Budget ‘06
Another year, another budget - but what’s in Gordon’s red box for Vox Polis readers? Pleasingly, there’s £50m pounds for our perennial favourite microgeneration. It’s certainly good to see support for home generation at the level of the chancellor but to put it in perspective £50m is only £2 per home in the UK. At this stage there’s not much word on how the new money will be distributed which has been the problem with previous subsidies for homeowners attempting to reduce their energy usage.
The budget also brought an increase in vehicle duty for more inefficient cars. Again good news but with a maximum tax of £210 once again it doesn’t go far enough. Also fuel tax increases have been deferred until September, an increase in the cost of petrol would have been far more effective in discouraging people from making wasteful journeys.
Finally there’s news that the climate change levy (the tax on use unclean energy by industry) will finally begin to increase with inflation from next year. The slant that isn’t been put on this is that for this year (and since its introduction) the levy will be decreasing in real terms.
So all in all the budget indicates that the government are still failing to face up to the hard measures needed to bring about genuine reductions in our country’s impact on the climate. Call me cynical but I’m not surprised.