My hon. Friends the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Kimball) and the Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) have given very accurate and eloquent testimony to the social revolution which has overtaken the countryside in the last decade or so and which will make the whole concept of petrol rationing infinitely more complex in execution than that of which we had experience at the time of the Suez crisis. I shall not repeat their argument but merely observe and endorse it in respect of rural Shropshire, no less than in respect of Lincolnshire and Leicestershire.

The point I would direct my remarks to is that contained in subsection (1)(b). It is perhaps inevitable on a Thursday evening that the Committee should be thinly attended, but this is legislation of considerable implication. To begin with, any Bill which seeks to make temporary provision almost certainly carries implications of permanence judged by all our past experience. In Clause 10 it is proposed that it shall be in force until 30th November 1974, and, of course, there are provisions for its reactivation. I am concerned about the powers of price control that are vested in subsection (1)(b), and my anxiety is that the Government's intentions about this should be spelt out at somewhat greater length than hitherto. As I understand the Bill, there is no relationship of necessity between rationing and price control.

Subsection (1)(b) could be exercised whether or not rationing was in force. We therefore recognise, as did the hon. Member for Midlothian (Mr. Eadie), that the days of cheap energy are past, and if he were not there to remind us of that fact certainly Sheikh Yamani indicates that the price is upwards, ever upwards.