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Finance Bill

No, I have given way enough. I made the point in an earlier intervention that we are dealing with rural businesses and economies. In my constituency, there are many hauliers. They transport goods in and out of the area. As I said earlier, there is one rail line that goes up the coast. Theoretically, we could get goods to Arbroath or Montrose by rail, but we must still use the roads to get them from there to all the other communities in the constituency. There is no rail line up Glen Esk, Glen Isla or any of the other glens of Angus. They were all ““Beeching-ed”” many years ago by previous Governments. Road transport is necessary to get goods in, and the price of everything that comes into my constituency is affected by the price of fuel. Crucially, the price of everything that goes out of my constituency is also affected by the price of fuel. Manufacturing and other industries in Angus need to transport their goods to market and transport is one of their biggest costs. That is also true of industries in Northern Ireland, Wales and many parts of England. Something needs to be done to deal with the cost to industry in rural areas or we will see a leakage of those industries from rural areas to the conurbations. One problem is that hauliers have entered into long-term contracts with major producers—many of them are food producers in my constituency—so that the goods can be hauled to market or, as is more appropriate in many cases, to the central distribution warehouses for the major supermarkets. The hauliers have to set a price for a considerable period ahead. When they do not know what the price of fuel will be next week, never mind next year, it is difficult to set a contract price for the long term. Some of them have managed to set a sliding scale in the contracts because of the good will of their customers, but the effect is slight because no one can give away too big a change in margins. The whole point behind the fuel duty regulator as proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, East (Stewart Hosie) is that it would provide certainty over a period. Businesses would be able to plan ahead and know what the fuel price will be for a set period. We would not face the sudden spikes that are so dangerous to the haulage industry and others in my constituency.