Fuel duty in remote areas

Brooks Newmark raises issues concerning the higher costs of living in remote areas.

Mr. Newmark: I was not expecting to speak in this debate, but I was once again inspired by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris). I put it on record that I have tremendous sympathy for people who live in rural areas. In fact, I live in a semi-rural constituency. Many of my constituents, and especially those in the more rural areas, are feeling the effects of high energy costs. However, I have a problem with how rural areas are defined, as opposed to urban areas. The hon. Gentleman asked why poor people in rural areas should benefit more than poor people in urban areas.

Mr. Alan Reid rose-

Mr. Newmark: If the hon. Gentleman will sit down, I shall make my point clear. I understand the problems faced by people in remote areas. I know that life there can be more expensive, but the same is true even in my semi-rural area. For example, people who live 15 miles away from the centre of Braintree have to pay higher fuel prices, for some strange reason. In those circumstances, how do we define remote? Various definitions have been offered in the debate so far. People in Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross are said to live in a remote area, and the hon. Member for Argyll and Brute-Bute, rather-said that people on the islands inhabit an even more remote area. However, people living in central London might regard Bromley and Chislehurst as remote.

Mr. Andrew Turner: Only the Labour ones.

Mr. Newmark: It is even more remote for the Liberal Democrats now. We will never be able to define what is remote and what is not. Who will play Solomon in respect of that very difficult question?

Sir Robert Smith: Why does the hon. Gentleman think that the UK is so feeble in its inability to understand the problems of remote rural areas, when Greece, Portugal and France understand them perfectly well?

Mr. Newmark: People define what they perceive as remote in their own way. The Liberal Democrats are not approaching the matter in the right way.

I turn now to the question of cost. Liberal Democrat Front-Bench Members told us that they had no idea of how much their proposal would cost. What a surprise-but then the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso) came to the rescue and got his calculator out. He said that the cost could be £3 million or £10 million or £20 million. Are there any higher bids? Once again, the Liberal Democrats have not thought out the costs of their proposals at all.

Julia Goldsworthy: Will the hon. Gentleman concede that new clause is purely an enabling provision and so has no cost implications? Given that that is so, why does he think that the Government should choose to reject it?

Mr. Newmark: Call me a simple soul, but new clause 4 does imply a cost. I shall not rehearse the arguments offered by hon. Members on the Liberal Democrat Front Bench, but I am sure that they will back me up when I say that their proposal does represent a cost to the Exchequer.

John Thurso: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Newmark: Is the hon. Gentleman going to get his calculator out again?

John Thurso: I have no idea how to work a calculator. I was quoting from a report. The figure of £3.5 million that I gave pertained to the highlands, and was a maximum. For the benefit of the House, I extrapolated what that might be as a maximum for the UK. If the hon. Gentleman reads Hansard, he will find that what he said about my remarks is wrong.

Mr. Newmark: I should be surprised to find that what I said is wrong. Unless the hon. Gentleman produces a definition of what is remote, I do not know how he can come up with a figure of £20 million in his analysis.

I turn now to new clause 6, which would require the Chancellor to forecast oil prices. I cannot pretend that the right hon. Gentleman has any greater forecasting powers than Mystic Meg, and there is no evidence that his skills in that respect have been especially good in the past. It is ludicrous to expect the Chancellor to provide a forecast of oil prices. We should all be multimillionaires by now, especially the right hon. Gentleman, if we could actually forecast the price of oil over the next 12 months.

If the Lib Dems want to show their true green credentials, they should be figuring out a way to tax carbon emissions. How can one do that? I do not want to digress from the new clauses, but focusing on carbon emissions and charges on them, perhaps through vehicle excise duty-although not the modest premium added by the Chancellor-and seriously charging Chelsea tractors that emit huge amounts of carbon would have been a far more sensible way forward.