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Finance (No. 2) Bill

My hon. Friend makes that point extremely well. A bus with one person in it is far more polluting that a car with one person in it. He is absolutely right. The objective that the Government have set out to achieve with the increase in vehicle excise duty is extremely laudable. It should be the case that more-polluting vehicles are punished and, broadly, we want to see a reduction in polluting vehicles and in emissions. However, much of the debate—including the discussions that we have heard today—has been characterised by references to what people are wont to call Chelsea tractors. I am not persuaded that that is the appropriate way for the debate to proceed. We are unable to go into any detail today, but I am not persuaded, as a point of principle, that taxation of ownership—in effect, that is what vehicle excise duty does—is the most appropriate way to tackle pollution and congestion. I would look to a form of national road user charging as the appropriate method to do that. In addition, I very much doubt whether any great increase in vehicle excise duty will have much impact on the owner of a Chelsea tractor. Such people tend to live in million-pound homes and have six-figure incomes, so I do not think that they will notice it very much. However, my constituents on whom the increase is to be imposed will see it as a real burden. As I have already said, such people typically have low or modest incomes. I have raised this matter before in Westminster Hall. The price of petrol and diesel in Wick, Thurso, Durness or any of the other remote areas in my constituency tends to be between 10p and 15p more than even the dizzy metropolitan heights of the cost in Inverness. Typically, the premium averages out at about 12p a litre. One of my constituents who owns a car with an average consumption of sufficient substance to tow the sheep to market will pay something like £200 a year more for their fuel than a person with exactly the same vehicle who operates in an area with a more competitive market for fuel, such as Inverness, Edinburgh, or even London.