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Finance (No. 2) Bill

I thank the Chief Secretary for his kind welcome, and congratulate the Chairman of the Treasury Committee on an excellent report and on his quiet, unassuming—but devastating—analysis of the Bill. For me, the Bill’s significance lies mostly in what it omits, not what it includes. There were great opportunities in the Bill, but they have been wasted. Perhaps the Chancellor is becoming a little slapdash in his impatience to move next door in Downing street. It is the Government’s failure to act on the environment that is the biggest opportunity wasted by the Bill—a point already touched on by the right hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Mr. McFall). Last week, both the Chancellor and the Leader of the Official Opposition made speeches about the importance of the environment. The Chancellor spoke of the ““moral duty”” of the developed world to tackle climate change and the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) spoke of the need to reduce carbon emissions by a third. But the Chancellor’s Finance Bill contains very few environmental measures and the Conservatives have made no hard and fast commitments to explain how they would achieve such cuts.