Fuel Costs

The hon. Lady is right in that few Members in this House would not have their own particular reasons for raising the issue of the cost of motoring with government. This issue is clearly a real challenge, which is why the Conservative party acknowledged it in opposition and said that we wanted to examine how we could tackle some of the key issues. The hon. Lady also referred to the impact of fuel duty on businesses. That is one of the reasons why our emergency Budget introduced a package of corporation tax reductions for companies, as she will recall. Small companies will now face a corporation tax rate of 20% whereas they were facing a rise to 22% under the previous Government. We also introduced reductions in national insurance, getting rid of the worst effects of the proposed jobs tax. We can support businesses in a number of ways to help them through a very challenging economic situation created by the previous Government.