Finance Bill

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question, but I do not want to be distracted, as I do not believe that the question is about the fairness or unfairness of trading; rather, it is about demand and oil producers' capacity to refine the product in the way that they need to if they are to bring it to market. The rise in the oil price is the first reason why the cost of motoring is a high-profile issue in the country at large at the moment. The second is environmental taxation, and I shall say more about that as it forms the basis of most of the new clauses and amendments under consideration. The third reason is the squeeze on household incomes. That is worth mentioning, as the sizeable rises in fuel costs in the UK and other EU countries that I have just set out have been accompanied by increases in food, utility bills and council tax. All those rises are happening at a time when the income of most households is being held down; in many cases, it is even not rising as fast as the official inflation rate, which itself is not in line with most people's experience. We are dealing with a live and important issue that will not go away. Unless the Government confront aspects of it today, I fear that they will find that their woes only accumulate. However, the Conservative record is also less than glorious. The hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening) accused the Government of a ““complete”” lack of transparency when it came to environmental taxation. The Conservative party likes to give the impression that it is environmentally friendly. To Friends of the Earth, it emphasises its new found environmental credentials, but its speeches to road hauliers are rather different. The leader of the Conservative party has put a windmill on his house, changed his party's logo to an image of a tree and bought some extremely expensive recycled trainers that used to be old tyres. That is the entirety of Conservative policy on environmentalism. If he thinks that that will cut the mustard, he needs to have a higher regard for the intelligence of people in this country. The speech by the Conservative spokesman, the hon. Member for Putney, contained a straightforward contradiction, and she may wish to intervene on me to clarify the point. She said that the Government were increasing the total VED tax take from £1.9 billion to £4.4 billion—a sizeable increase—but she then said that the policy was not working, as it would lead to emissions savings by 2020 of only 0.16 million tonnes. The only logical inference from that observation is that the Government are not taxing fuel nearly aggressively enough. If the hon. Member for Putney believes that emissions are not being cut enough, and if she is in favour of environmental taxation, the presumption must be that she wants consumers to be even more incentivised to make greener choices.