Finance Bill

I want to pay two compliments to the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Danny Alexander). First, he undoubtedly spoke from the heart on behalf of his constituents. Secondly, in putting the proposal together, his party has made some attempt to listen to some of the criticisms that were ventilated in relation to last year’s proposals, which he mentioned, and to which I will return in a moment. As was apparent, the new clause is the Liberals’ latest attempt to find a workable solution to some of the problems that undoubtedly afflict people living in remote rural areas and rural areas generally. As I said in Committee, it is incontestably true that people living in remote rural areas often do not have access to public transport in the way that people in less remote areas do, nor do their circumstances make walking, or even cycling, practical. The 2003 national travel survey for England—the hon. Gentleman did not make clear how many people in England and Wales would be covered by the proposal, but we will return to that in a moment—showed that half the residents in rural settlements of fewer than 3,000 people lived within a 30-minute walk of a bus stop. According to the expenditure and food survey for 2002-03, households in such areas spent £70.60 on transport, compared with households in rural areas, which spent £45.50 on transport. Of course, there is less congestion in some areas, which can lead to apparently counter-intuitive results—a bus in a remote area may be less environmentally friendly than a car if that bus carries only a few people. In short, people in such areas often need cars, and the hon. Gentleman’s remarks about fuel prices in those areas were entirely apposite.