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Finance (No. 2) Bill

It seems that there is a move to tackle two separate issues. The first is to create a vehicle excise duty regime that will offer a genuine disincentive to unnecessary use of high CO2 emitting vehicles, and the second is to protect car users in rural areas where there is no alternative to the car and unnecessarily high costs. The amendment draws attention to a number of flaws. First, the main penalty faced by drivers in remote and rural areas is the regular high cost of fuel, not the one-off cost of VED. The price of fuel went through the £1 a litre barrier in many parts of Scotland some time ago. The issue would be far better resolved by a sensible and sensitive fuel-tax regulator to lower the level of duty when world oil prices rise. It is a great pity that such a regulator was opposed by the Liberal Democrats and others last year. The issue of fuel cost is extremely important. The last available rural Scotland price survey showed that in all of rural Scotland the price of road fuel was 6.3 per cent. higher on average than in urban areas. In the rural highlands and islands area, the price was 9.7 per cent. higher. This is a genuine issue. The second flaw is that the amendment does not recognise the difference between genuine working vehicles and other high CO2 emitting vehicles that happen to be in rural areas, for which a disincentive for high use or unnecessary usage would be welcome. For vehicles that are not used for genuine working purposes where the owners are as close, perhaps, to a supermarket or a filling station as the owners of vehicles in some of the suburban parts of my constituency, a reduction in VED would be unnecessary. The third flaw is the definition—definition is incredibly important—of a sparsely populated rural area. The hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy) referred to the Countryside Agency’s definition. Would she prepared to accept amendments to the amendment? Obviously the agency has no locus in Scotland or in Wales. That has been accepted. However, there are a number of definitions. The definition used by the Scottish Executive contains a sixfold description of rural and urban areas. That covers 98 per cent. of Scotland’s land mass and 18.7 per cent. of the population. That definition would be wholly inappropriate. There is also the Randall definition, which is based on sparsity of population. A sparsely populated rural area is defined as one with less than one person per hectare. The definition is based on local authority areas that cover Aberdeenshire, Angus, Argyll and Bute, Dumfries and Galloway, east Ayrshire, the highlands and so on. That definition would cover 89 per cent. of Scotland’s land mass and take in 29 per cent. of the population. The use of such a definition would also be wholly wrong. I am on record in this Chamber—twice, and I stand by it—as saying that there is a world of difference between a Land Rover taking animal feed up a snowy field in late spring to early lambs, and a ““Chelsea tractor”” sitting outside a flat in Kensington. Of course something needs to be done to help genuine working vehicles.