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Finance (No. 2) Bill

New clause 4 is an enabling clause, which gives the Treasury power to specify lower rates of duty on fuel sold in remote rural areas. Accepting the new clause would allow discussions to begin; we could then decide exactly where lines should be drawn, and what the differentials should be. I urge the House to accept the new clause. It does not commit the Government to anything and it would not reduce the Treasury’s revenue, but it would allow a debate to start. The sad fact is that fuel is sold in remote rural areas at a much higher price than in urban areas. People living in areas where there is no public transport alternative must pay far more for their fuel than those living in areas where there is such an alternative. Let me give some examples from my constituency to show how large the differentials can be. The difference between the cost of fuel on the islands of Mull and Islay and in, say, Glasgow is usually between 15p and 20p per litre. In the case of smaller islands such as Coll and Colonsay, the difference is about 30p per litre. That demonstrates the massive extra amount that people living on the islands must pay for their fuel. The additional cost has a damaging effect on the economies of those islands: not only does it have an impact on people’s daily lives, but it discourages people from starting or continuing to run businesses. The remote communities in the highlands and islands have suffered years of population decline, which shows no sign of stopping. The high fuel prices are part of the problem: as I have said, they discourage people from opening and running businesses that create the jobs that will allow young people to remain in those remote communities. Encouraging people to stay in the remoter parts of Britain benefits the whole country. Every time the Government propose the building of tens of thousands of new houses in the south-east, Members of Parliament from that part of the country object. They should ask why market forces are pushing people towards it. The answer is that the cost of living in remote areas is becoming so great that the jobs are not there. Sustaining viable economic communities in remote parts of the country is beneficial to the country as a whole. There is an environmental justification for high fuel taxes: that they encourage people to use public transport alternatives. That environmental justification, however, does not exist in remote areas where there are no buses, and where it would be environmentally nonsensical for councils to subsidise bus services because buses would run with only one passenger on board. There is simply no environmental argument in favour of high fuel taxes in rural areas.