MP in call to cut fuel duty in rural North Yorkshire

7:39am Wednesday 27th February 2013 in News

AN appeal for rural areas of North Yorkshire to secure lower fuel bills and better flooding insurance for the region’s residents has been made to Chancellor George Osborne by a North Yorkshire MP.

Ahead of next month’s budget, Thirsk and Malton MP Anne McIntosh said she was “making the strongest possible case” for parts of her constituency to be considered for a rural fuel duty rebate if a pilot scheme is extended.

She said Hambleton and Ryedale had some of the highest prices in the country and residents had to drive further to fill up because of the rural nature of the areas.

She also said she was concerned many homes will have no insurance cover against flooding when a safety-net agreement called “statement of principles”, committing insurers to offer insurance to customers at significant risk of floods, expires at the end of June, saying a levy on household contents and buildings insurance through the “insurance premium tax” could be used to wholly or partially replace it.

Miss McIntosh has written to the Chancellor to state her case, saying: “High fuel duty is crippling the rural economy and having a high impact on families, the elderly and vulnerable and businesses. Public services, school buses, waste collections and emergency services are also costing more to deliver in rural areas due to this.”

Comments(5)

Fourkov says...
7:55am Wed 27 Feb 13

If you choose to live somewhere, pay the costs of living there. Why should the rest of the tax payers subsidise the poor country peasants. What next. Those poor penthouse dwellers in London who are paying a fortune in rent and council tax should be subsidised? Typical tory attention seeking idiocy.

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Cari6192 says...
10:52am Wed 27 Feb 13

Not everyone lives in the rural areas by choice. Some of us work in them.

Along with farmers (it's a bit difficult to grow crops in the middle of town, although it could be interesting seeing a combine going around the centre of York) there are also those of us that are part of the service industry based in the communities, e.g pubs, those that still have them shops, etc.

And then there's the poor public transport.

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neutral observer 2 says...
12:17pm Wed 27 Feb 13

Imprisonment for using red diesel.

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Caecilius says...
5:11pm Wed 27 Feb 13

And how much sympathy did residents of our overwhelmingly Conservative-voting rural communities show when Thatcher's policies were throwing hundreds of thousands out of work in urban areas and destroying whole industries? They've always been very keen to vote for everybody else to be left to the mercy of market forces, while simultaneously expecting the rest of us to subsidise, massively, their own chosen way of life. Let them have a taste of their own medicine. If we can now import the products that British manufacturing industry once produced, we can import food as well.

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gjh says...
6:05pm Wed 27 Feb 13

Back in November when MPs voted against blocking the 3 pence rise, Miss McIntosh did not vote. Surely if she was that concerned about high fuel duty "crippling the rural economy and having a high impact on families, the elderly and vulnerable and businesses" she would have cast a vote to block. But that would have been contrary to her party line.

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