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Mr. Cranston: Did the hon. Gentleman also ask the Financial Secretary about the benefits that his constituency will receive from the £50 million a year for bus services for the next three years?
6.30 pm
Mr. Swinney: I would not need the Financial Secretary's advice to get my calculator out to start working my way through that £50 million over three years for a number of large and diverse rural constituencies. I got into some trouble in a recent radio debate involving the hon. Member for Gordon (Mr. Bruce), when I suggested that there were no public transport services in my constituency. That was careless, because the next day I received a letter from the Stagecoach bus company telling me how many buses went through my constituency.
Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome): The hon. Gentleman's constituency has some similarities to mine in terms of its rurality. Many households need more than one car to go about normal life, because public transport
does not exist for them. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one way of making the imposition fairer on rural areas would be a drastic reduction in vehicle excise duty, with that package being presented to the rural motorist as environmental, but fair?
Mr. Swinney: Such a solution would take account of the differences between areas. Petrol prices in London are substantially lower than in parts of my constituency, such as Blairgowrie, Pitlochry and Forfar.
The essential nature of cars in rural communities was outlined by the Scottish Office in 1987, which said:
Earlier, the hon. Member for Shipley (Mr. Leslie) intervened on the right hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) and referred to a quotation from 1995. One of the points that I would use to shore up the argument that the right hon. Gentleman made is that, when petrol increases are introduced, the effect on small shops and the price of commodities--which is already higher in rural areas than in urban areas--is severe. That must be appreciated when decisions of this nature are made.
I have looked at the information on travel-to-work patterns in rural areas of Scotland provided by Highlands and Islands Enterprise. In the UK, about 9.85 per cent. of people travel to work by bus; in the highlands and islands, the proportion is 6.6 per cent.--showing a further differential in the availability of public transport and the essential nature of the car.
The Government have embarked on a route that--as has been drawn to their attention in the Budget debates, at Second Reading and again today--is damaging the rural economy at a time when it is at one of the most fragile stages of its development. I urge the Government to think again and to give greater consolation than the £50 million over three years. [Hon. Members: " fifty million a year."] I stand corrected. If that amount is broken down into individual constituencies--and the type of work required to build effective public transport services in fragile rural areas is considered--it will not take us very far on the bus.
Mr. Malcolm Bruce (Gordon):
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the city of Aberdeen is discussing a possible cross-city commuter railway service, using the existing railway line? It is estimated that that would cost £30 million to £50 million. One project in one city could use the entire amount--and that is a project to bring rural people to work.
Mr. Swinney:
The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point, which touches on the impact on cities such as
I conclude with some information on comparative petrol prices, which was kindly provided--I could not quite believe the source--by BBC Ceefax in April 1998. This country has the fourth largest average price for unleaded petrol in the EU, and many other countries operate with lower petrol prices. The Government, by pursuing the measures in the clause, are entrenching a problem which is felt by many people--particularly, and most severely, people in rural areas.
Mr. Ruffley:
It would be in the interests of hon. Members to remember that this is yet another tax increase, a tax increase that the Prime Minister said before the last election he would not be making. House of Commons figures--which Opposition Members have not denied--show that an average household will be more than £1,000 a year worse off as a result of mortgage rate and tax increases.
No one in the Chamber, Mr. Haselhurst, has even attempted to deny the independence and judgment of those figures. [Hon. Members: "Sir Alan."] You have always been a knight in my eyes, Sir Alan. A large component of that burden on average families comes through increases in duty, including petrol duty.
The increase is in three parts. The escalator is going up from 5 to 6 per cent. Then there are the two timing changes that the Government have introduced in respect of the previous financial year: the timing was moved from November to July and there is the more long-term change of moving the point of operation of the tax increase from November to March. Those constitute three separate increases.
That is not more or less what the previous Government did. It is defying the laws of arithmetic to suggest that the increases in the Bill are more or less what the previous Conservative Chancellor was engaged in. It is complete nonsense. If Labour Members bother to read the Red Book, they will discover why. It shows that the estimate for the amount of revenue to be raised between 1997-98 and 2002 is over and above the estimate under the Tory 5 per cent. escalator: it is £9 billion more than under the Conservative escalator. A colossal amount of revenue is being raised by the increases that the Bill would put into effect. For that reason, we suggest that the increase be pegged to 5 per cent.
With that extra £9 billion over those financial years, a burden will be placed on the countryside. There is no other way in which to interpret £9 billion extra in revenue. Liberal Democrat Members have drawn attention to the experience of their constituencies. [Hon. Members: "Nationalist Members."] I am sure that the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) will make that point; he has already made it in an intervention.
The increases fall on families for whom a car is a necessity, not a luxury. Many Opposition Members who do represent rural constituencies--not perhaps as ruralas Dudley--have a considerable number of rural
constituents. They represent the counties of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Gloucestershire, and actually know and understand--
Mr. David Hanson (Delyn):
Scotland and Wales.
Mr. Ruffley:
I refer to the hon. Members who are here in their places and not to those who are not.
Mr. Hanson:
There are no Conservative Members in Scotland.
Mr. Ruffley:
Labour Members representing Scotland and Wales are not in their places at the moment; the hon. Gentleman should listen to what I say.
The fact remains that many lower-income families have smaller, perhaps quite old cars and are not very wealthy by any means, but they need a car to travel large distances. For example, outlying villages in my constituency--those in the Norfolk-Suffolk borders such Hinderclay and Redgrave--are miles away from any nodal transport. That has always been the case. In that part of high Suffolk, for 50 years public transport has not been as good as perhaps it should have been. I do not imagine that it will be any different under this Government, but that is a hard fact of life. The inhabitants there know that they need cars, sometimes more than one car. It is beyond belief that a Government who believe in governing supposedly for the many and not the few can ignore large swathes of the rural populations in Scotland and Wales.
Mr. Clifton-Brown:
Will my hon. Friend consider the fact that, if the Government really want to represent rural areas, they should in some way balance the amount of money that they give to rural community bus services with the amount of duty that they raise on petrol?
Mr. Ruffley:
My hon. Friend makes an interesting point.
Mr. Bercow:
My hon. Friend's charm and courtesy in giving way are well established throughout the House. Does he agree that, if Labour Members representing rural constituencies are to prove that they are independent spirits and not craven lickspittles of the party leadership, they should be prepared to get up and denounce this vicious attack on country dwellers?
"a car in a remote area may be both highly unreliable and barely affordable but nevertheless essential to survival and any households without a car in remote areas must be at a severe disadvantage."
Statistical evidence shows that, on average, 57 per cent. of households in Scotland have one car. In the highlands, the figure is 68.5 per cent.; in Grampian it is 68.3 per cent.; and in the northern isles it is 70 per cent. By my calculations, when above-inflation increases are taken into account, the increase proposed in the Bill means that an average rural car user will have paid about £60 extra a year since 1993. That is about £400 over that period for rural car users--an enormous burden for people who survive on fairly modest incomes, particularly in the current financial climate.
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