Clause 6 - Road fuel gas
Finance Bill
10:30 am
Mr Rob Marris (Wolverhampton South West, Labour)
I welcome the increase in excise duty on LPG. I am not an expert and the right hon. Member for Fylde will perhaps correct me, but I do not think that LPG is nearly as clean as its proponents claim, particularly in terms of its outputs of carbon monoxide and nitrous oxide. There were some interesting figures in The Sunday Telegraph about two months ago, indicating that LPG vehicles pollute more than petroleum vehicles—not in every case, but there are significant differences. That gap has increased historically to the point where LPG vehicles have been, to coin a phrase, overtaken by petroleum vehicles due to developments in petroleum technology in vehicles, particularly cars.
Those developments include the common rail diesel engine and Volkswagen's FSI high-pressure petroleum engines. LPG vehicles are now passé technology—a road transport dead end in terms of environmental
friendliness, because they burn more fuel per mile. A few years ago, there was an excise incentive for their use, because they were then thought to be less environmentally damaging than petroleum engines. That is no longer the case, and I welcome the increase in excise. It is unfortunate for those who have invested in that technology—whether individuals or the industry—but it is a dead end and the Government have rightly recognised that. They are right to put up the excise duty and should increase it by more.