Fuel Duty

David Simpson Excerpts

Monday 12th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon]

I am hugely grateful to my hon. Friend and, I have to say, to many colleagues in this House, some of whom are on the Opposition Benches. My hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) has done a huge amount of work behind the scenes, as have many other colleagues. We will have to wait and see what the Government say in the autumn statement, but I am happy to support them because I believe that they are in serious listening mode.

I have three concerns about the Labour motion. First, it is a non-binding motion; it is just gesture politics. My constituents care about the price of petrol, not the politics. Secondly, the only way that we can stop the petrol tax is through the autumn statement on 5 December. That is how it has been done in the past few years. Yes, I am asking the Treasury for action on fuel, but what my constituents want is action on the policy—the substance. My constituents will not be looking at what happens today; they will be looking when the Chancellor makes his speech on 5 December. That is when we hope the Chancellor will listen to British motorists.

Thirdly, we need a long-term settlement for cheaper petrol. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham is exactly right. The motion proposes a three-month oil rush, which would lead to motorists being hammered with a 7p tax rise in April 2013. The only way to get the long-term settlement is to work constructively with the Government and look at reform and how we can permanently lower fuel duty.

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Robert Halfon]

I may if I have time, but I will continue for the moment.

I believe that the Government are in strong listening mode, and I would not go into their Lobby tonight if I did not believe that to be the case. If we look at the Treasury amendment carefully, we see that it does not rule out stopping the planned rise in January. That is a significant move from a few months ago, when the Government said that the rise would go ahead. As I said, the Treasury team have done more to cut fuel prices than Labour did in a decade. We do not have to work at Bletchley Park to read the signals the Treasury is sending about helping with the cost of living—it is written in black and white.

I will continue to ask the Government to lower fuel duty, but I want to end where I started: this is a matter of social justice. I have stuck my head above the parapet and tabled several motions urging the Government to cut fuel duty. Inevitably, the focus in the media today has been on the economics, but this is about social justice. The average person in Harlow spends £1,700 a year filling up the family car—one tenth of their income. In essence, those families are facing fuel poverty. According to data published last year, three quarters of bankruptcies in the transport sector were the result of fuel costs. High fuel prices are adding to Britain’s dole queues. Furthermore, as the AA shows, families are choosing between buying food and filling up at the pumps.

I urge the Chancellor and the Treasury to listen to the thousands of Harlow residents who have written to me, and take action. Given everything the Treasury team have done in the past two years to cut fuel duty and given that the Chancellor’s amendment leaves the door open to cuts in fuel duty, we should at least wait for the autumn statement before casting judgment. That is why I will be proud to vote with the Government tonight, and I urge the House to vote for the amendment. I would not support the Government if I did not believe they had genuinely taken this on board. I hope they do not let us down.

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

We have heard many high-quality speeches tonight, including a powerful argument from my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Cathy Jamieson) and from the hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), who made a genuine plea—I think—to the Chancellor at the end of his speech, urging him to listen carefully.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about the social issues around the fuel price increase, but it is not just the fuel increase that is causing problems. The cost of living has risen across the country, and these higher costs are taking particular hold in the south-west and my constituency. Average wages are rising nowhere close to inflation, and hard-working families are finding it harder to make ends meet—and this at a time when the south-west has been dealt another blow from this out-of-touch Government, who have allowed 20 NHS trusts to create a pay cartel in order to slash wages for NHS workers in Plymouth and across the region.

Wages in the south-west are already among the lowest in the country, with more than one in five employees—430,000 working people—earning less than the living wage. With prices for almost all commodities rising, in a recent survey more than 40% of workers in the region said that their finances were worse off now than just a month ago—and fuel has clearly been a major part of both the increase in the cost of living and their perception of how hard things are getting.

Families in the south-west have experienced a double burden in terms of wages and the cost of utilities. Water charges in the south-west are among the highest in the country, with customers paying £150 more than the national average on their yearly water bills, while energy bills and fuel prices are increasingly unaffordable across whole swathes of the country, as we have heard. Figures given in a written answer on 7 November showed that 16.4% of families living in England in 2010 were in fuel poverty, but that number is expected to rise significantly.

The south-west has a large rural population. My constituency is not rural, but Plymouth depends on its hinterland. The wider economic benefits to the region and Plymouth come from people in our travel-to-work area, which is largely rural. In addition to the high water costs and low wages, people in the rural hinterland are paying about £10 a week more on petrol, diesel and motor oil than the average UK household. Rural populations are struggling with the cost of living in general—on average about £2,000 per year for a rural household over and above that of urban inner-city town dwellers such as my constituents. Of course, some of the people in the south-west will have chosen to live in a rural area. Some might well have a second home there and be quite well off, but there are huge swathes of the population across Cornwall and Devon who are agriculture workers or who are working in small food processing factories, and they are not on very high incomes at all.

Bus services in rural areas are infrequent, so elderly people often need to drive to Derriford hospital. That can be a long journey for a lot of people. They might need to be driven to the hospital. This all costs money. Young people can feel isolated in rural areas. Unless their parents can afford to drive them into town, they can be stuck and feel very much out of the loop. That is not good for social cohesion. We know that many families are having to curtail the number of journeys they make. Travelling to and from rural areas for work can also be extortionately expensive. I recently met a Plymouth man who travelled out to Liskeard to work. He had been unemployed, and he was delighted to have got a job in Liskeard, but the petrol was costing him between £60 and £70 a week and the situation was becoming unsustainable. He was really keen to work, and he was willing to travel long distances, but it was becoming impossible.

[David Simpson]

I am sure that the hon. Lady is aware that we have a land border in Northern Ireland. The hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) seemed to have inside knowledge that the price of fuel might not go up, but if it were to do so the amount of fuel smuggling from the Republic of Ireland to Northern Ireland would increase, and the Exchequer would lose a lot of revenue.

[Alison Seabeck]

The hon. Gentleman speaks from the experience of his own constituency, and the Chancellor will need to consider that very serious point when he sets out his Budget later this year.

There has also been a huge increase in housing costs. Average house prices are now 11.5 times higher than the median income, and private rents are set to rise by an estimated 65% over the next 10 years. That will create huge cost of living issues for people in my constituency. Road fuel prices are higher by about 2.1p a litre in rural areas and, on average, people who live in rural areas travel 53% further than those who live in urban areas. They are also less able to access public transport alternatives. In my area, there are poor rail services down to Plymouth and we have no airport. All those factors push people into cars, and rises in the price of fuel make it extremely difficult for our economy and the economies of individual families to thrive.

I shall finish my speech early because you pulled me up for intervening, Mr Deputy Speaker. I hope that the Chancellor will have listened to his colleagues on the Government Benches, and that he will also take seriously those on the Opposition Benches as we go through the Lobby tonight to make it absolutely clear that we need a temporary halt to the increase.