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AMENDMENT OF THE LAW

That is almost like asking what is the length of a piece of string. I do not know the answer. What I will say is that we need to learn some of the lessons that were not addressed in the first round of the fuel price escalator. At that time it was seen simply as a way of raising revenue for the Exchequer. My argument is that the whole nature of green taxation should be set in a completely different context. There is no case for its being a revenue-raiser for central Government; that defeats the purpose. Allowing people to pay more in order to go on behaving badly will do nothing to change the nature of an unsustainable economy. What is needed is behaviour change rather than revenue gain for the Exchequer. There are also advantages in the use of green taxation as self-taxation and self-reward. If the fuel price escalator is reintroduced, we should say to the industry ““Keep 50 per cent. of the revenue specifically for use in subsidising sustainable and alternative fuel systems.”” That would induce the industry, and invite the motorist, to make more sustainable and ethical choices, because the industry itself would be paying; those who pollute would be paying a premium in order to support those who do not pollute. That is the way to engineer behaviour change. The same principle applies to aviation, even though the idea of the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) about imposing a tax on individual passengers on flights was barking mad. We must do something about aviation’s contribution to climate change damage. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that the only way to achieve that is to set carbon mileage allowances for every airport in the UK based on last year’s passenger miles multiplied by a factor that applies to the energy efficiency of the aircrafts that land. In doing that, we would be saying to each of the airports, ““Your targets for reducing your own carbon emissions will be precisely the same as the targets set for the economy as a whole. How you do that—by the introduction of more efficient planes, for instance, or by changing the make-up of the flights you offer—is down to you, but we cannot pretend that the rest of the economy will be on a course that requires carbon emissions to be built in year on year but that somehow the aviation industry exists on a different planet.””