Finance Bill

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. The scheme would not apply to tourists. There is a good case for having a more generally available scheme to answer such points, but one of the major arguments against the proposal last year, which the hon. Gentleman supported, was the potential for leakage outside the target population for the measure. The reason for limiting the scope is to try to find a way to deal with the problem of leakage in an effort, I hope not a vain one, to encourage Treasury Ministers to look more favourably on trying to find a way to move this forward. As I was saying, fuel prices are a higher proportion of costs and average incomes are lower in the highlands—they are only 85 per cent. of the UK average—and that is important in the context of social justice. I am a member of the Scottish Affairs Committee and we recently visited Bonar Bridge in the highlands, and it was made clear that one of the major barriers to work for people on low incomes was the perception that in addition to all the other calculations that would have to be made in terms of being better off in work, there was the cost of travel to work. That also applies to the long distances that many people who live in remote areas have to travel to access public services.