Finance Bill

The hon. Lady is right; the amendment is limited. I considered tabling another amendment stating that clause 12 should not apply in respect of anybody who paid for and ordered their tickets before 6 December. She has referred to another mischief, which is one of the reasons why a number of us are concerned about clause 12 in general. In a sense, that is a separate argument. It is a strand of the same retrospection issue, but speaking in strict parliamentary terms, I am talking about not increasing taxes on people in this country without allowing Parliament to vote on those increases. Although the Government say that they have only one Budget a year, they are using the pre-Budget report as an opportunity to announce tax increases—in this case, a tax increase of £1 billion a year—so the Chancellor can come along on Budget day and say, ““This is a neutral Budget.”” That is exactly what he did this time, having conveniently forgotten that he had already announced a £1 billion tax increase in his pre-Budget report, for which he had not legislated or obtained parliamentary approval. The issue is important, and I am glad that there is concern among Conservative Front Benchers and in the wider House about retrospection. I want briefly to examine the idea that the tax is somehow justifiable because it is ““green”” or ““environmental””. I will not get into what I think is partly a semantic debate about whether this is a proper environmental tax—although in my view it is not. Even if it were an environmental tax, Conservative party policy, which has been announced by my hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor, is that we support green taxes, but only if they are offset by reductions in taxes elsewhere. The shadow Chancellor put it this way when he addressed the issue in an interview in ““The World at One”” on 1 February, following my point of order on the previous day:"““I think there is a case for green taxes and bringing in an aviation tax but they should be replacement taxes””." That is not consistent with saying, ““We can’t vote against any tax increases proposed by this Government.”” We have said, as a matter of policy, that we will vote against tax increases, and particularly those that purport to be green tax increases, unless they are accompanied by offsetting reductions in tax. The amendment is modest, and it does not go as far as some would wish, but it states the important principle, which we should stick to through thick and thin in this House, that we should not introduce retrospective taxation.