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Fuel Duty (Rural Areas)

The hon. Gentleman says nothing with which I could disagree. Indeed, he leads me on rather nicely to the first point that I wish to bring to hon. Members' attention—the prices being paid at the pump by my constituents in Orkney and Shetland. I checked these figures yesterday. Lerwick is the largest town in Shetland, and the largest garages are able to provide the cheapest petrol. Pump prices there for unleaded petrol go from 124.5p per litre to 125.9p per litre. On other islands, including Unst, my constituents are paying 130.9p per litre. For reasons that I shall explain in a moment, the prices in Orkney are slightly lower. At most filling stations in Kirkwall, the pump price is about 120.9p, but in Westray, which has a fairly substantial island population in the context of Orkney, my constituents are paying 129.9p per litre. I want to say a word or two about the structural market reasons why such variations should be the case. We have no supermarkets selling petrol in Orkney and Shetland. We do not have big retailers with the buying muscle of garages in the urban conurbations, which can get cheap fuel. One retailer on the west side of Shetland told my office yesterday that he makes only 6p per litre. He said that he could buy the fuel more cheaply at a petrol station in Aberdeen—at the retail price, including duty and VAT—than he can buy it from the wholesaler or distributor.