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Fuel Duty

I enjoyed the speech of the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable), who made some important points. I will return to a couple of them. One of the hon. Gentleman's points was particularly well made: those of us who feel that the way that motorists are taxed must change should ensure that we are not double accounting in relation to where the money comes from and goes to. If one revenue is to offset a tax, we must ensure that we are not offsetting in two different places. It is clear to me from the Conservatives' recent announcements that they are doing precisely that. As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, their family-friendly proposal is that fuel duties should be put into a pot to offset income tax and be treated as green taxes. However, they are also talking about offsetting those same revenues against motoring taxes. That is clearly double accounting and it does not stack up. I am not going to attack the principle of what the Conservatives propose because, as I said in an intervention, I proposed something similar in an article on the Progress website. I would claim that they have nicked my policy rather than that of the Scottish nationalists. However, whether it is the SNP's policy or my policy that has been stolen, the only added value that we have had from the Conservatives is that they spent the past three weeks with a thesaurus, coming up with a different word to describe the policy.