FUEL prices will rise despite Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown's fuel duty reductions planned in the March 2001 Budget, Arval PHH Vehicle Solutions said this week.

Brown said the fuel duty cuts were part of a £2 billion-plus 'green' giveaway, but Keith Greenhead, Arval PHH's director of fuel, this week claimed his statement was 'a masterpiece of illusion, all smoke and mirrors to distract fleets from an unsavoury truth'.

'The truth is that fuel duties are still too high and are likely to remain so,' said Greenhead. 'The new duty cuts on ultra low sulphur will almost certainly be absorbed by the increases that are inevitable in 2001. The very best we can hope to see is prices remaining the same, and even that is unlikely. Fleet managers and company car drivers should be bracing themselves for prices going up still further.'

Arval PHH's latest monthly national fuel price report reveals: unleaded petrol - lowest price, Southend 79.03p a litre/359.26p a gallon; highest price, Bangor, 81.58p/370.85p. Diesel - lowest price, Southend 81.2p/369.12p; highest price, Selkirk, 83.91p/381.46p.