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Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [Lords]

I struggle with the humour, Mr Deputy Speaker. The facts cannot be hidden. The facts about immigration cannot be hidden because they can be rooted out. My point is that the facts should be there and they should be presented. The facts on the semi-retired, part-retired, would-be-retired, past-retired and those back in the labour market are not there, but they would help with some of our social policy making and, I repeat, are vital to our economic policy making. When it comes to the price of petrol and the level of tax on it, I imagine that some Greens and others—there are not many Green Members, of course—would see those statistics as important for social policy. As I have said, however, I am mainly interested in economic policy. I am interested in knowing about the impact in my area on small businesses as well as the larger businesses that rely on vehicles. I used to rely on vehicles when I had my own small family business, driving lorries across Europe. We know how much it costs to fill up, but as a new MP entering Parliament in 2001, I would have been interested in challenging Labour Chancellors over what they were going to do with the historic tax on fuel that had been imposed by their Conservative predecessors, particularly between 1979 when it was 6.6p and 1997 when it was about 45p—the biggest increase in petrol duty anywhere in the world. I appreciate that statistics can be embarrassing to Governments.