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AMENDMENT OF THE LAW

No, it is not a delicate matter; it would be a foolish thing for anyone to do. It is not a matter of standing up for the rich against the poor. That is the point that I am making, and it is why I particularly stressed the maximin principle that John Rawls established. That is why I said that for a poxy £500 million to £800 million we should not risk our economy losing a potential £3.5 billion, £4.5 billion or £7.5 billion. I want to ensure that we get this right, so that that money is spent protecting the poor and so that we have the resources to increase the fuel duty allowance and to take 250,000 children out of poverty. My fear is that the uncertainty will put people off. It was a bad measure, and it was a bad measure when the Conservatives suggested it. The criticism from the Conservative Benches was quite rich, given that the Conservatives launched the policy. It is a terrible thing when we cannot trust the official Opposition to get their sums right in the first place so that we can steal their policy. I have welcomed taxation as an instrument of social justice. However, it can be used not only to redistribute wealth but to change behaviour. I am pleased to welcome the measures announced today to increase revenues from plane duty by 10 per cent. in the second year and to exclude from road tax in the first year cars with emissions lower than 130 g per kilometre. Those measures seem genuinely designed to change behaviour and to encourage people to pollute less. That is important, because such fiscal measures, if not designed to change behaviour, tend to operate against the first objective of taxation, which I believe is social justice, because they allow the rich to go on polluting, but they stop the poor from engaging in the same behaviour. Because of that, the fiscal neutrality such as that urged by the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) is not always a salient point and is not necessarily just. If additional revenues are raised from rich polluters, they can be redistributed to poorer citizens who have been forced to change their behaviour. That undermines the point that he made earlier.