Mr Richard Holden

My hon. Friend makes the really important point that this is about choices. She is also right that many people do not have such a choice about their cars, and nobody has a choice about going to a shop to buy food, which will be delivered by some form of road transport at some point. So everybody will be paying for Labour’s road tax or fuel duty increases, and that is what we are opposing today. My hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) makes a broader point on the choices that this Government are making about on whose backs they are balancing the books. They are choosing to balance the books on the backs of working Britain. Businesses up and down the country are facing tax after tax and new bill after new bill, in the Government’s relentless pursuit to do our country down and throttle anything that seems to give a half chance of delivering growth, all to pay for a ballooning welfare bill. They would put Dumbo to shame, because they do not have the guts to reduce welfare—heaven forbid—and they do not even have the guts to try to slow the pace of the increase in welfare. We voted against tax hikes in the Budget because they are the wrong thing to do for growth in our country and for families in our country. We are voting against a tax hike today because of the circumstances now. Especially with an international environment of soaring prices, to saddle motorists with an extra hike in the cost of getting around is the wrong thing to do. That is why the Leader of the Opposition tabled our motion, and why we are urging right hon. and hon. Members across this House to say no to Labour’s hikes on fuel duty.