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Fuel Duty (Rural Areas)

I can usually claim in debates to represent the constituency that is furthest away, but clearly my hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) has that honour today, and I congratulate him on securing the debate. I will first pick up on the question of opportunity raised by several hon. Members, particularly the right hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs. McGuire). The OFT has conducted several inquiries on the matter in my part of the world, but the problem is that it has concentrated on whether there are anti-competitive practices between garages in one or two local towns and found, quite properly, that there are not. The problem is that in large metropolitan centres, such as Edinburgh or Glasgow, a forecourt with eight to 12 pumps and a throughput of vehicles could have a cash profit per litre of as little as 1p or 0.5p, so there would be sufficient cash throughput to amortise across the fixed costs. A petrol station with two pumps in a remote village such as Durness, on the top west corner of Sutherland, however, will have one car stop every half hour and so will be forced to have a larger cash margin per litre to be able to survive. The right hon. Member for Stirling is right that there is something fishy going on further up the supply chain, and that is where the Competition Commission should be looking. What is the problem? The problem is that my constituents regularly face a premium ranging between 9p and 14p over the national average, and I have looked at that several times over the past nine years. The scheme I proposed would have rebated around 3p—it might have been 2 points or 3 points, but of that order. Therefore, the idea that people would drive across a boundary 30 or 40 miles away to pay less for their petrol, which in the early years of my proposal is what the Treasury said would happen, as my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr. Reid) said, is ludicrous. In fact, a rebate scheme would counter that by enabling people to fill up nearer home, and reduce the incentive to go off to the supermarket in Inverness to fill up. It would therefore have the opposite effect, with regard to carbon, by reducing the amount of petrol or other fuel used and allowing people to fill up more cheaply. The absolutely critical point is not just that there is a premium, but that there is no alternative, and there never will be on the north coast of Sutherland. There was a post bus, but it has been taken away. There is now no way one can get from the middle of the north coast to Thurso, which is an hour away, and back on the same day. It is simply not possible. Therefore, if one does not have a car, or some good friends to stay with overnight, one simply cannot go into Thurso to see a doctor or dentist, go to the shops or do all the things that are a requirement of ordinary life, and the key point is that there are no alternatives. I support the call my hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland has made for a pilot scheme, because I really believe that that can work. It would be an easy and simple way of showing that the scheme can work, or showing that it will not work, if the Treasury are convinced that it will not, and that will help the argument for other areas. I support the concept of a pilot scheme, but I will continue to argue that it should come across to the mainland in due course. I will not go into the details of the scheme I proposed, but if any Members have serious trouble sleeping, I can send them a copy of the lengthy document and allow them to study it. I have gone through it in detail in several Finance Bill debates over the years. Three years ago, the Financial Secretary at the time—the right hon. Member for Wentworth (John Healey), I think—infamously responded to the proposal by comparing what I was requesting with giving Londoners a rebate on duty on beer. That simply demonstrated a complete lack of understanding. By contrast, we made progress with the Minister for Pensions and the Ageing Society, the hon. Member for Wallasey (Angela Eagle), who was in the Treasury at the time and was extremely sympathetic. I met her, and she went through the detail and corresponded with me. I thought that we had nearly persuaded her but then she was promoted elsewhere, so we were back at the bottom again. The scheme is entirely workable and is permitted under EU law. It will not give cheaper fuel in remote areas but will simply give a little bit of an alleviation to a massive disadvantage. Frankly, my constituents cannot understand why a Government who were elected on a promise of looking after those in need simply ignore this obvious and unfair situation.