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Finance Bill

I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, but the scheme does interact with vehicle excise duty, which is in the Bill. We need to consider the impact of the two on the environment, because part of the purpose of the scrappage scheme and the vehicle excise duty changes is to try to reduce this country's carbon footprint. Reading the Bill, it seems to me that, owing to the law of unintended consequences, the scrappage scheme and the vehicle excise duty changes have the potential to make a greater carbon impact, because there will be disincentives to buying new cars and getting rid of old ones. This Government often find themselves in difficulties with the law of unintended consequences. When intervening on my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham, I briefly mentioned the law of unintended consequences in respect of the higher imposition of duty on alcohol and tobacco. It is a campaign that I have long fought; I have done so since 1994. The introduction of the single market has destabilised the alcohol and tobacco markets significantly, because of smuggling. Obviously, there has been a reduction in the value of the pound, and it could be argued that some of that is counter-cyclical, so the attraction of smuggling will not be as great. However, there is already some evidence that the pound's value is changing, and these matters are very price sensitive. A long-standing friend, who was a very wise person and ran businesses throughout Europe, would say that, if the price differential was 6 per cent., nobody would cross borders, but that when it became 6.5 per cent. they would all cross borders. We will therefore see whether tobacco and alcohol smuggling rises up the political agenda—again as an issue of unintended consequences. Many people have made many serious points, and I do not want to repeat them. However, I shall finish by saying that the Bill does not deal with this country's problems in order to get us out of the recession. I shall not repeat the arguments about the levels of Government borrowing, because we all know them, they are horrific and the Government are doing nothing about them, and I shall not talk about the black hole or any other bigger issues that people who are much more expert than I am have dealt with at much greater length. However, I am very conscious that, from an incompetent Government, we have an incompetent Bill that will not, sadly, lead to a better standard of living or to hope for our people, which is what the Finance Bill should have set out to do.