at around £4 million a year. The message to anyone hoping for relief at the pump is clear: the green agenda takes priority.
This position puts the Minister in direct conflict with a significant strand of public and political opinion. Reducing fuel duty was a popular theme during the recent election, with multiple candidates backing the idea. Caritas Jersey CEO Patrick Lynch was among those outside the States who also called for a cut. Within days of the election, Deputy Lucy Stephenson lodged a proposition to reduce fuel duty by 10p per litre. That proposition was subsequently withdrawn following negotiations between Deputy Stephenson and the government, with Senator Le Hegarat making her position to the Treasury Minister plain: “I said absolutely no way.”
Targets missed, funding fragile
The Minister’s determination to protect the fund sits somewhat awkwardly alongside her own admission that the programme it finances has not been delivering results. Senator Le Hegarat repeated an acknowledgement from her department that important climate targets for 2022, 2023 and 2024 had not been met, and conceded that Jersey would not achieve “what we thought we were going to achieve by 2030.” This is not a new revelation: earlier this year, the island’s independent Climate Council declared that the 2030 targets were “unachievable.”
Deputy Alex Curtis, a Scrutiny Panel member, pressed on the financial outlook, highlighting that the Climate Emergency Fund’s income “was expected to decline” and raising “concerns about long-term sustainability of funding.” It is a reasonable concern. As electric vehicles become more common and fuel consumption falls, the very success of the net-zero agenda would, ironically, erode the duty revenues that pay for it.
Senator Le Hegarat acknowledged this tension directly. She said that “at some stage, there’s going to have to be an acknowledgement… there’s going to have to be decisions about how you would replace [fuel duty] with.” If fuel duty income were to collapse during her term, she added, there would have to be “a discussion” about alternative funding.
What this means for Jersey residents
For islanders already contending with the cost of living, the Minister’s position is a significant one. Fuel costs in Jersey are not trivial, and the prospect of relief at the pump, which was dangled during the election campaign, has now been firmly pushed back. The government negotiated away Deputy Stephenson’s 10p-per-litre proposition, and the Environment Minister has made clear she regards fuel duty as ringfenced for climate spending.
The broader question, which Scrutiny is right to probe, is whether a fund that is missing its targets and facing a structural decline in its income represents good value for Jersey taxpayers. Around £4 million a year is being collected and spent on a programme that its own independent advisers describe as falling short of its goals.
Source: Bailiwick Express
