The Welsh Liberal Democrats have this week called on the UK Government to extend the Rural Fuel Duty Relief scheme to rural parts of Wales, after highlighting that rural Welsh communities were explicitly excluded from the scheme when it was designed by the Conservatives.

Speaking in a debate in Parliament, Welsh Lib Dem Westminster Spokesperson David Chadwick MP criticised the way the scheme was set up, which currently applies to areas across rural England and rural Scotland, but excludes every part of rural Wales due to how the Conservative Government at the time designed the scheme.

Rural Fuel Duty Relief helps bring costs down for motorists in rural areas, where drivers are estimated to spend around £800 more a year on fuel than those living in urban communities. Under the scheme, fuel retailers can apply for a 5p per litre rebate on petrol and diesel, which is passed directly on to consumers through lower prices at the pump.

Despite Wales being one of the most rural nations in the UK, Conservative Ministers chose not to include any Welsh areas when the scheme was established. As a result, rural drivers in Wales have been left paying higher fuel costs than their counterparts in England and Scotland for more than a decade.

The Welsh Liberal Democrats have long called for this exclusion to be corrected. The party has proposed a consultation to identify which areas should qualify for the relief, with Powys, Ceredigion, Carmarthenshire and Gwynedd among the areas identified as likely to benefit most.

The Liberal Democrats have also committed to introducing a Pumpwatch scheme, allowing drivers to easily compare fuel prices and protecting them from rip-off pricing. A similar scheme already operates in Northern Ireland, which consistently has some of the lowest fuel prices in the UK. Although the Government previously promised to introduce Pumpwatch, it failed to deliver before the end of the Parliament.