Finance Bill

No. Obviously, I am not making myself clear, because I am arguing that this is not a retrospective change. The key issue that we have to face is whether vehicle excise duty can be a useful way to combat rises in CO2 emissions. Given the interest in this debate, I am sorry that more hon. Members were not present yesterday when Julia King, of the King review, spoke to the all-party motor group and covered some of these issues. Some of the issues that arose were very interesting. The King review says that if people drive more efficiently, they can probably reduce their carbon emissions by about 15 per cent. It also says that if people choose the most appropriate car for their use, they could probably reduce their carbon emissions from transport by another 15 per cent. If they choose the most fuel-efficient car in the class of car that they use— whether they drive a hatchback or a 4x4—they can reduce their emissions by 25 per cent. Most cars in this country are not the biggest or most expensive. The volume is in the middle and small ranges, so if we want to have an impact on the contribution of road transport, especially cars, on CO2 emissions, we must do something about the middle and lower ranges. In the Opposition day debate on 14 May, I asked the Opposition spokesman if he believed that, in principle, vehicle excise duty should have a role in incentivising customer choice. He said that it should, but only in respect of cars not yet purchased. That is incoherent: it has not been the case before, and it is not the case now. VED rates already in existence apply to cars that people already own, not just those that they buy in the future. When people buy cars, they do not, by and large, buy new cars. Fleets do, but private customers tend to buy second-hand cars. Therefore, the decisions about the rate of vehicle excise duty should apply to existing cars—those that people own already—and not just to new ones. VED rates can incentivise people to embrace greener motoring in two ways. First, the incentive can be to buy a car with lower CO2 emissions. The second way is by influencing the decisions whether and when to change vehicle. The problem with the new clause is that it contains no incentive for people who already have cars with the highest emissions to change them. That is illogical, because the environmental performance of cars in all segments of the market is improving year on year. If, as some people suggest, taxation is weighted on to new vehicles and second-hand cars are exempted, people will be incentivised to keep vehicles that are less fuel-efficient, instead of changing to newer ones in the same class that are more fuel-efficient. As I said, the King review said that if consumers chose the lowest emission car in their class, they could reduce their carbon emissions by 25 per cent. Do such incentives work in practice? I would like to think that exhortations to save the planet would get us somewhere. In fact, some surveys suggest that it is not as simple as that. What Car? did a survey on the impact of this year's Budget on whether people would choose a greener car next time they buy. The bad news is that 34 per cent. of people said no, the Budget would have no impact at all. However, of those who said yes 19 per cent. said that they would be incentivised to buy a greener new car because they felt that they were being encouraged to save the planet, while 47 per cent. of people said that they would buy a greener car because it would save them money. The economic aspects have an impact. Of course, there is a balance to be struck with affordability, and that is why I have some problems with the Government's proposal. The problem with what the Government have been doing does not lie in the principle, and Conservative Members are wrong to say that it does. There are problems with the detail and the phasing of the change. It is right to increase the number of vehicle excise duty bands to equate better with the environmental performance of vehicles, but there can be a Catch-22 for low-income families if the increases and the way in which they are phased are too steep. Someone cannot get rid of an existing vehicle and move to a more fuel-efficient vehicle if, as an Opposition Member mentioned earlier, the second-hand value of their vehicle is reduced to such an extent that they cannot sell it and buy a different one. However, if they do not sell their original car, they are still hit by the increase. There are issues with affordability and people's ability to pay. We must take on board the impact on families with children, who require bigger vehicles, on the disabled and so on. At a time where we have a difficult economic situation, with fuel prices making people think more carefully about the cost of motoring, the precise way in which the change is made needs to be rethought. However, the right way to do that is to think about the subject properly between now and the pre-Budget report and to consider the best way of achieving the objectives that we want to achieve, rather than having a knee-jerk reaction today. We need to look at how the economic circumstances of the time relate to what we need to do with vehicle excise duty. We need to look at whether we can tax things better, particularly when fuel prices are fluctuating as much as they are at the moment. We could consider some forms of incentives to stimulate more fuel-efficient driving. We could consider, for instance, doing something about reducing the motoring taxation of people who go on eco-driving courses, which exist these days. We could look at incentivising the fitting of dashboard displays that remind people how much fuel they are using and, if possible, what that costs. We could provide more obvious customer information, and the King review has proposed a number of examples of how we could do that. People need to understand what is being proposed, and when taxes are raised through motoring they need to be clearly hypothecated towards road transport and the kind of objectives that we want, such as improving the fuel efficiency of cars. Finally, we need to consider whether in the current climate it makes a lot of sense to maintain the price differential between diesel and petrol when diesel vehicles, by and large, are a lot more fuel-efficient than petrol vehicles. We need to think about how we can incentivise research and development into more fuel-efficient vehicles and put more money into investment in that R and D. That is why we need more thorough thinking on that matter and we need to take time to do it. That is why we have to do it in the pre-Budget report. It is completely wrong to try to bounce the view of the House and the public in an over-simplistic way, as the Opposition are doing today.