---

Climate Change

I can assure the hon. Lady that it is not peculiar economics at all. The reality is that often an ongoing tax, with an ongoing change in price, is needed to bring about an ongoing change in behaviour. We find that with traditional sin taxes, such as tobacco tax, and indeed with the congestion charge. There is no real conflict of the sort that she suggests; one can, for example, calculate what the behaviour of car buyers will be in response to what happens on vehicle excise duty. The Energy Saving Trust—and, I believe, the Department for Transport, but the Secretary of State will correct me if I am wrong—commissioned work from MORI that suggests that our proposals, which we introduced during the Finance Bill, and for which we voted for recently at the Liberal Democrat conference, would help two thirds of new car buyers to achieve lower emissions. Clearly, that would still leave a substantial amount of revenue, and I am grateful to the hon. Lady for pointing that out, as it means that we can direct that revenue towards lifting the low-paid out of income tax altogether and cutting the income tax burden.