Finance Bill

The hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman) talked about the need for an annual report on top of whatever is in the Green and Red Books. What we see on microgeneration in this year’s Red Book makes that case more strongly than anything. It makes statements that seem on the face of it to be incredibly positive, such as:"““The Government today announces that it will allocate a further £6 million—making a total investment of over £18 million—to Phase One of the Low Carbon Buildings Programme for households.””" If one considers that statement in the wider context, one realises that at that point the low-carbon buildings programme was suspended altogether, and that when it was restarted at the end of last month, the maximum grant of £15,000 that was available to households had been reduced to £2,500. As the hon. Member for Braintree (Mr. Newmark) said, the cost of photovoltaic cells is considerable. Many campaigning climate change organisations have been vitriolic about the impact that the change has had. They would far rather extend to more households the opportunity of taking up this option as opposed to probably making it prohibitively expensive for them to do so. The devil is always in the detail, and often the Red Book is not the place to see all the information presented in the most appropriate way. I very much welcome the amendments, which reiterate the spirit of those tabled in Committee of the whole House. It is important to make clear the impact of such measures and to be certain that they are not a green fig leaf for a Bill that otherwise contains very few environmental measures and shows the Government’s timidity in pushing forward this issue. The hon. Member for Wycombe referred to an aspect that I highlighted in Committee of the whole House. Clauses 20 and 21 limit the amount of tax relief available on the basis of an individual’s intention not to generate more electricity than would ““significantly exceed”” that needed for personal use. I do not see why it is necessary to limit it in that way. Surely we should be encouraging people to use the maximum capacity that they have available at a personal level. Moreover, there is already a definition of microgeneration in section 26 of the Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Act 2006:"““the use for the generation of electricity or the production of heat of any plant””." It then lists the sources of energy and technologies that must be used to qualify for that definition: biomass, biofuels, fuel cells, photovoltaics, water, wind, solar power, geothermals and combined heat and power systems. It also defines the capacity of a microgeneration system: 50 kW for the generation of electricity and 45 kW thermal for the production of heat. Given that we have that incredibly specific definition of microgeneration, why is it necessary for the Bill to limit the scheme on the basis of the individual’s personal use and intentions? That makes absolutely no sense and prompts the question of what impact and benefit it will have. How will it affect people’s behaviour, and how is the Government able to assess that? Surely, as the scheme is based only on what people intend to use, the threshold will be so low that there will not be any real incentive for them to take microgeneration on board. What happens in circumstances where they mistakenly produce more electricity than they intend for their personal use? What happens if they have a wind turbine and it blows a gale throughout the middle of the autumn? What would be their intention in that situation? In a whole series of areas, the measure is, on the surface, very welcome, but what is not welcome is the way in which it is limited. On that basis, I commend amendments Nos. 3, 4 and 5, which are virtually identical to amendments tabled in my name and those of my hon. Friends in Committee of the whole House and the amendment tabled last year by the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson). I would hope that the Minister welcomes them as a way of beefing up what is essentially a very weak green thread running through the Bill.