George Osborne says that high petrol prices are a scandal. What he doesn't tell you is that today his own fuel policy would be putting prices up at the pump up. This is the real scandal about George Osborne's hypocrisy.

David Cameron can do the slick PR, but can he answer the tough questions –like why he thinks now is the right time to put an extra 5p tax on unleaded petrol.

A promise on fuel tax which David Cameron made to win headlines in July would now add millions of pounds to British families’ tax bills because of changing oil prices. For all his smooth patter, the truth is Mondeo drivers would now be paying £3.50 a tank more because of David Cameron’s schoolboy error.

He was happy to highlight this promise when it was launched but today he is keeping very quiet about its real impact on family budgets.  Just like with his other vague pledges to increase "green taxes", David Cameron doesn’t want to come clean with people about his plans.

While Labour is freezing fuel duty for a whole year, the Tory plan of raising this tax on businesses and families right now would hit our economy hard.  Not only that, but trying to reduce recent falls in petrol prices would undermine our work to combat inflation.

When times are tough and people are worried about their cost of living, this just shows the risk of putting a headline-seeking novice in charge.

The example above is based on the Tories’ own costings of filling up a Ford Mondeo with a 70 litre fuel tank.  The cost of 70 litres of unleaded petrol is now, on average, £68.60 according to the Tories' own sources.  Under the Conservatives, it would be an extra £3.50, or £72.10 in total.

Steve Ladyman, a former Transport Minister said:

"If David Cameron had listened to me he wouldn’t have made this mistake. I proposed a fuel duty moderator that would have reduced duty when the price went up so that there would have been a damping effect on price rises. When the oil price came down then duty would simply return to normal. He tried to be too clever and didn’t think his proposal through – not for the first time and I suspect not for the last."