Clause 34 - Car fuel: calculation of cash equivalent of benefit
Finance Bill
4:45 pm
Mr Howard Flight (Arundel and South Downs, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 37, in page 23, line 14, leave out subsection (3).
The amendment addresses the Government's commitment not to keep changing the tables. It asks indirectly whether the Government are willing to guarantee that fuel differentials between road fuels, petrol and diesel will not be changed beyond 2004, to give manufacturers and fleet owners an assurance of consistency and ensure that manufacturers particularly who invest in new technology will not have the rug pulled from under them. There is an acknowledged lack of confidence in the Government maintaining differentials in clean fuels, as emerged in the debate on 19 October 2001, when the Minister effectively undertook that there would be no changes before 2004.
The amendment removes the Treasury's power to change the amounts in the tables. As I understand it, only Vauxhall and Volvo are investing money in liquefied petroleum gas technology. The longer there is no risk that the fuel duty basis on which such manufacturers are going ahead will suddenly be changed, the greater the certainty that they will get this new technology into production.