Finance Bill

I am grateful to you for that guidance, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Climate change is already happening in the United Kingdom. The Government are taking steps to adapt, such as by enabling us to build things such as flood defences, but we are not doing enough in that regard, and the Finance Bill represents a missed opportunity. Let me set out the sorts of steps that we should be taking, and for which there should have been tax reliefs in the Budget—to refer to the point of the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne as to how the Budget as a revenue-raising measure intersects with this issue. We should have more tax reliefs than those that currently exist in our financial regime, and those that the Finance Bill introduces should be stronger. We should also have had some new tax reliefs. There should be tax reliefs for adaptation measures. I broadly agree with a point made by the right hon. Member for Wokingham, when he told me to look at what his Conservative Government did when they were faced with a campaign for lead-free air. A tax regime was introduced whereby there was a tax discount— not a tax relief—for unleaded petrol. When it was introduced, some people found that their car needed no adaptation whatsoever. I was putting in unleaded petrol before there was a tax break and, at one point in 1985, there were only two petrol stations in the entire city of Wolverhampton that offered unleaded petrol. I was driving a Volkswagen, which did not need any adaptation at all. However, other cars, on slightly different technology, needed adaptation, which at that time cost about £30, if I remember correctly. A tax differential of lower excise duty for unleaded petrol than for leaded petrol massively boosted what had been a tiny market almost overnight. It happened very quickly—within a year, I estimate. There was at that point no legislation banning leaded petrol; perhaps there should have been, but there was not. The shift was driven by the market, which was driven by fiscal changes. In the Finance Bill, there should have been more such general measures to do with adaptation for dealing with the effects of climate change. I would like boosted research and development tax credits. They have already been boosted a lot by the Government, and there are also some changes to them in the Finance Bill. I understand that what I say on this is open to a charge of complexity, but we will need boosted R and D for endeavours such as research into the medicines that we will need to deal with the new diseases that we will get in this country, such as malaria. It will not just be cases of malaria in people who have been on holiday: we will also have malaria in southern England because of climate change as rising temperatures mean that malarial mosquitoes will come into our country. Research must be done on that. We also need research on the kind of crops that we will be able to grow in this country. We will not simply be able to transplant a crop that has grown in a more southerly latitude, because the configuration of daylight hours is different the further north we go. In some places, there are longer summers and shorter winters, so we cannot always simply transplant a crop from Algeria or Malaga, for instance, up to Margate or Manchester to replace those that might no longer be viable because of shortages of water and higher temperatures. There must be a research and development push on that. Steps are being taken, but we need to encourage that further with fiscal measures that I would have liked to have been included in the Finance Bill. There is a similar point to be made on biodiversity, and The Wildlife Trusts is doing a great job in driving that. It produced a document on,"““Adaptation to climate change. Sustainable local economies. Abundant wildlife. Healthy cities and green space for all?." The document was produced last year, and I went to TWT’s excellent reception in the Members’ Dining Room. Many other groups are also taking such steps, but they need some fiscal encouragement. The VAT regime has been referred to indirectly, and perhaps ironically, from the other side of the equation by my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller). There has been some levity on Opposition Benches regarding changes in measures such as stamp duty land tax for low-carbon homes; Opposition Members chuckle to themselves about how many low-carbon homes there might be. There is a fiscal measure in the Finance Bill to do with tackling climate change, which the reasoned amendment decries the Government for not doing. It is a measure to make a market and drive a market. In and of itself, it will not make or drive a market, and it is not equivalent to the situation with regard to unleaded petrol, but it is similar: it is a fiscal measure to try to kick-start a market.