I beg to move amendment 20, in clause 177, page 105, line 25, leave out paragraph (b).

With this it will be convenient to discuss clause stand part.

This is a probing amendment to lever in some discussion of the Government’s policy on LPG and taxation. I have a personal interest in this issue because I own and drive two top-of-the-range Japanese cars: a 3.4-litre Honda Legend and a 3-litre Toyota Camry, which motoring experts in the room will know has the same engine as the Lexus. Unfortunately, they are both 16 years old and very expensive to fill up with fuel. I have often considered the prospect of converting them; the cost starts somewhere in the region of £1,400 upwards, which probably exceeds the cost of each of them. Come to think of it, that probably exceeds the cost of both of them.

I want to deal with LPG in the same manner in which the hon. Member for Gateshead dealt with the issue of electric cars. I am concerned about securing continued investment in LPG as a fuel on our roads, and in the provision thereof. I am well aware that the Government encourage use of LPG, and there is a differential, but it varies from time to time and from Budget to Budget.

The question is whether the Government’s thinking over the long term is sufficiently clear to justify the kind of investment that may need to be made. After all, from time to time, minor fluctuations have had an appreciable effect on the LPG market. People will be familiar with what happened years ago when many buses converted to LPG, but subsequently converted back to diesel as the rates of LPG subsidy and diesel subsidy for buses varied. That can make an appreciable difference to what people do and what fuels they use.

We are not doing awfully well on the use of LPG in this country. There are 7 million LPG vehicles in Europe, but only 140,000 of those are in the UK. There are 26,000 fuelling outposts in Europe, but only 1,000 in the UK. The sadness is that we actually make LPG vehicles, but often exclusively for export, because the cost of small volume adjustments for cars that drive on the right-hand side are not straightforward for the manufacturer.

It is worth rehearsing some of the advantages of LPG, because I think that the Government have another objective here: it is about not just encouraging a desirable fuel, but encouraging something that is substantially beneficial compared with most other fuels that I can think of. LPG vehicles are 30% quieter than diesel vehicles. Their lifecycle hydrocarbon emissions are lower than for petrol vehicles. LPG emissions of benzene, a dangerous carcinogen, are about one-thirteenth of those from petrol and half of those from diesel, and their  emissions of carbon dioxide are two-fifths of those for petrol. LPG vehicles emit one-fifth of the sulphur that petrol and diesel vehicles emit, and they score extraordinarily well on ozone precursors.

There are appreciable advantages in using LPG, and there are reasons for us to favour it over other fuels. The advantages of diesel are apparent to most motorists at the moment, but what is not so apparent is the number of particulates from diesel cars that pollute our atmosphere—for example, they are responsible for 75% of the particulates in London. Even if we take electric cars as a desirable alternative, the thinking in the motor industry is that they will become only a small, niche element of the market. They have high initial costs and high road weight, and there are limits to the technology and how it can be developed.

I have tabled the amendment with a view to asking the Government to sketch out the future for LPG. The industry needs certainty, it needs a long-term future and, I think we would all agree, it needs some sort of encouragement. LPG is unquestionably better for the environment than some of the alternatives. I hope that my amendment will tempt the Minister to say something about not just what the Government are currently doing, but what they will be doing in four or five years’ time—if they are still the Government.

It is instructive that the hon. Member for Southport says that he has tabled amendment 20 in order to probe the Government’s long-term policy on the differential between petrol, diesel and LPG. It would be helpful if the Minister could address those points. At one time the Government were claiming to be the greenest Government ever; it would be interesting to see whether the Minister is still hugging those huskies—I do not know whether they have dropped that plan. When discussing the market and support for low-emission vehicles, the Minister can perhaps comment on Boris Johnson’s decision to distort some of the thresholds, which has had a negative effect on the low-emission vehicles market. Many people are questioning whether it is actually a backwards step.

I see that the amendment has been grouped with the wider clause stand part debate, which is on fuel duty. As the Committee knows, the Labour Government postponed or cancelled planned fuel duty rises on 13 separate occasions, including of course at the height of the global financial crisis. We have led calls on the Chancellor to ease the squeeze on motorists, families and businesses, and Labour piled on pressure when the Chancellor was prevaricating over fuel duty last summer when, as we all recall, he performed the quickest U-turn in the coalition’s history. The Secretary of State for Transport was sent out on Tuesday to defend the fuel duty rise and then another deferral was announced on the Wednesday.

Will the hon. Gentleman clarify something? Had his Government’s planned increase in fuel duty not been abolished or deferred, how much extra would a litre of petrol cost at the pump now?

I know the hon. Lady means well with her question, but she is labouring under a false impression that a Labour Administration now would not have done what they did at the time, which was to postpone and cancel fuel duty plans. The notion that she has a monopoly on flexibility when it comes to fuel duty arrangements is simply not the case. She is mistaken in her view of what might have happened in that hypothetical situation.

Just for the record, is the hon. Gentleman confirming that the Labour Government did not intend to implement a 13p per litre increase in fuel duty had they won the last general election?

I do not believe that the Labour Government would have continued with that. I am not quite sure what point the hon. Lady thinks she has hit upon, and I do not believe that she should take that simplistic view and draw a straight line. Chancellors keep tax levels under review and that would have been the case were Labour in government. I know that the hon. Lady secretly wishes that we had a Labour Government, and we of course wish the same because we did far more to help motorists. The hon. Lady voted to increase fuel duty by 3p per litre when she walked through the Lobby in favour of the 20p rate of VAT. I wonder whether she regrets her vote on that increase.

Would the hon. Gentleman reverse the change to 20p if Labour was in power?

We have consistently said that, were we in office, we would need a stimulus for the economy and a temporary reduction in VAT would be necessary. That is hardly new to the hon. Lady, but I take it from her answering a question with another question that she does not in any way regret that VAT rise to 20% and that extra 3p a litre that she personally put on fuel for her constituents. It hangs around her neck.

Will the hon. Gentleman first confirm that 13 is bigger than three? Will he also confirm that tough measures had to be taken to get us out of the deficit that we inherited?

I do not know which bankers were responsible for causing that particular deficit. We have obviously had that debate before and it would be wrong to extend this debate to the wider issues of the Conservatives’ consistent calls to deregulate the banking sector. We must not digress from the topic. The hon. Lady is wrong to assume that absolutely nothing would have been flexible or changed were a Labour Government in power. After all, as I said, we cancelled and postponed several fuel duty changes, about which she should not be surprised.

Is my hon. Friend as surprised as I am by the mock shock from the Government Benches? As he said, I believe we cancelled and postponed fuel duty rises 13 times throughout our 13 years in government, in response to the economic climate at the time. It is unthinkable that we would not have done so in government in the present circumstances.

The fake surprise of Government Members says all we need to know about their partisan approach to these questions. It is clear that, when it comes to the crunch, they increased fuel duty, most significantly through VAT. If the hon. Member for South East Cornwall thinks that every time her constituents fill up at the petrol pumps, paying considerable amounts, they are thanking their lucky stars that an even higher rise has been forgone, she is living in a different world.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I will give way if the hon. Lady agrees to do a survey of her constituents next time she is at the petrol pump. I want her to ask them, “Are you all grateful for what we’ve done about petrol?” I suspect they are not.

I can say to the hon. Gentleman in reply to his question that my constituency is very rural, and the average income per household is about £23,000, so 13p per litre on every litre of petrol they consume on travelling to work is a considerable amount of money. Yes, they are really grateful to this Government for not implementing those rises.

I notice that the hon. Lady is not preparing that survey. They do lots of surveys in marginal seats. I do not know what is going to happen at the next general election. I would personally be sad to see the hon. Lady lose her seat, although we clearly need a Labour representative in that seat.

Can I tell my hon. Friend that I also live in and represent a very rural constituency? My constituents, who are seeing their living standards go down and down under this Government, feel no sense of gratitude, especially not for an increase in VAT to 20%.

Conservative Members live under the fiction and delusion that the public are grateful for interventions and policies that are weighing them down in terms of lower wages and extra costs. I challenge the hon. Member for South East Cornwall and all Members on Government Benches to do the survey and ask their constituents what they think about the cost of living, in particular on fuel bills. My constituents are certainly not thanking the Government and being massively grateful for the misguided principles they follow.

On the issue of fact and fiction, I respectfully say to the hon. Gentleman that this comes in the context of a week when the shadow Chancellor, directly answering the question of whether Labour spent too much, said, “No, I don’t think we did.” That is not fiction; that is fact. This debate comes in that context.

The hon. Gentleman seems to think that the problems of the global financial crisis were caused by too many police officers, nurses, teachers, hospitals, new schools—[ Interruption. ]

Order. Can we now get back to amendment 20?

I am only trying to answer the question, Mr Amess. I am trying to be as helpful as possible to the new guru of No. 10’s policy unit. I envisage him sitting at the table there with many of the new fresh-faced Members as they produce detailed papers that are then ignored by the Prime Minister weeks later. I wish the hon. Gentleman luck. I hope he has some influence in that new august body and that when the reshuffle comes he does as well as the Minister assumes he will.

It is clear that the Government have a bad record on the costs affecting motorists. It is important to listen to the response to the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Southport and to get on the record what exactly Government policy is on LPG and the differentials.

The Government should also say a word about what is happening in the market more generally. We heard recently about the European Commission investigation into oil companies, the distortion of pricing and the manipulation of published indices. We tabled amendments to the Financial Services Bill to ensure that commodities and oil came under the regulatory perimeter of the Financial Conduct Authority, to ensure transparency and so that we could have proper clarity about what is happening in the oil market. That is another issue about which our constituents are concerned. They want to ensure that the price at the pump is a genuine price, reflecting the real market value and not some rigged or distorted figure that the industry has colluded to produce. That is an incredibly important point.

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair again, Mr Amess.

The clause freezes fuel duty rates. We recognise the effect that persistently high pump prices have on households and on businesses, and we have taken action. The clause is the latest in a series of active steps that the Government have taken to support motorists. Why have we acted? We inherited a plan to support motorists through a fuel duty escalator and seven fuel duty increases. The previous Government planned to increase fuel duty by more than inflation in each year of the Parliament. We rejected that plan. This Government understand that motoring is an essential part of everyday life for families and businesses up and down the country. For many, the car is a necessity. Motorists have been feeling the pressure of high pump prices over recent years. Since coming to office, therefore, we have acted to ease the burden on motorists by £21.5 billion over the Parliament to 2015-16.

Will the Minister clarify which party was in office when the fuel duty escalator was first introduced?

What I can clarify is that we are the party that abolished the fuel duty escalator—this Government abolished it, just as we have cut fuel duty. The hon. Lady rightly pointed out the cost-of-living pressures faced by her constituents, and made an accusation against the Government, but I noticed that she did not mention the fact that, during the last term of the previous Government, her constituents saw a huge rise in unemployment, which hit their ability to deal with  cost-of-living pressures. Unemployment increased by 116% in her constituency during the last term of the previous Government, with an increase of 139% in youth unemployment—she is not in a position to talk about how she has helped her constituents.

Can my hon. Friend refresh my memory? Was the Labour party not in government for 13 years? It could have abolished the fuel duty escalator at any time during that period.

My hon. Friend makes a good point again. On fuel duty, the Labour party’s only intention was to raise as much revenue as it could, without any regard for the effect on ordinary people and businesses up and down the country.

Perhaps I can give the Minister an update from the latest unemployment statistics for East Lothian: long-term unemployment in my constituency is up 13% on the year, while long-term youth unemployment is sticking at the same level, which is hardly a record for him to be proud of.

Is the hon. Lady saying that she is proud of the record of the last five years of the Labour Government, when youth unemployment in her constituency went up by 139% and unemployment in general went up by 116%? When she talks about being proud of changes in unemployment, perhaps she should look at the record under her own Government.

Will the Minister acknowledge that what happened in 2008, not just in Britain but in the global economy, changed things dramatically? Until that time, of course, his own party had said that it was happy with and would stick to the amount that the Labour Government were spending.

The hon. Lady was perhaps not in the main Chamber today when I made my statement on RBS and bank reform. Her colleague, the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Nottingham East, was there, so perhaps he has had an opportunity to relay some of my points to her. I had to remind the House of the contribution that the previous Government’s policy made to the deepest recession in this country’s post-war history.

I was not in the Chamber for the hon. Gentleman’s statement, which I regret. I would like to be able to divide myself in two in this place, or even three or four at times, but I presume he is referring to the question of regulation. I do not recall a single time during that period when Conservative politicians were calling for more regulation. Indeed, there were many times when they called for less—[ Interruption. ]

Order. Although this is all good fun, I now ask the Minister to draw his remarks very closely to amendment 20.

May I respond briefly to the hon. Member for Edinburgh East? [ Interruption. ]

Order. I have been very lax for the past five minutes, but I now ask the Minister to draw his remarks closely to amendment 20.

I will, Mr Amess. I will send the hon. Member for Edinburgh East a copy of the Hansard report of today’s debate, which will answer her question.

We have introduced a fair fuel stabiliser that ensures that fuel duty will increase by no more than inflation when oil prices are high. In this clause, we have completely scrapped two increases planned by the previous Government. As a result, to answer my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall, fuel duty is 13p per litre lower than it would have been had we kept the plans that we inherited.

As a direct result of the Government’s action, fuel duty is forecast to fall over this Parliament by 11% in real terms. Had the Government implemented the measure, rates would have increased by 7%. It currently costs £7 less for a typical motorist to fill their tank. In total, over the past two years: a typical motorist will have saved approximately £170; a small business with a van will have saved £340; and a haulier will have saved approximately £5,200.

My hon. Friend the Member for Southport, who moved amendment 20, made his case eloquently and clearly. The amendment would result in increased fuel duty on road fuel gases such as compressed natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas; rates on all other fuels would be frozen. Some vehicles can be converted to run on road fuel gases, which have lower greenhouse gas emissions than petrol and diesel. In recognition of their lower emissions, compressed natural gas and LPG are taxed at reduced rates. The previous Government announced that, until 2014, the duty differential for compressed natural gas and biogas was to be maintained as the standard fuel duty rate increased. The differential for LPG, however, was to be reduced by the equivalent of 1p per litre each year, as LPG is not as environmentally friendly as compressed natural gas. Budget 2013 extends that policy to 2015-16 to provide further certainty to support the uptake of road fuel gases. Since the fuel duty cut in March 2011, duty on road fuel gases has been frozen as increases to the main rate of fuel duty have been cancelled.

It would be unfair and damage the uptake of road fuel gases if fuel duty were increased only on those fuels. In addition, the amendment would mean that producers of road fuel gases would have to pay fuel duty dating back to 2012. It is fair that all motorists benefit from the freeze in fuel duty and that we support the uptake of road fuel gases.

I thank the Minister for clarifying, and I will seek to withdraw the amendment. I know he supports the industry, but does he believe that it can see far enough ahead to make the key investment decisions it needs to make on LPG?

I accept my hon. Friend’s point: there is a need for some degree of certainty. However, I hope he will understand that the Government need to balance  the provision of certainty with the ability to respond to economic and fiscal developments. We can provide a degree of certainty—the extension that I talked about provides that—but I hope he will take into account that there needs to be a certain degree of fiscal flexibility. I also thank him for confirming that, as he said earlier, the amendment is a probing one and he will not seek to press it to a vote.

Before I conclude, the hon. Member for Nottingham East raised the issue, which we all heard about recently in the news, of the allegations of oil market abuse. He rightly pointed out that those allegations are very worrying. He will probably be aware of the statement made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change; the allegations are being looked at and there is an inquiry, which will report back in due course and will take the allegations very seriously.

Fuel duty increased by over 20p per litre under the previous Government. Their plans would have increased pump prices by a further 18p per litre by the end of this Parliament. However, this Government are committed to supporting motorists. I therefore ask my hon. Friend to withdraw his amendment.

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 177 ordered to stand part of the Bill.