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Finance Bill

I simply do not know what provoked that intervention. I did not mention an election. In fact, far from being partisan, I acknowledged that there were particular concerns about petrol and diesel prices in rural communities, and that as large areas of Scotland are rural, those concerns must be felt keenly there. I could not have been less partisan; I was making an entirely conciliatory point. However, if the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Stewart Hosie) invites me to be partisan, I will be a little more partisan. Cutting 2p off pump prices costs the Government about £1 billion, so if the Scottish National party wishes to send the electorate in Scotland—or the motorists of Scotland; let us take elections out of it altogether—the message that the party wants lower prices at the pump, it needs to answer the question: how will it fund those cuts? To be fair, that is a question that all parties in the House have to answer. I read in the newspapers yesterday that, behind the scenes, the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform is lobbying the Government to defer the 2p increase in petrol duty that is planned for the autumn.