Finance Bill

We will have to agree to disagree on that. It is very hard to increase production capacity dramatically in the short term, yet there have been increases. It might help the hon. Gentleman if I say that my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), who is a doughty campaigner on these matters, asked the Department for Transport a question and received a written answer on 25 June, a week ago. He asked about increases in petrol and diesel prices in all the EU countries. He was told the prices in January 2005 and April 2008, which was extremely helpful and interesting. They are a few months out of date, and of course prices have since risen further, but the trend between the beginning of 2005 and a third of the way into this year is interesting and informative. In that time, petrol prices rose by an average of 36 per cent. in the UK. That is a sharp increase, and markedly more than the increase in wages in that time. However, it is fair to say that in the comparable large economies of western Europe, the rises were even greater, although I acknowledge that they started from a lower base. In France, the rise was 51 per cent., and in both Germany and Italy it was 44 per cent. By April 2008, the UK no longer had the highest petrol prices in Europe. The average price of a litre of unleaded petrol was higher in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden. That is not true of diesel, for which we still have the highest price per litre in the EU, but other countries began to catch up with us in that period. The increase in the price of a litre of diesel in the UK was 39 per cent. I acknowledge that that is way in excess of the rise in income and means that people driving the same mileage are having a larger percentage of their overall household budget taken up by fuel costs than in January 2005. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to consider what has happened in other large western European economies and put on record the fact that prices went up by 60 per cent. in France, 56 per cent. in Germany and 52 per cent. in Italy.