Finance Bill

I am looking for a sentence that will sum up the what the official Opposition feel about clauses 20 and 21, about new clause 1, about the Liberal amendments to the clauses and to new clause 1, and about what the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson) has just said. That sentence is: ““The Red Book only takes us so far.”” It takes us only so far in relation to the two clauses before us because, although they are microgeneration measures—they are welcome, and we do not intend to oppose them—page 177 of the Red Book does not tell us how effective the Treasury expects them to be. In other words, it does not say what it expects the incentive effects of them to be over what period of time, or how many extra microgeneration systems the Treasury expects to be installed by how many people over what period of time. The House would like to have that information. The theme of the limitations of the Red Book brings me to new clause 1. Last year, this measure was proposed as new clause 9, and I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Nottingham, South for drafting it. It was voted on last year, and supported by the hon. Gentleman and other Labour Members, as well as by us and the Liberals. It was a good new clause, and it is worth returning to it this year, which is why we have re-tabled it. I have all the quotes from the speech that the hon. Gentleman made last year, but I am not going to quote him; he is perfectly capable of speaking for himself. His argument, in essence, is that the Treasury is the powerhouse. It has been powerhousing domestic politics since the war, and it does not grow any less powerful as the years go by. Indeed, under this Chancellor, it is growing more powerful. If the microgeneration drive is to be taken seriously, we do not simply need the description of what the Government are seeking to do, as outlined on page 177 of the Red Book. We need an annual assessment of how effective their strategy is, of its framework, of the take-up of the measures and of whether that take-up is successful. When the Financial Secretary responded to the debate on the proposal last year, he did a very workmanlike job, as he always does. He referred us back to the Red Book, but there is a prevailing feeling in the House now that that simply will not do if the Treasury is to drive this strategy forward. I agreed substantially with what the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy) said about these proposals. She made a good case for her amendment to our new clause, and we certainly have no difficulty with it. She also asked the Minister some pertinent questions about the necessity of the subsections of the two clauses that would apparently limit the amount of energy produced by microgeneration. I shall not repeat her questions; I shall simply ask the Chief Secretary to respond to them in due course, and to give us some reason to believe that the Treasury really is going to put itself in the driving seat in relation to microgeneration, rather than leaving it to other Departments that do not have the Treasury’s muscle.