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Finance (No. 2) Bill

I shall shortly consider cost and I hope to be able to provide some detail to hon. Members who have asked questions. I say that now so that they do not try to intervene before I reach that point in my remarks. First, I shall comment briefly on new clause 6, about which the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Stewart Hosie) spoke. When I first read it, I had some sympathy with it but I soon decided that it was superficial sympathy. There are two fundamental problems with new clause 6 and the answer that he tried to provide. First, the major disadvantage that my constituents and those of some of my hon. Friends suffer is the huge differential in price for diesel and petrol, which can range, depending on the cycle, from 6p or 7p at its most benign through an average of approximately 9p in the five years that I have been tacking the price to close to 14p in May 2003, which was the worst example. The problem is, as the hon. Member for Dundee, East admitted when I intervened on him in Committee, that his proposed system locks in the inequality. The price nationally would be held but the inequality would remain.