Angela Eagle
Main Page: Angela Eagle (Labour - Wallasey)Department Debates - View all Angela Eagle's debates with the HM Treasury
Fuel Prices and the Cost of Living
Angela Eagle Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House recognises that rising world oil, food and commodity prices are increasing the cost of living and adding to the squeeze on families on low and middle incomes across Britain; believes this has been compounded by the Government’s decision to increase VAT to 20 per cent., which will cost a family with children an annual average of £450, has helped to push up the consumer prices index annual inflation to 4 per cent. and, according to the House of Commons Library, is adding £1.35 to the cost of filling up a vehicle with a 50 litre tank; notes that the AA announced last week that the cost of unleaded petrol has now reached an average of £6 a gallon and that the fuel duty stabiliser promised in the 2010 Conservative Party manifesto has not yet been announced or implemented; further notes that the previous administration regularly postponed planned fuel duty rises when world oil prices were increasing sharply, as they are now; and demands that the Government takes immediate steps to reverse January’s VAT rise on road fuels, using the extra £800 million from the bank levy and securing the appropriate EU derogation, in order to provide relief to hard-pressed motorists and, at the time of the Budget, looks again at the annual duty rise due in April.
It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram), whose ten-minute rule Bill seeks to address an issue that is close to the hearts of all of us from Merseyside.
Times are increasingly tough for millions of ordinary hard-working people and families in our country. Since May last year, we have seen this Government embark on a reckless gamble with our future prosperity. Public expenditure is being cut too deep and too fast, and up and down the country millions of people are really beginning to feel the pinch. Families are facing the biggest squeeze in their living standards for 80 years, and some economists are warning that it could get still worse. Real wages are static, even falling. With recruitment freezes, job losses and rising unemployment, people are right to be worried about the future.
Mr Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)
Will the hon. Lady help the House? Over the past 13 years, in every aspect of Government policy, the Labour Government were deliberately and decisively anti-motorist. Does the motion before the House today represent a seismic shift in policy, or is it, as we suspect, a transient spat of opportunism?
Ms Eagle
I am rather sorry that I gave way so early in my remarks to that kind of comment. I do not recognise the right hon. Gentleman’s caricature of our policies for motorists. Perhaps he has been reading too much of the Daily Express. [Interruption.] Well, I am a motorist as well. He should realise that motorists are not confined to the Conservative Benches.
Robert Halfon
I find the Labour motion astonishing, because over the past few years the hon. Lady’s party crucified Harlow’s motorists by putting up fuel duty by 6% a year and increasing it more than 12 times—and it was going to introduce another tax.
Ms Eagle
I will come to the details of the motion later. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will do us the honour of staying in the Chamber and listening to that.
Taxes such as VAT are rising, and the Chancellor’s huge cuts in benefits and services are only just starting to bite. The Government are doing all this while the world economy is still very fragile after the international banking crisis. Global commodity prices are soaring, and these price increases are hitting people and businesses in Britain hard.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that this problem tends to have a worse effect in rural areas than in some towns? A lot of people in rural areas rely on oil as a fuel, so they are being hit by a double whammy.
Ms Eagle
I am pleased that the competition authorities have launched an investigation into what has been going on with heating oil. My hon. Friend is right to point out that transport in rural areas is a particular issue.
People who are already financially stretched by this Government’s slash-and-burn approach now find themselves trying to cope with sudden sharp increases in the price of essentials such as food, energy and fuel. Recent OECD figures put UK food inflation at 6.3%. That is higher than the consumer prices index, higher than the retail prices index, and higher than in most of the rest of Europe. In my constituency, parents are now worried about the rising cost of providing balanced meals for their children.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
Does the hon. Lady agree that the fuel duty escalator is an important tool to send a clear message that oil prices are going to have to continue to rise, not only for geopolitical reasons but because of peak oil and climate change, and that a way of ensuring that the poorest are not hardest hit would be to scrap the recent VAT increase in totality and replace it with a crackdown on things such as tax evasion and tax avoidance?
Ms Eagle
The hon. Lady is right that there has to be a balance between the environmental aspects of taxes on fuel and living standards. However, I find, all too often, that on the green side of the argument the social justice aspects of imposing environmental tax rises are not thought about enough, and such measures tend to hit hardest people whom we are least able to help. She needs to help all of us, when we are thinking about this, by bearing in mind the effects on poverty of environmental taxes.
Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)
The fuel duty escalator was introduced by the former Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke). One of the first things that the Labour Government did on assuming office was to make sure that we did not pursue that policy. [Interruption.] Oh, yes. That is why, on several occasions in our 13 years, the Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer got rid of the fuel duty increase. That is the truth.
Charlie Elphicke
I thank the hon. Lady for her kindness and generosity in allowing me to intervene. To clear up the addling of some minds in the House regarding the history of this matter, will she confirm that in 1997 duty was 36.86p and today it is 57.19p?
Brandon Lewis
I thank the hon. Lady for being so generous in giving way. Will she confirm that, despite what has been said, my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) is right: there were 12 fuel duty rises under the Labour Government, and six more were set to come into force before they left office and would have done in the next few years?
Ms Eagle
As I said, we had six years when we did not even increase the price of fuel by inflation, so there were real-terms price falls. The number of increases in all sorts of duties tends to expand the more one is in government. We will see what this Government do in the Budget next week.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
The difference in our approach is that we are looking to help people across all parts of the economy. Surely the people at the Freight Transport Association who have been campaigning solely for a fuel duty rise not to be imposed, which would benefit them, should realise that they must build an alliance with other people by campaigning for the striking down of the increase in VAT to 20%, which is hurting everyone, including not only themselves as the people who deliver goods, but the people who have to purchase those goods.
Ms Eagle
No. I have given way a few times, and I am going to get on with my remarks.
It is absolutely clear that increased fuel duty costs are eating further and further into already stretched household budgets, making the squeeze on living standards even worse. Businesses are suffering from problems caused by inflating commodity costs, tighter margins and restricted access to credit from the banks. Many are anxious about how they will get by in the next few years, and the continuing rise in the price of fuel is adding to that worry.
Ms Eagle
I will get on with my remarks and give way to the hon. Lady shortly.
The cost of oil has been rising on world markets as a result of underlying increases in demand from Asia and uncertainty because of the unrest in the middle east. Just a week ago, petrol prices hit a new high at the pumps. The average price for unleaded fuel is, a week later, still £1.32 a litre. That means that the cost of fuel has risen 7p a litre since the beginning of the year. The AA pointed out that the £6 gallon has arrived for the first time, and that prices for diesel have soared even higher, currently averaging £1.38 a litre.
Gordon Birtwistle (Burnley) (LD)
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way—[Interruption.] May I refer to an e-mail that I received—[Interruption.]
Ms Eagle
I am not willing to give way to the hon. Gentleman. [Interruption.] He can show me the e-mail afterwards.
The Conservative-led Government’s decisions to raise VAT to 20% may have been expertly disguised before the election so that the voters were kept in the dark about it, but we all know about it now. Increased VAT has added an average of £450 a year in extra cost to a family with children and has pushed the headline CPI figure to 4%, which is double the Bank of England’s target.
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Justine Greening)
Perhaps the hon. Lady will confirm and clarify her party’s position on—I think—fuel duty. I am not sure because on ITV’s “Daybreak” the shadow Chancellor said: “We’re saying today, as well as the duty thing, which I’ll think you’ll freeze”—I presume that he was not saying that explicitly to Christine Bleakley—“I think you should reverse the VAT rise.” Specifically on the “duty thing”, is the shadow Chancellor talking about freezing the 1p rise, the RIP rise—[Hon. Members: “RIP?”] Sorry, I mean the RPI plus one rise. Which is it? [Interruption.] I might have made a slip, but I was thinking about the Opposition and their policy.
Mr Speaker
Order. Before we continue, may I appeal to Members, including Ministers and other Front Benchers who are intervening, to do that economically? I remind the House that the Chair’s responsibility is to seek to protect the rights of Back-Bench Members who wish to speak. I put it to Front Benchers that Back Benchers will be not inconsiderably irritated if long speeches from the Front Bench stop them getting in.
Ms Eagle
I was trying to help hon. Members by giving way. Obviously, that extends the time that one’s remarks take, but I think that some exchange helps the debate.
I hoped that the Chief Secretary would be here today, but we have the Economic Secretary instead. Why will the Chief Secretary not turn up to one of his own debates? Where is he? Why has he not come to tell us about what he has been doing on all those issues?
Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)
The hon. Lady will recall that when she was a Treasury Minister, she received a delegation of highlands and islands Members of Parliament, including the Chief Secretary, and that we asked for a fuel duty derogation for remote rural areas. We had tea and sympathy, but no action. The Chief Secretary is now implementing that policy. Does the Labour party now support reduced fuel duty for the islands?
Ms Eagle
We want to do something that helps everyone in the country, not one third of 1%.
As we all know, VAT applies to petrol. As I said , the Library has calculated that the 2.5% increase in VAT has added nearly 3p to the cost of a litre of petrol when people are least able to absorb that extra cost. We all know that an extra fuel duty increase of 1p above inflation is factored into the Chancellor’s Budget arithmetic and due to be implemented next month. Taken with rising inflation, those changes could put 5p a litre on to fuel duty rates. The combination of sharp rises in world oil prices, ongoing uncertainty in the middle east and the self-inflicted rise in VAT is creating real hardship for many people. It causes higher inflation, lowers consumer spending power, which is already weak, and reduces both consumer and business confidence, thereby putting any prospect of growth at risk. The economy shrank by a shock 0.6% in the last quarter of 2010. People are getting increasingly desperate for some relief from the Conservative Government, but there is precious little sign of it.
Ms Eagle
I am trying to get on with my remarks, as the Speaker wishes me to do.
What help has been put in place to tackle rising fuel prices since the Government took power last May? The Business Secretary was reported as telling the Press Gallery over lunch recently:
“It’s quite likely that we are going to get a nasty period of high fuel prices”.
Top marks for observation, but most people would think that, at an average of £1.32 a litre, we already have a nasty period of high fuel prices. However, the Minister of State for International Development does not seem to think that they are high. As a former oil trader, he was unable to resist the urge to speculate. His irresponsible guesswork succeeded in generating front-page headlines in The Sunday Times on 6 March, when he announced that he thought that the record price of $147 a barrel for oil reached at the height of the oil price spike in 2008 would be smashed. He said:
“I’ve been saying in Government for two months that if this does go wrong, £1.30 at the pump could look like a luxury, $200 a barrel is on the cards”.
His words of wisdom, which were hardly calculated to bring calm to the international oil markets, were reported around the globe. His headline-grabbing antics succeeded only in making a bad situation worse, and, I would imagine, swift removal from No. 11 Downing street’s Christmas card list.
Meanwhile, total incoherence was breaking out in the oddly named “quad”, which, for those who do not know, consists of the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Chief Secretary. Apparently, they are meant to be the ones who actually run the Government, and it seems that they are falling out over the Conservative manifesto promise to introduce a so-called fuel duty stabiliser, which would cut duty when prices were high but raise the tax when prices fall.
Ms Eagle
I will not give way. I am trying to get on. [Interruption.] I hope that the hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) will stay in order. I have said that I want to get on with my remarks because the Speaker is trying to protect Back-Bench business, and I have given way a lot. She should now be patient if she wishes to contribute to the debate.
The fuel duty stabiliser relies on the view that increasing oil prices provide the Treasury with a windfall from North sea oil revenues that can be distributed to hard-hit fuel users. Where is the fuel duty stabiliser? In April last year—conveniently before the general election—the Prime Minister, after a huge song and dance on the issue, which we saw on the front pages, suggested that a Conservative Government would cut the cost of petrol by 10p a litre if oil prices remained high. At that time, petrol cost 12p a litre less than it does now. The Daily Telegraph reported that the Tory fuel duty stabiliser
“is expected to be launched within months if Mr Cameron is successful.”
As oil prices soar, voters who remember that promise are still waiting.
Since then, the Prime Minister has dropped lots of little hints about his pet policy, without actually doing anything about it. Every time he mentions it, he is quickly slapped down by the Chief Secretary. That happened in January just after a prime ministerial fuel price hint. Speaking on the BBC’s “Politics Show”, the Chief Secretary said of the stabiliser mechanism:
“It’s a complicated idea and it’s difficult to see precisely how we achieve it”.
Of course, that did not stop the Conservatives dangling the idea cynically before the electorate last April. In the same BBC interview, the Chief Secretary rejected calls to scrap the 1p rise in fuel duty that is due to be introduced this April, saying—
Ms Eagle
No, let me finish. The Chief Secretary rejected calls to scrap the 1p increase, saying that he was not prepared to “sacrifice income willy-nilly” to help motorists. That is the Chief Secretary who is not at this debate. Perhaps Conservative Members should be asking him their questions. He proceeded to champion the fuel derogation for remote islands, which will help just a third of 1% of Great Britain’s almost 34 million registered vehicles and 60 million people. To be fair to him, he has battled for 10 months to get that policy up and running and, showing the energy and drive for which he is famous, he has managed to get around to asking the EU for permission to think about doing it. That is a perfect example of a policy from this Government: it generates a satisfyingly large amount of headlines, helps virtually nobody and costs almost nothing.
Meanwhile, the Chancellor asked the Office for Budget Responsibility to undertake an assessment of the effect of oil price fluctuations on the public finances, in order to design a stabiliser mechanism. It produced that assessment last September.
Ms Eagle
I have given way to the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis) already.
The Office for Budget Responsibility produced the assessment last September, and it failed to make the numbers stack up for the policy. It calculated that the overall effect on the public finances of a temporary oil price rise would be close to zero, and that a permanent rise would create a loss to the public finances. In other words, there is no windfall for the Treasury to redistribute using a so-called fuel duty stabiliser mechanism.
No one appears to have told the Prime Minister about that and he clearly has not bothered to read the OBR report, because at Prime Minister’s questions a couple of weeks ago, he promised a fuel duty stabiliser in the Budget:
“we will look at the fact that extra revenue comes to the Treasury when there is a higher oil price, and see if we can share some of the benefit of that with the motorist.”—[Official Report, 2 March 2011; Vol. 524, c. 300.]
The Daily Telegraph called that statement “misleading and economically illiterate”. I could not have put it better myself.
Ms Eagle
I have given way to the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth.
That statement shows that this Government are run by a Prime Minister who does not do detail and who appears to be at odds with his own Chief Secretary. The OBR has shown that a temporary rise in oil prices generates a £100 million surplus in the first year for the Treasury, but that that turns rapidly to a net revenue loss of £700 million the year after. What the Government gain from higher oil tax revenues, they lose from the effects of higher prices on consumption and the requirement to spend more on indexing pensions and benefits. A permanent rise causes permanent losses to the public finances. The Prime Minister has to stop pretending that there is a windfall in rising oil prices that he can share out, because it simply does not exist. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I apologise for interrupting the hon. Lady. I say to the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) that loud conversations in the middle of a speech are discourteous and must not happen. That is not a proper way to conduct debate. I am not having it, and that is the end of it.
Ms Eagle
I was saying that the Office for Budget Responsibility has given the lie to the view that a fuel duty stabiliser mechanism can be financed by the windfall that rising oil prices give the Government by revealing that that surplus does not exist.
The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills was caught recently saying that the Liberal Democrats are in a “constant battle” inside the Government, especially over tax proposals. They are obviously in a battle over the fuel duty stabiliser. In debates on the 2008 Finance Bill, he said that fuel duty stabilisers were “unbelievably complicated and unpredictable”. He also said:
“May I suggest that there might not be any net windfall at all?”—[Official Report, 16 July 2008; Vol. 479, c. 339.]
The OBR has since confirmed that there is not. The Liberal Democrat bit of the Government is saying one thing and its Tory masters another. Together, there is total inaction on fuel prices.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded that introducing a fuel duty stabiliser would inject more uncertainty into the public finances rather than less. Analysis by the Policy Studies Institute found that if a stabiliser had existed for the 12 months to last December, when the price of petrol rose by 13p a litre, it would have cost the Exchequer a staggering £6 billion. The Government’s flagship policy on fuel, which they used cynically before the election to generate so many favourable headlines and to gather votes, is not only late in arriving, but looks shambolic and incoherent.
Andrew Bridgen
The Labour party’s apparent damascene conversion on fuel taxes will amaze and intrigue the bulk of the electorate. Will the hon. Lady confirm whether she supported the crafty action of the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer, who effectively excluded fuel from a VAT reduction in 2008 by raising duty, and then put the VAT on fuel back up to 17.5% in January 2010?
Ms Eagle
One minute Government Members say that we have no plan to deal with the deficit, and the next minute they complain that we had a plan that would have raised money. They really do try to have it both ways and are not remotely coherent.
The time for action is now. The Chancellor should take immediate action on fuel prices to ease the cost of living crisis in Britain. He does not even have to wait until the Budget. We are calling on him to reverse immediately the 2.5 percentage point increase in VAT on petrol that he imposed in January.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The hon. Lady is always enormously gracious and generous in giving way. The Labour party is now proposing tax cuts, and has not proposed any serious spending cuts. Does it just want the country to go bankrupt?
Ms Eagle
The hon. Gentleman should not believe the propaganda from Tory central office. Of course we do not want the country to go bankrupt. We had a plan that would have halved the deficit, rather than dealing with it in four years. If I were in the Conservative party, I would not be quite so proud of producing the third largest fiscal consolidation—public spending cuts in ordinary language—of the top 29 industrialised countries, beaten only by Iceland and Ireland. As the hardship and the squeeze on living standards in this country become clearer in the coming year, the Government will come to rue their decision to cut too far and too fast. People will suffer day in and day out as a result of that decision.
Mr MacNeil
I am not sure what the hon. Lady thought about living standards in the Outer Hebrides when, time after time, she stood at the Dispatch Box as a Minister and said what she could not do and why she could not do it. Does she, in her quieter moments, regret not approaching the European Commission for a rural fuel derogation for the Hebrides and other islands in Scotland?
Ms Eagle
I must continue.
The Chancellor should use the Budget to look again at the annual fuel duty rise due in April, because of the price of fuel in world markets. At this time of instability and change in the middle east and north Africa, the Chancellor has to work with other Finance Ministers to try to keep oil supplies flowing and get world oil prices down.
At the weekend, the Deputy Prime Minister claimed that the Liberal Democrats were
“in the middle, for the middle”.
I say to them this afternoon: prove it. If they really cared about the struggles facing hard-pressed families in Britain, they would join us in the Lobby and vote for our motion. I for one look forward to seeing them.
Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)
My hon. Friend has laid out clearly why a fuel duty stabiliser or regulator would not work in fiscal terms. The tragedy is that the wider UK public, on the back of the Fair Fuel UK campaign, have been sold the idea of a stabiliser while at the same time talking about a reasonable price. Does she have any idea what would be a reasonable price with which people would be satisfied? It would be quite unsustainable, I think.
Ms Eagle
I thank my hon. Friend for his observations, and he is quite right. The stabiliser mechanism relies on our having some idea of the price at which petrol ought to be stabilised, which means guessing right. A wrong guess could lose the Exchequer a lot of money. The question is, when is a rise in fuel prices a blip and when is it a trend? A stabiliser would require a judgment call on that point, too, and if the Government got it wrong it could cost a lot of money.
We have had nothing but delay and dithering on the issue from the coalition parties, despite their electoral promises, which were lavish in the extreme. The Government should be taking action now. Instead, just 10 months in, what do we have? A Foreign Secretary who is looking for his mojo, a Deputy Prime Minister publicly denying being taken hostage by the Prime Minister from inside his £2 million ring of Sheffield steel, and a Business Secretary who is so full of self-importance that he claimed he could bring the Government down single-handed if he was pushed too far. Millions of Britons struggling in the middle of the largest squeeze in living standards for 80 years are hoping and praying that somebody will push him, and push him fast.
Families are crying out for help now, but the Government are cutting too far, too fast and pursuing a dangerous and extreme experiment on the UK economy. Since they came to power, growth has stalled. Today’s unemployment figures are the worst since 1994, and inflation is double the Bank of England’s target. They need to recognise that families need help now, and they need to forget the dogma and join us in the Lobby to vote for this cut.
Justine Greening
I shall not pre-empt next week’s Budget, but the hon. Gentleman knows that both parties in the coalition Government spoke in opposition about the effect of fuel duty on motorists. Conservatives spoke in opposition about how the oil price fed through into fuel prices at the pump, and Liberal Democrats talked about the impact of fuel prices on people living in remote rural areas. The coalition Government are now looking at how to tackle both those problems, but I cannot pre-empt the Budget.
Ms Angela Eagle
Will the Minister now admit that although before the election the Conservatives said they would reduce fuel by 10p a litre if petrol prices were high, they have actually increased fuel duty twice—once in October and once in January—since getting into power?
Justine Greening
Listening to the Opposition is stunning. The outgoing Chief Secretary’s message to the incoming Government was that there was no money left. Worse than that, the previous Government had pre-planned increases, which were due to come in now, as the hon. Lady just pointed out. The bottom line is that it is outrageous for the Labour party to cry crocodile tears about tax increases that it had planned—it is disingenuous in the extreme, and shows that it has no credibility and no leadership on the issues that matter to people, such as motoring, which we are debating today. The audacity of the motion is stunning.
Let me turn—as I was about to—to the Opposition’s proposal to cut VAT on fuel. [Interruption.] The shadow Chancellor is hectoring from a sedentary position, and I think the reason is that he is worried that we are about to talk about his policy—a policy that unravelled within hours of his announcing it. He has come late to the debate on motoring. Obviously he spent many years being driven around in a Government car that the taxpayer paid for. I understand that it was reported in the papers that he used to use it for journeys of just 100 yards. Perhaps he was not aware at that point of how much it cost people to fill up their cars, but perhaps he knows now, and perhaps that is why he has suddenly realised that this is an issue, as we did in opposition. He has come to this debate late, but his policy-making suggestions are, to put it bluntly, illegal under EU law.
It is quite an achievement to make a proposal along those lines. As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) , the shadow Chancellor is quite wrong to say that we can reverse the VAT rise on fuel, because doing so would be illegal under the EU VAT directive. However, if the right hon. Gentleman thinks that the UK operates under a different VAT directive, perhaps he would like to intervene on me right now. [Interruption.] I think we have established that there is only one EU VAT directive, and his proposal is illegal under that directive. The other big flaw in his argument—[Interruption.] Does he want to intervene?
