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Fuel Duty (Rural Areas)

It is indeed a long way from Orkney and Shetland to Westminster, but as it affords me the privilege of serving under your chairmanship, Sir Nicholas, it is worth every inch of the journey. I return this morning to a subject on which I have addressed the House on a number of occasions over the past nine years. It is a source of considerable and genuine regret that we have not made more progress on a public policy that brings with it one of the most significant burdens to life in island and rural communities. I shall confine my remarks this morning largely to the island communities, for reasons that I hope are so obvious that I shall not need to state them. It is plain from the geographical spread of the constituencies of Members here today that the problem affects communities in all remote and peripheral parts of the country, not only those that I represent. My ask for the Minister this morning, as on previous occasions, is that if she cannot consider a derogation of fuel duty—I recognise that a substantial element of the cost of petrol is attributable to fuel duty—there may be a possibility of getting a derogation from European Union legislation to allow the imposition in some areas of a lower rate of duty, thus recognising that that there are market-based reasons for the higher prices. The importance of the problem cannot be overstated. In communities such those that I represent, which are geographically substantial but with small populations that are spread very thinly, the use of the private car is not a luxury but an essential. It is also an environmental essential. If we had a fleet of buses running around the west side of Shetland to provide the required transport access to other parts of Shetland, they would effectively be running empty. Having smaller private cars on those roads makes environmental sense. Buses, with their emissions and their use of fuel, would be carrying air around the west side of Shetland or the remoter parts of Orkney. That makes no environmental sense. Although the mindset in many parts of the Government may be that the private car is bad for environmental reasons and should be pushed off our roads in favour of public transport, the private car makes good environmental sense in areas such as those that I represent.