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Finance Bill

Indeed it does. The Government face the peril of being more successful than they intended to be. That leads me neatly to my second concern about the proposals made by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), which is that the straightforward commercial or financial incentives to pick lower-emission cars would be reduced. My party wants those incentives to be in place. The right hon. Gentleman makes an interest point about the impact of some behavioural taxes on different social groups. Tobacco taxation, for example, has a disproportionately large impact on people in the lower income deciles, because they have a greater propensity to smoke. That is one of the reasons why, in percentage terms, the total tax burden on people on lower incomes is in many cases greater than the burden on people on higher incomes. There is a serious social question to be asked about some of the behavioural taxes, but it applies less to VED because many people in the lowest two or three income deciles cannot afford to drive—although I take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith) that that is more true in urban areas than in rural areas: some people in rural areas on very low incomes have to drive. However, large numbers of people, particularly in cities, on low incomes do not have cars, and those on relatively low incomes who do have cars tend to pick models with smaller engines, although not exclusively, of course. My point is that the social impact of VED differentials is less pronounced than that of other forms of behavioural taxation.