Making fuel prices fairer

The cost of filling up the car with fuel is again frequently at the forefront of people’s minds as the average price of a litre of petrol across Scotland has risen to £1.20 and is over £1.30 in some areas. At a time when budgets are already tight, this is an extremely unwelcome additional cost for families to bear.

For many in rural areas, the relative remoteness and weather conditions such as those we saw earlier in the year make regularly using a car an absolute necessity rather than a personal choice. This inevitably means that when we see a spike in fuel prices, those who have to use their car most often are the ones that pay the biggest price.

In Banff & Buchan, fuel prices have a significant impact on many aspects of the fishing industry and the profitability of their businesses. The road haulage industry too, relying as it clearly does upon fuel, is particularly vulnerable to fluctuations in what they pay at the pumps. Any business needs to be able to predict what its operating costs will be with some degree of certainty if it is to be successful, but this is obviously extremely difficult when a business relies so heavily upon variable fuel prices.

This is why the SNP has long been pressing for the introduction of a fuel duty regulator which would see the substantial tax duties placed upon road fuel go down when the price of oil goes up. When the price of oil goes past a certain point, a freeze in fuel duty would kick in while any extra cash raised from increased VAT receipts on higher fuel prices would be used to fund a corresponding reduction in fuel duty. This would give much needed stability to fuel prices at the pump and even out the spikes in forecourt prices that we see when the price of oil rockets.

This measure has the backing of numerous industry groups that rely upon petrol or diesel to operate, including the Road Haulage Association, the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation and the National Farmers Union Scotland. However, each time that the SNP group in Westminster has tried to introduce it in recent years, the London parties have joined forces to block the measure. This makes some of the fuel related promises trotted out recently in other parties’ election manifestos hypocritical at best and downright disingenuous at worst.

Motorists, the haulage industry and other businesses like the fishing and farming sectors don’t need empty promises trotted out during election campaigns when it comes to fuel prices, they need the kind of action that only the SNP group in Westminster has been consistently pressing for over the years.

Leading the way

I have written frequently about the way in which Banff & Buchan’s fishing industry is leading the rest of Europe when it comes to introducing pioneering new techniques aimed at securing a sustainable, profitable future for everyone in the sector. This was recently underlined by a recent visit from a Dutch delegation to Scotland, examining the way in which the Conservation Credits Scheme operates.

The Dutch delegation looked at a range of conservation measures that are in use across the Scottish fishing fleet, such as real time closures and selective fishing gears, and how they feed in to the Conservation Credits Scheme. With other European Union countries adopting the measures pioneered in Scotland, I have a feeling that the Dutch will not be the last visitors who come to learn from the example our fishing industry continues to set.