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Finance (No. 4) Bill

I hope that some of the hon. Gentleman's friends might support me in Copmanthorpe—you never know. He is right that many rural garages in my constituency and throughout north Yorkshire are struggling. Independent forecourts are struggling even more than the supermarket chains. Fuel prices have gone up, but that is due to the higher oil prices, which have escalated dramatically over the past two years. As I said, if we had not stopped the previous Government's tax increases on fuel in the past 18 months, fuel prices would have been 9p to 11p higher than they are. The impact on rural areas and hard-working families across the country would have been huge.