Finance Bill

My hon. Friend makes an important point about the impact of high fuel prices on island communities. Two pensioners wrote urging me to point out to the Chancellor that their car was their lifeline and that this proposal does a great deal to take into account the needs of pensioners in remote highland communities. Not only is the price of fuel important. There is a triple whammy. There are the higher fuel prices, the fact that people in such areas travel much longer distances than in other parts of the country, and the lack of public transport. In many cases, there is either no viable public transport alternative, or a very limited public transport alternative. That all contributes to the fact that in the highlands, fuel costs are a higher proportion of domestic costs than the average across the UK—18 per cent. of disposable income is spent on fuel in the highlands, compared with a UK average of 13 per cent.