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Fuel Duty (Rural Areas)

May I just finish this point, because I want to set it out fairly? An important distinction that could be made between housing costs and fuel costs is that tax makes up a large part of fuel costs—I do not know if the hon. Gentleman was going to make that point in his intervention. However, it is also fair to say that stamp duty land tax tends to exacerbate the cost for someone wanting to buy a house in a more expensive area. For example, in my county of Hertfordshire, the last time I looked, the stamp duty payable in respect of the average house price was £2,300. In some areas, however, the average house price is below the stamp duty threshold. Stamp duty therefore exacerbates the situation. There are limited things that we can do in the tax system to address this inequity, if one sees it in those terms—one could do something to help first-time buyers, for example—but there is more scope for doing something with fuel duty.