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Finance (No. 2) Bill

The hon. Gentleman plainly has not read the list of amendments in front of him grouped under the heading ““Hydrocarbon oil duty and vehicle excise duty””. He will see, if he reads it, that amendments Nos. 123, 129 and 125, which are all part of this group, refer to vehicle excise duty. I suggest that next time, he read the selection list before making an intervention. Since the earlier amendments were substantially the same as two of those in the group that we are now considering, I want to refer back to them for a moment. The first proposed to reduce the rate of VED for the most polluting vehicles registered before 23 March this year owned by households with a postcode in a remote rural area. The second proposed not to change the rate of VED for the most polluting vehicles registered after 23 March owned by households with a postcode in a remote rural area. The third proposed to raise the rate of VED for the most polluting vehicles registered after 23 March owned by households with a postcode in a remote rural area. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy) says from a sedentary position that the latter was not selected. I was not claiming that it was selected, although as she has raised the point, one might question the wisdom of tabling an amendment that cannot be debated—but I shall return to that in a moment. After the debate in the Committee of the whole House, which those of us who were there remember with affection, the Liberal Democrats chose not to press their amendments to the vote, which suggested to the rest of us a certain lack of confidence in them. I shall return to that point later. It is not perhaps a very good sign that three of the amendments in this group cover the same ground as was covered during the debate in the Committee of the whole House. Our view is straightforward: we acknowledge the seriousness of the transport problems faced by people who live in remote rural areas, to which I shall return later. Indeed, Conservative Members represent the bulk of rural areas—although, I concede, not the bulk of remote rural areas as the Liberal Democrats are defining them. However, we believe that the one-off cost of VED is not the main problem faced by people who live in remote rural areas, and that any fiscal solutions to those problems must be fair, simple to administer and proof against fraud, and above all they must not simply leave a black hole in the Government’s accounts. With the greatest respect to the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Danny Alexander), who spoke to the new clause, which I shall come to in a moment, it is very hard to see how it can be fair simultaneously to reduce the rate of VED for the most polluting vehicles registered before 23 March this year owned by households with a postcode in a remote rural area, as amendment No. 123 proposes, and not to change the rate of VED for the most polluting vehicles registered after 23 March owned by households with a postcode in a remote rural area, as amendment No. 129 proposes, while wishing all the while, apparently—I shall not dwell on this point, even though it is potentially a little embarrassing for the Liberal Democrats—to raise the rate of VED for exactly the same households in exactly the same circumstances, as amendment No. 124 proposes. As I say, I shall not dwell on the amendment that the Liberal Democrats tabled but which we cannot debate. I shall move on.