Dave Doogan

I do not have the detail of the Scottish Government’s plans, but I am pretty sure that nobody in England or anywhere else in the United Kingdom has received actual monetary support from that funding. Let us be really clear. The Chancellor talks about the broad shoulders of the Treasury and says that thanks to her fiscal wit—if you can believe that—she has come up with £52.4 million. If we divide that money across the number of people who will need support, it comes out at about £35. That is £35 of support from a Labour Government for people seeing a £700-odd price shock in heating oil. Somebody somewhere in the Treasury needs to get themselves a calculator. The fuel duty increase is inflationary: it will feed through to the prices of goods and services, all of which will subsequently have VAT added on to them. The 5p added to the price of fuel is actually 6p, because it is added before the VAT is added to the fuel, so it is not 5p at all. I am pretty certain that we can read in the Government’s amendment to the motion the vacuous nature of their application to this subject. Like other right hon. and hon. Members, I am pretty confident that a wee bit closer to the time of the elections in Scotland and Wales in May, the Government will suddenly find the wit to scrap this hike in fuel duty. I am quite happy for them to do that, but as other people have pointed out, households are in crisis now. Now is the time for the Government to lead, but that will never happen with a Labour Government.