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Mr. Gray: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. Did he notice that, in answering the intervention to which he refers, the Deputy Prime Minister not only did not seem to know what the fourth option would be, but suggested that I should wait for the publication of the Bill? Was he not aware that it was published six months ago and has already undergone pre-legislative scrutiny?
Mr. Redwood: I willingly give way to the right hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Prescott: As the right hon. Gentleman knows, the Bill was published in order to allow the House andthe Select Committees to study it and make recommendations. We are now considering those recommendations and will report back on them.
Mr. Redwood: My hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire has won game, set and match, but let us put that on one side. Anyone can make a mistake.
The important thing is that the Secretary of State should understand the anger, in Labour as well as Conservative local government, at the prospect that existing practices would not be allowed to continue under his proposed legislation. I urge him to think again. If he does not, we shall table amendments that would enable the existing system to continue. We regard this as another of Labour's modernisations, which would drive a bulldozer through the checks and balances of our local constitution, exactly as the Government have done in our national constitution.
Mr. Brady:
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. He may be interested to know that the borough of Trafford has embarked on a cabinet style of local government already, and that many Labour councillors are feeling excluded from the process and increasingly frustrated at their inability to do their jobs.
Mr. Redwood:
The Secretary of State has a great deal of thinking to do, to try and make the councillor's role a decent, good role in some of the models that he is proposing, especially in his model of the elected mayor, which represents a massive downgrading of the elected council and councillors. He has never explained how that would work, and we look forward to seeing more of the details, as doubtless he rewrites the Bill as it goes through the House, and guillotines it at the end, in the same way as he had to rewrite much of the Bill dealing with the government of London, and then decided to guillotine it so that we could not debate pages and pages of substantial amendment. That is how the Government have been bulldozing our constitution, both nationally and locally.
The Bill has been designed by people who do not believe in local democracy and whose idea of devolution is that anyone living under devolved government must accept whatever central Government want. Labour cannot accept the idea that a mayoral candidate for London might ever disagree with the elected Government. "Perish the thought," they say, "that the Welsh Assembly should wish to do something different from that which the Prime Minister seeks." It is an odd style of devolution that entails all the extra costs of more officials and more politicians but gives none of them the right to independent thought or action. For those and other reasons, we will give the local government Bill strong opposition. We are against mayors made in Downing street.
When it comes to his transport policy, the Secretary of State is becoming a joke. We know that the Prime Minister is seriously worried that DETR is upsetting all
the motorists. We saw in a recent television poll that the Government are in deep mire with their record on transport. When people were asked in the poll whether the Government had a good record on transport, 79 per cent. said no, they did not, and only 16 per cent. said yes they did. The public have got this one entirely right, and the Secretary of State should be deeply worried that he has upset not just the Prime Minister but so many people trying to travel round the country.
We know that the Government are so worried that the Chancellor has been prevailed upon to moderate his language about the fuel escalator, but he has not yet changed his actions on the petrol tax. People will not thank the Government until they are absolutely sure that it is not just the words that are changing, but that the deeds will change as well.
Mr. Prescott:
It is a Conservative tax.
Mr. Redwood:
It is not a Conservative tax. The last increases in fuel duties were introduced by a Labour Government and a Labour Chancellor, at a higher rate than any that the Conservatives introduced, from a higher level of the duty. We are against it; the Government are in favour of it, and they cannot wriggle away from the responsibility. The Deputy Prime Minister seems to think that he has not been governing the country for the past two and a half years. Perhaps he has not, but the public believe that the Government have been governing the country and they know that it was this Government's Budgets that put the price of fuel up so much: it could hardly have been done by the outgoing Conservatives, who can no longer put through a Budget.
Mr. Prescott:
Will the right hon. Gentleman tell the House in what year the fuel duty escalator was introduced and by which Government, and who now proposes to abolish it?
Mr. Redwood:
When a new Government come into office, they have to decide on their policies. This Government decided to put the fuel duty up in each of the Budgets that they have introduced. They not only decided to put it up, but they put it up by more than the Conservatives, and from a much higher level. The Deputy Prime Minister should remember that we opposed the Government's increases in fuel duty. We are now asking him to come clean. Will he tell us that they have finished with increases in petrol duty? Will he promise us that there will be no further increases in petrol duty for the lifetime of this Parliament and under this Government? Will he give that guarantee?
Mr. Prescott:
I think that the right hon. Gentleman has now confirmed that a Tory Government brought in the tax and that a Labour Government are now committed to abolishing it. That is precisely the position. Any increases in the duty that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer was prepared to consider over and above the inflation rate, he would hypothecate to public transport. Do the Opposition agree with that degree of hypothecation if we introduce it?
Mr. Redwood:
I think that the Deputy Prime Minister has confirmed that the Chancellor of the Exchequer reserves the right to increase fuel duties not just in line
Mr. Oliver Letwin (West Dorset):
Has my right hon. Friend noticed, as some of us have, that, in the Red Book, the Chancellor has predicted a 5 per cent. increase in the total take from fuel duties next year?
Mr. Redwood:
I am grateful to my very learned hon. Friend, who has read the Red Book carefully and confirms my point. We cannot trust the Government on the fuel duty. It is very obvious that they will increase it.
Mr. Bercow:
Given that currently £17 out of every £20 spent at the petrol pump goes directly to Treasury coffers, and that, during his oration, the Deputy Prime Minister blathered on about the principle of fairness, does my right hon. Friend agree that the Deputy Prime Minister should tell us whether he believes that it is fair that 85 per cent. of the spend on petrol goes to the Treasury? If he does not, at what alternative figure does he propose to aim?
Mr. Redwood:
That is a very good question for the Deputy Prime Minister and I am sure that he will not be able to answer it. I do not know whether he wishes to try to answer it.
Mr. Prescott:
The record is clear on the matter of raising fuel duty. Under the previous Administration the tax on fuel went from 7p to 42p a litre, and the money that they raised from the motorist was increased from £4 billion to £21 billion a year, but they spent less of that on transportation systems.
Mr. Redwood:
As I thought, the Deputy Prime Minister was not going to answer the question, because he has not a clue about the answer to it. Let me make a prediction. The right hon. Gentleman thinks that he has a deal with the Treasury on hypothecation, but he will find that other parts of his budget are cut to allow for the fact that he now has his hands on a little bit of the money that he is raising by way of extra taxes.
Mr. Paterson:
The Deputy Prime Minister failed to point out that when the fuel escalator was introduced, only two countries in Europe had lower fuel prices than the United Kingdom. We now have easily the highest fuel prices, with the cost of diesel twice what it is in Spain and three times what it is in Turkey. The real humbug--
Mr. Prescott:
That is why we are abolishing it.
Mr. Paterson:
Will the Deputy Prime Minister contain himself and stop interrupting?
Last year, Madam Speaker, you kindly granted me an Adjournment debate on the crisis in the road haulage industry. At that time, I said that the Government were abusing the duty for general taxation purposes, but the then Economic Secretary said:
"That is not the case."--[Official Report, 11 November 1998; Vol. 319, c. 349.]
18 Nov 1999 : Column 143
In last week's pre-Budget statement, however, the Chancellor said that the duty would be used for general taxation.
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