Finance (No. 3) Bill

That is exactly what I am suggesting such a report could achieve. The VAT chargeable on the duty element of the fuel price brings the total impact of fuel duty to about 69p a litre—that figure is a few days old, so it might be more or less than that now, depending on the daily price rate. Using a typical fuel consumption rate for road haulage of 8.5 miles per gallon, that means that each kilometre travelled provides 22p to the Exchequer; given an average load of 10 tonnes, each tonne of freight transported into or out of the north-east region delivers £4.30 to the Exchequer in fuel taxes, compared with an average for goods moved between English regions of only £3.52. We are already starting to see the impact on an economically deprived region in terms of businesses developing there and on its prospects for employment, given its peripherality to the bulk of the English economy. Many hauliers in the North East chamber of commerce membership have no choice but to pass a proportion of those costs on to their customers, the vast majority of whom tend to be based in the north-east region. The chamber of commerce has argued that decisions on fuel duty need to take greater account of the impact on businesses in each part of the UK, and that a more considered approach is needed than that of the automatic increases that have been fixed into Government policy for the upcoming period. The figures I have quoted exclude those for goods transported within regions, as the impact of fuel duty would be the same in each region for that type of journey. If the amendment were accepted, I would ask that a detailed analysis be included of the introduction of a measure that would help to stabilise fuel duty. In fact, that is exactly what the Federation of Small Businesses has been calling for. We have had debates in the past about some sort of fuel duty stabiliser, and it remains to be seen whether that would be a workable option, but surely when carrying out such an analysis, the Government could look at measures that would stabilise fuel duty and the cost of fuel.