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Proposals can help cut fuel rates in North - for The Inverness Courier
THIS week, I and my Highland Liberal Democrat MP colleagues, John Thurso and Charles Kennedy, will put to the House of Commons our idea that there should be a lower level of fuel duty in remote rural areas.
We hope to amend the Finance Bill to allow a reduction, as happens in France, Greece and Portugal. We have pushed this proposal in each of the last two years but MPs from less remote parts of the country have failed to support it.
I hope that the massive rise in fuel prices over the last year will have changed minds. People across the Highlands are paying a huge price for the rising cost of diesel and petrol — it hits us harder because of the higher price, longer distances, and absence of other alternatives.
There has at least been a change in the government's tone. Two years ago, the then treasury minister John Healey was dismissive, comparing the price of fuel in the Highlands to the price of a pint of beer in London.
By contrast, when we met treasury minister Angela Eagle a couple of weeks ago, she agreed for the first time to look at the evidence for our proposal. So I hope the government will respond positively this week — the relief our plan would bring is desperately needed.
High fuel costs are not the only frustration for people trying to get around our area, the lack of progress on much-needed investment in our transport infrastructure is still a real headache.
After all the progress that has been made in putting together plans for the Inverness Trunk Link Road (TLR), it was deeply disappointing the Scottish transport minister, Stewart Stevenson, was unwilling to make any sort of commitment to providing the necessary funding when he was in Inverness last week.
The TLR is an essential investment for Inverness as roads are increasingly congested at busy times and the connection between the A9, A96 and A82 is not what it should be. Getting the development started is also essential to the development of the proposed new university campus in Inverness.
It is a great shame the minister was not able to echo the commitment made by his predecessor, Tavish Scott, that when the detailed plans are finished, funds will be made available.
Instead, this project, along with many other essential investments in the A9, the A96, the bypass for Nairn, much-needed rail investment, have been kicked into a nationwide review, with no guarantee they will be successful.
Even the much-needed and inexpensive rail halt at the airport, which was to have been built this year, has been stopped by the government's decision to take transport partnership HiTrans' budget away.
Sadly, we have to consider the possibility that the grandiloquent promises made by the SNP in opposition may not be delivered.
Last week, the Independent/SNP administration in the Highland council collapsed. It has been suggested this frustration at lack of delivery in Holyrood may have had more to do with the breakdown in the local authority than the personality differences that have been publicly blamed.
I hope that whatever new administration emerges will reverse the centralisation of power in the Highlands over the last 15 months and do a better job of arguing our case in Edinburgh.
A year of Brown
Last weekend Gordon Brown marked the end of his first year in office.
I doubt the champagne corks will have been popping at Number 10. Mr Brown's claims to have been the author of Britain's benign economy over the last 10 years were always over-blown and now he is being held responsible for the massive financial pressure that high prices are putting on families.
The world economy does have a big effect on Britain but matters are much worse because of bad decisions to inflate personal debt and allow the housing market to get out of control.
It is ordinary people who are now paying the price for these mistakes.
Posted on: 01/07/2008
