The Approved Mileage Allowance Payment — AMAP — has finally been increased to 55p per mile for cars and vans. That sounds like a small story. It isn't. It is the first time the rate has moved in fifteen years.

From 2011 until this month, anyone using their own car for work — community nurses, self-employed engineers, district councillors, sales reps, social workers, plumbers, vets — was reimbursed at a rate set when diesel was around £1.30 a litre and a Ford Focus cost £14,000. Diesel is now north of £1.70. A new Focus is over £28,000. The rate stayed at 45p the whole time.

This Wasn't an Oversight. It Was Policy.

The Treasury did not "forget" the AMAP rate. It quietly profited from leaving it frozen. Every year that fuel, insurance and vehicle prices rose, the gap between the real cost of driving and the tax-free reimbursement widened. The result: drivers were effectively taxed on income that was, in reality, reimbursement for their own out-of-pocket costs.

That is fiscal drag in its purest, sneakiest form — the same tactic Labour now applies to income tax thresholds. Freeze a number, let inflation do the dirty work, count the cash.

Who Was Hit Hardest

The biggest losers were exactly the people Westminster pretends to champion. Rural community nurses driving 200 miles a day between visits. Self-employed tradespeople running from job to job. Charity volunteers. Carers visiting elderly clients in remote villages. All of them subsidising the Treasury out of their own pockets, year after year.

And remember: rural Britain pays the highest petrol prices in the country, has the worst public-transport alternatives, and the fewest electric-charging options. The 45p AMAP rate hit hardest precisely where people had the least choice but to drive.

One Cheer, Not Three

So yes — 55p is better than 45p. But let's not pretend the maths add up. If 45p was the right rate in 2011, the inflation-adjusted equivalent today is well over 60p. The Treasury has rounded up a fraction of what it owes and is asking us to applaud.

Worse, the rate above 10,000 miles for cars and vans remains derisory. Anyone whose job requires real mileage — delivery drivers, mobile carers, visiting clergy — still finds the second-tier rate falls catastrophically short of real costs.

What Reform UK Would Do

Reform UK would index the AMAP rate to the actual movement in fuel and vehicle running costs, reviewed annually — so the Treasury can never again pocket a stealth tax on people simply doing their job. If the cost of driving goes up, the reimbursement goes up. Automatically. By law.

We would also scrap the artificial 10,000-mile cliff for high-mileage workers and lift the rate for motorcycles and bicycles. People who drive for work are not a Treasury revenue stream. They are the engine of community life — quite literally.

Fifteen years too late, at the wrong rate. Better than nothing, but a long way from honest.