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Fuel Duty (Rural Areas)

I understand that there is a need for more responsible behaviour by the oil companies, particularly the wholesalers and distributors. I am not suggesting that the sort of difference that could be made by a duty reduction would be the silver bullet, but it could be part of a package that would make a significant difference. Moreover, it would be a useful way for the Government to send the message that it is time for the oil companies to smarten up their thinking. When one looks around the European Union, one realises that such behaviour is pretty well accepted there. Let me briefly turn to how the extra costs of diesel and petrol and fuel duty have an increased impact on agriculture. The Minister will be aware that, since October 2007, the duty increases of 2p a litre have been applied across the board—to road fuels, rebated fuels or red diesel, biofuels and other domestic fuels—and that has affected the agricultural sector that relies on red diesel, because 2p as a proportion of the red diesel duty is significantly larger than it is on non-rebated fuels. Therefore, over the past six years, farmers have faced a red diesel price increase of more that 180 per cent., which has been driven not by increased oil prices but by the duty element. Such an increase is disproportionate, and for a community such as mine in Orkney and Shetland, which relies heavily on agriculture as the core of its local economy, the impact is particularly severe. If we add the peripherality of the area and the small size of the community market to the extra burden of fuel duty increases that have been imposed in a very crude way, we can see that the most fragile of economic communities has been put at the most substantial disadvantage. The Government's argument for increasing duty on red diesel was to combat oil fraud. I do not know how such a measure will combat oil fraud. I would have thought that raising duty increases the incentive for people to take a chance of putting red diesel in their tractor or private car. None the less, combating fraud seems to be the basis of the Government's logic, but it is not as robust as we might expect from the Treasury.