Finance Bill

The hon. Lady’s question makes my very point: the problem is that the Government do not create any definitions. They have grand schemes but do not define what we need to do or where we are going. As I said, the background to the regulations’ introduction is not reassuring. We do not seem to know where we are now, let alone where we will be in 2012 or 2016. The Deputy Prime Minister once said, in an immortal phrase, that the green belt was a"““Labour achievement and the Government intend to build on it.””" In a similar vein, the Economic Secretary accused Opposition Members of being"““consistent in their opposition to taking forward concrete action on the environment””—––[Official Report, Finance Public Bill Committee, 15 May 2007; c. 134.]" Clearly, there was no irony there. My hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) has exposed how successful the Government have been at concreting over the environment. They are at the top of the class in that respect, but the foundations of their proposals on eco-homes are a little less concrete. Such homes involve technology that is new and untested. Either it does not yet exist, or it is experimental and somewhat uncommon. The choice depends largely on the mood of the Economic Secretary. We are justified in feeling a little suspicious of the Government’s record on using taxation to effect behaviour change. I was concerned in Committee, and I remain concerned now, that the Government have proposed a tax relief that will chug along for several years without regular monitoring, and then simply stop. In addition, the relief is founded on the paradoxical assumption that it will contribute in some way to the Chancellor’s thrice-announced 100,000 new eco-homes for a magical total of—and I do not get the maths here— 200,000 by 2016. According to the Red Book, those houses will come in at a cost of only £15 million by 2102. Either the incentive will be used widely, in which case it will cost more than the £15 million predicted by the Government, or it will not work and will need to be rethought. I pointed out in Committee, and it is worth reiterating now, that some £130 million has been spent on seven millennium communities, delivering homes to the ““excellent”” standard. I was amused to see—I made this point in Committee—that one of the seven communities, in east Manchester, was, in true new Labour fashion, named New Islington. It is a wonder that the Chancellor did not go the whole hog and call a street there Granita or New Granita. The fact remains that, after 10 years, the homes have not been delivered, so the idea that a large number of homes will be built in time to take advantage of clause 19 is optimistic—or indeed over-optimistic. The Economic Secretary talked of a non-linear projection for uptake, but was unable to provide figures for the uptake of eco-homes by the 2012 cut-off point for the regulations. Even using a curve rather than a straight line, it ought to be possible to extrapolate back from the aspiration of 200,000 eco-homes in 2016 and give us at least a ball-park figure for uptake by 2012—it could even be a Gallions Park figure. In the absence of that figure, my hon. Friends have proposed the only workable answer to the Treasury’s remarkable opacity and confusion on eco-homes by requiring an annual review of the policy to see whether it is having the intended effect. The Economic Secretary offered the Committee a vague and open-ended commitment to review the regulations in or around 2012, if he is still around. That is not really a commitment at all, because it seems to depend on the prevailing circumstances. He also contends that this is a bold, innovative and radical policy, but let us hope that the Government have paid enough attention to his fourth adjective of choice and ensured that it is also coherent and that eco-homes will in future receive annual scrutiny.