Finance Bill

I accept that the Government made that admission. It was a candid admission, and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) made the same admission when he first introduced air passenger duty. He said, ““We’re short of money in the Exchequer. We need to find some new taxes.”” The Government of whom he was Chancellor of the Exchequer were famed for introducing new taxes. In the end, that resulted in the problems that our party encountered when it had to face the people in the 1997 general election. That is part of history, but my right hon. and learned Friend was certainly candid about air passenger duty being a revenue-raising tax, and I believe that the Financial Secretary has accepted as much. It has been suggested that it is not a revenue-raising tax but a tax designed to alter behaviour, but how can we alter behaviour when that behaviour has already occurred? It is nonsense to make a green tax retrospective, because the behaviour has already occurred. Unless people withdrew their decision to take a holiday with their children or to embark on a flight for some other reason, the retrospective element of the environmental tax would mean that it had no impact whatever. The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) made a short but pithy contribution. It was one of the most effective bids that I have ever heard for preferment in a forthcoming reshuffle. When I had a junior ministerial role, there was nothing that the Prime Minister and other Cabinet Ministers wanted more than a Minister who would accept that what they said was absolutely the bee’s knees and that there was no reason to argue with it. If the hon. Lady does not gain a ministerial post straight off, perhaps she will be given a position in the Whips’ Office. She would be well—