A cross-party committee of MPs has come out in favour of the chancellor’s plans to reform Vehicle Excise Duty (VED).

The chancellor faced intense criticism over his plans to retrospectively apply VED changes, which will push millions of used cars into higher road tax bands.

Fleets with higher-polluting vehicles will be forced to pay hundreds of pounds more to tax each vehicle from 2010, even if they are already on the road. It is this retrospective application that has provoked most criticism.

However, the Environmental Audit Committee said there is “nothing intrinsically unfair or unusual about setting new VED rates for cars that have already been purchased”.