Baroness Boycott
Main Page: Baroness Boycott (Crossbench - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Boycott's debates with the Cabinet Office
(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, I welcome all the new noble Lords to this House and I welcome their maiden speeches.
This week the Government published their draft environmental principles policy statement, which says that policymakers must “have due regard to” the principles in their decision-making. However, there is an exception for
“taxation, spending or the allocation of resources within government.”
This would suggest that HMT is not on board with the Government’s green agenda and that it has plans to make decisions that could go against these principles. One of the principles is that the polluter pays. How is this possible if there is an exemption for taxing, spending or the allocation of resources, as the Treasury must lead the way on carbon prices? If departments cannot raise taxes themselves, how on earth are we to get the polluter to pay? Fines or fee charges, which are suggested, can never be consistent or realistically workable. Can the Minister please say what is going to happen? Also uncertain is whether a Treasury decision would overrule a departmental decision or whether a department wanting to do something not within the spirit of the principles could ask the Treasury to make that decision on its behalf. This strikes me as a loophole.
The revised Green Book, by which the Treasury judges fiscal policy, supposedly takes account of net zero—in fact, it should be front and centre—but if decisions such as cutting air passenger duty for domestic flights, when in the majority of cases there are rail alternatives, passes this new test, what is the point? It does not work. Why are we still making flying cheaper and travelling by train more expensive? Climate change and biodiversity loss, which were so shatteringly revealed by Professor Dasgupta’s recent report, commissioned by the Treasury, can no longer be kicked down the road. However, this current Budget might give the impression that that is exactly what we are doing.