Simon Hoare

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon and Buchan (Harriet Cross), who spoke with her usual passion on behalf of her constituents and a sector that is important to her local economy, and with the depth of knowledge that the House has come to expect from her. She raised the important theme—I touched on it slightly in an intervention on the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury, the hon. Member for Swansea West (Torsten Bell), as he opened the debate for the Government—of the Government’s lack of consistency or common sense as a starting point, and of fleetness of foot in responding to events as they materialise. My hon. Friend referred to the absurdity of the Government saying in one breath, “As we transition to a renewable, clean, green energy source, we will continue to need oil and gas in our economy, but we would prefer to buy it from a third country’s production even though we have it literally on our doorstep.” There is a lack of imagination and, as I said, fleetness of foot as the Government respond to pressures in the changing landscape. If the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury will indulge me, I invite him to consider what he would be saying about the proposals announced in the Budget to increase the main fuel duty rates if he were on the Opposition Benches or at the Opposition Dispatch Box rather than speaking for the Government. The point that I made to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury was a simple one. I did not support the Chancellor’s announcement on fuel duty, but she had a common-sense approach to it and was perfectly within her rights as Chancellor of the Exchequer to make that rate announcement. It predated the events in Iran. I ask the Minister to consider what he would say if he were on the Opposition Benches and he faced intransigence from a Government who said, “We understand that costs are going up. We understand the volatility of the market. We understand the enormous pressures being placed on all households—in particular those with low incomes, the elderly, the vulnerable and the just about managing—but we are still going to plough on.” If they said that rather than, “We still want to increase fuel duty, and we may very well do so in the future, but now is not the time. We are going to pull the plaster off this thing and reverse the announcement. We are not going to increase fuel duty, because the tail of this fuel pricing crisis will be quite long, irrespective of whether the situation in Iran and the strait of Hormuz comes to a conclusion in the foreseeable future,” I think he would be jumping up and down, pulling his hair out and accusing the Government of being tin-eared and tone deaf. I hope that the Government Whips get the timing of this week’s debate right so that we do not have the ignominy of the Minister wishing he had spoken for a further 20 minutes and people dramatically falling ill in the Lobby but then miraculously, at the stroke of 7 pm, suddenly rising Lazarus-like from near deathbed experiences to get on with their parliamentary business. When he comes to sum up, I hope that he will reflect on the need for a rapid response in real time. On that theme, may I address one aspect of the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister? As the Minister probably knows, last week there was a hugely useful meeting with the Minister for Energy and the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Lord Livermore. Many of us who attended were pleased that it had taken place. We took away a variety of responses, but it certainly seemed that the Government were getting it. However, there is the perpetual repetition of the point that they are continuing to work with the Competition and Markets Authority on regulation of the heating oil market. That is a long-term solution; it will not solve the problems today. I do not think that is a crutch on which the Government can rest and presume that the House and our constituents will be satisfied. There must be two workstreams here, with future regulation in the medium to long-term and immediate help in the here and now. Fuel Finder, which is referenced in the Prime Minister’s amendment, can be useful. However, the Minister will probably know, or will have heard, that in rural areas we do not have a petrol station by every village green or on every corner, and in my constituency—I will deal in miles rather than the modernity of kilometres, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon and Buchan did—which is about 440 square miles, people are having to drive a 5, 10 or 15-mile round trip to fill up their cars. Therefore, Fuel Finder—welcome as the idea that sits behind it is—is really only of use to people who have a larger number of fuel stations where they can fill up their vehicles in close proximity to where they live or work. I want to say a word or two about heating oil. Thanks to figures produced by the House of Commons Library referencing the census data of 2021, we know that about 7.1% of households in the south-west of England use heating oil; the UK average figure is 4.9% and the figure for the North Dorset constituency is 13.71%. I understand that those figures do not include households using liquefied petroleum gas—they merely include traditional heating oil—and they certainly do not include the vital requirement of red diesel for the farmers of North Dorset. Not increasing the main fuel duty would help everybody in our country, but it would disproportionately benefit those whom we referred to at a certain time in our recent political history as “just about managing”. Those are not households that are supported by a raft of welfare state interventions and benefits, and they are not people who are disabled and unable to work. They are people who are doing their best and doing their bit—often couples working more than two jobs just to keep the roof over their head and food on the table. I am certain that when one is in the Treasury dealing with telephone-number sums day in and day out, an increase of 5p per litre does not sound like a vast amount, but when the household budget is so finely balanced that a couple of quid here or there makes all the difference, those 5p’s add up. I do not want to turn this into a rural versus urban debate, but it is important for urban Members of Parliament to hear about the reality of living in rural areas. We are lucky to live in rural areas—we have beautiful environment, lovely countryside and a slower pace of life—but every economist recognises that the cost of delivering services, the cost of produce and the cost of transport is greater in rural areas. That is principally for two reasons that result from sparsity of population: greater distances must be travelled to access them, and there are higher costs in getting to those rural markets because they are further away from the nexus of the transportation networks. All those things have a knock-on effect. If there was a choice and people could say, “Oh, I could jump on a tram, a tube, a bus or a light railway and forgo using my car or my van,” of course they would do so as a way of saving additional expenditure. It is depressing that although I think I am right in saying that at no time since 1966 has the Labour party in government had a higher number of Members of Parliament representing rural constituencies, unless those MPs are in deep camouflage this afternoon, they appear to be showing what I would describe politely as precious little interest in the welfare of their constituents. Maybe that is because they realise that those on the Treasury Front Bench have almost given up on rural Britain, probably promoted by a lack of knowledge and understanding, and certainly by a lack of curiosity to find out anything about what it is like to live in our rural communities. Maybe they have given up trying to persuade those on their Front Bench of the need for a change of heart. On the Conservative Benches, and on those of the other Opposition parties, we will not give up advocating the cause of our rural communities.