Clause 7
Finance (No. 2) Bill
5:45 pm
John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, Liberal Democrat)
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that road-user charging is the most effective way to tax road use; it impacts on those who create the most environmental problems—in other words, cause congestion. It has the added benefit of reversing the current problem: people who live in far-distant places such as the north of Scotland pay 12p more for their fuel than those in metropolitan centres. Road-user charging puts more tax on people in areas with congestion and therefore with alternatives.
Implementing that will take five or six years at the very least. In the interim, what could my hon. Friend offer my constituents? Would she favour using the EU derogation, which would permit such remote areas to have a lower fuel duty?