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Mr. David Nicholson (Taunton): Raising the proportion to 60 or 70 per cent. on a national basis may be practicable, but to do so for every shire county might be difficult. I speak of Somerset, which I know reasonably well, whose relatively small towns do not have the brown-field sites that exist in the great conurbations. Yet it is to places such as Somerset--and, indeed, Suffolk--that people are trying to move their businesses and homes.
Mr. Yeo: I accept that it may not be possible to apply the target at micro-level to every district planning authority, and that to achieve the 75 per cent. target that I suggested we would need to consider a broader distribution of the way in which housing need is met, but only by imposing a national target can we ensure that the effects trickle down through the system and provide enough pressure and incentives for developers to consider ways of meeting housing needs other than the use of green-field sites.
I fully understand that demand from consumers is now strongly oriented towards the rural areas. That is unsustainable in itself, and what I have suggested would enable us to reorient the demand a little. If we approached planning matters in that way, we could make the planning system a genuine guardian of land that needs protection.
That should be backed up by a levy payable on any new green-field development, which would encourage developers to consider the alternatives more carefully. For example, a levy of £60,000 per hectare would generate more than £200 million a year even if the present rate of green-field development were halved. It would increase the price of a new house on a quarter-acre green-field site by £6,000, thus making alternative property relatively more attractive. To sweeten the pill, part of the proceeds could be applied to restoring derelict land.
Much is already happening to make our transport policy more sustainable. Railway privatisation, of which I have long been an enthusiastic supporter, is the first and long overdue step towards rebuilding a golden age of rail, which should reverse the long-term decline in the railways' share of passenger and freight movement.
I welcome the Budget changes in fuel and vehicle excise duties, which give a valuable environmental tweak to the taxation system for cars and lorries. However, the changes need to be taken further if the increase in carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles is to be reduced
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The publication in March of the excellent document "Indicators of Sustainable Development" drew attention to the relative fall in the cost of car use compared with rail or bus travel. Doubling the annual real increase in petrol duty to 10 per cent. would at least redress the balance slightly. Higher rates of vehicle excise duty for high-consumption cars, a change that could be introduced on a revenue-neutral basis by lowering the duty on more economical models, would encourage fuel efficiency.
At the same time, the recent decline in cycling could be reversed by allowing expense claims to be paid, tax-free to the recipient and at a rate comparable to that paid for cars, for the use of bicycles for business purposes.
The problem of congestion cannot be overcome by building more roads, which simply encourages extra traffic. Instead, a limited road pricing experiment--for example, charging users of the M25 during rush hours--should be tried. The technology now exists for road pricing to be operated without complicated or time-consuming vehicle checks.
Rural dwellers for whom a car is an unavoidable necessity would not be penalised. Their roads would not be subject to any pricing. But drivers of gas-guzzling vehicles who insist on using key roads at peak periods would certainly pay more. The prize would be less pollution and congestion, and much less demand for additional roads as better use of the existing network was made by spreading demand throughout the day.
My third concern, energy efficiency, is a subject in which the "no regrets" principle applies par excellence. It unites environmental and economic goals. It is astonishing that so little attention is now paid to energy efficiency both by individual householders and by the public sector.
Households are responsible for 16 per cent. of carbon dioxide emissions in the United Kingdom. We must make all householders aware of what they can do to cut energy costs. One way, as I suggested in my ten-minute Bill last summer, would be to include an energy rating in all house surveys carried out for purchasers when mortgages are arranged.
Few people buy a home without being aware of its council tax band, yet hardly any buyers know how energy-efficient their perspective homes are, despite the fact that fuel costs almost always far outweigh council tax payments. The anomaly could be corrected by simple legislation, and from the results of a comprehensive survey of major lending institutions that I carried out after introducing my Bill it is clear that the lending industry would be perfectly happy to see such legislation.
My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment will know of the great disappointment felt last week when the Budget did not cut the rate of VAT on energy-saving equipment to the 8 per cent. charged on domestic fuel. I acknowledge his Department's achievement in winning extra resources in a difficult year for the Energy Saving Trust. Regrettably, however, there remains an anomaly in the VAT system, which now offers an incentive for energy consumption rather than energy saving.
I must ask why there has been so long a delay in producing the energy efficiency figures for the Government estate. According to the Library, the latest
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I must mention global warming, an issue to which I hope to return in the new year. Global warming is no longer simply a possibility: it is now beyond doubt that the world's climate is changing as a result of human activity.
For us in Britain, the consequences will not be a happy transformation of our present weather pattern into an agreeable Mediterranean climate. Temperatures will certainly rise, perhaps by 1 deg C over the next 50 years. But sea levels will also rise, storms will become more frequent, and both flooding and drought are likely to increase in some parts of Britain. So not all the changes will be beneficial. Many will have far-reaching implications for crop yields, river flows and demand for water.
The consequences for some other countries will be even more dramatic. Furthermore, even if the world succeeds in stabilising the concentration of greenhouse gases, some of the trends, such as rising sea levels, may continue for several generations.
Britain has played a distinguished role both in achieving wider understanding of climate change and its consequences and in influencing international responses. We are on target to achieve the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000--indeed, we may well improve on that target--but we should now look beyond 2000. The last meeting of the parties to the UN convention on climate change agreed in principle that legally binding targets should be set for the years after 2000, but did not decide what those targets should be.
Time is not on our side. If the long-term aim is to limit the increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases to a level double that reached in the pre-industrial age--in other words, to double the level that has prevailed throughout almost the whole of the earth's history--a substantial cut in carbon dioxide emissions will be needed, perhaps a halving of present levels of emissions. It is simply not credible to suppose that that will be achieved by present policies. Britain should be in the forefront of initiating debate both about the targets for the next century and about how to reach them. Our voice in this debate will be heard more clearly if we build on all the existing measures, and those that I have suggested in my speech, while considering others.
The possibility of a carbon tax has become caught up in the arguments about whether any taxes should be imposed by the European Union on member states. That is a pity, because a carbon tax has, in principle, much to recommend it. Its potential contribution to the process of curbing carbon dioxide emissions deserves to be examined on its merits, and these should be reconsidered. There are other possibilities, notably the use of tradeable quotas. Like a carbon tax, tradable quotas have the immense advantage of providing flexible market incentives for environmentally responsible behaviour. They reward people who find cheaper and more effective methods of reducing emissions.
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Mr. Matthew Taylor (Truro):
I am pleased that the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) has sought and won the opportunity to debate this important subject, and I overwhelmingly agree with his comments. He was right to say that the problems can be tackled, and that they will be tackled above all by harnessing people's ingenuity. The irony is that most of the problems that we face are the results of previous ingenuity in overcoming previous problems. The hunt for warmth, shelter, food, easy transport and communications have led to new problems, but exactly the same ingenuity will help us to overcome them. There are ways in which the Government can have a hand in encouraging the exercise of that ingenuity.
The hon. Member for South Suffolk referred to four key themes, and I shall seek to follow briefly the points that he has made. The first--land use--is perhaps the area in which the impact of environmental problems is most immediate to ordinary individuals in this country. They see it in their view, in the traffic jam in which they sit and in the increasing asthma attacks suffered by their children, which are linked to air pollution.
In that context, the issue of household growth is probably the one that will be highest on the agenda of many politicians as we come to the next general election. In my part of the world, people are greatly concerned about the high level of proposed building in the countryside. I am not sure whether they make the connection with the wider environmental issues touched on by the hon. Member for South Suffolk, but it is an issue that they will be taking up with their local Member of Parliament.
In this context, sustainability versus large-scale household growth is a central dilemma as we approach the end of the century. The problems will be compounded by the fact that the demand for housing and the readily available sites that we might wish to see developed do not often occur in the same place. Urban areas are often enthusiastic about new development on brown-field sites, but demand is likely to be strongest in more rural areas.
Furthermore, one-person households are expected to make up 80 per cent. of the expected 4.4 million new households. It is therefore inevitable that there will be an increase in the number of houses being converted into flats and bed-sits. That raises further social issues that I should like to see the Government address through a national licensing scheme to sort out the appalling living standards in much of that kind of accommodation. The net benefit of tackling that problem will be that more people might be willing to live in that kind of accommodation, particularly in urban centres. That will regenerate those centres and help stop the continuing erosion of our countryside.
The first step in tackling the problem must surely be to use what we have. I am disappointed that so little mention has been made of the thousands of empty properties
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The next step must be to encourage development on previously developed land. Last week, the Secretary of State for the Environment stated that in future he wanted the proportion of new houses built on brown-field sites to increase from 50 to 60 per cent. That was a welcome statement, but without any real incentives I fear that it is unlikely to happen. It is suggested that the Secretary of State has looked at, and may even favour, introducing a green-field tax of the sort outlined by the hon. Member for South Suffolk to promote brown-field site development. I should like to see that step being taken, and I should have liked to see it in the Budget. I hope that such a tax will be introduced in the future. It is a policy that the Liberal Democrats have long advocated, and I hope that it will be specifically introduced during consultation.
Several attempts have been made to introduce taxes based on the increase in the value of land that results from the acceptance of planning applications. Such betterment taxes have in the past been justified on the grounds that as the community creates a fortuitous gain for the landowner by granting planning permission, it should therefore share the benefits by cutting taxes that currently fall on the things that we do want, such as local jobs and businesses. That could help pay for direct community costs, such as improved public transport, schools and waste recycling, and could provide compensation payments for people directly affected by the decision. The case for such a tax is unarguable, and the sooner the Government introduce it, the sooner we will see a shift towards developments in brown-field sites. The financial incentives will be there, rather than merely the rhetoric and pleadings of local councillors or national politicians.
Incidentally, the market--provided that it is given those incentives, and provided that we structure the tax and planning systems appropriately--will to some extent provide solutions for those problems. I doubt, however, that the market will find solutions for social housing needs, and I regret that Government have again cut the provision of social housing. That has a particular relevance to the development of green-field sites. Local authorities have now been told that they cannot negotiate for an element of affordable housing on sites smaller than 40 units. In my county--and, I suspect, in most rural areas--very few developments are likely to be built on a larger scale than that, particularly in local villages where there is the greatest need for, and the greatest shortage of, social housing.
Councils are being prevented from using capital receipts for such building, and now they cannot negotiate with the developer. If we are to see development on green-field sites, let us make sure it is properly balanced and that it addresses the needs of local communities, rather than simply the needs of people who move out to retire or to commute--precisely the kind of green-field site development that we do not want. I have spoken at some length on that matter because it is probably the most immediate to politicians.
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I agree strongly with most of what the hon. Member for South Suffolk said about transport. There is a strong argument for an increase in petrol duty, balanced by incentives for those driving more fuel economic and less polluting vehicles and by changes in the tax system, especially that for company cars, which encourages people to drive larger vehicles unnecessarily and to make unnecessary journeys to maximise their tax benefits. That system is nonsense and can be changed.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned bicycles. I would also urge the Government to consider tax relief for individuals who are provided with public transport, in the form of rail season tickets, for example, through their company.
The hon. Gentleman is also right about energy efficiency. I would love the requirement on housing surveys that he suggested to be imposed. I entirely agree with the policy of reducing VAT on energy-saving equipment and my party included it in our Budget proposals. However, I believe that, had there been a vote on the issue last night, it would certainly have been won. I regret that there was no vote, and I believe that the Labour party made a mistake in its motion by not picking that issue, which could have been won, and picking instead an issue for which there may be greater political support but on which it was always likely to lose. I hope that we shall have such a vote in the coming months or, even better, that the Chancellor will propose suitable amendments during the proceedings on the Finance Bill.
I agree with the hon. Member for South Suffolk that global warming is the biggest single threat that we face. It is such a threat because it is the most difficult problem to overcome, as well as being the most serious. Our current lifestyles depend on excessive use of resources, but an even worse problem is the fact that, as 80 per cent. of the world's resources are currently used by only 20 per cent. of the population, if the rest of the population even moves towards standards of life similar to ours, regardless of whether they adopt best environmental practice--which is in itself unlikely, given the costs that can be associated--the current targets set internationally and by the Government will not even begin to contain the situation.
It is important to make people understand that those problems are a priority. I was extremely pleased to hear what the hon. Member for South Suffolk said about carbon tax, which I have consistently advocated. Tax should be targeted on those energy systems which create the pollution, and other taxes should be cut to make it politically acceptable. For instance, we should cut employers' national insurance--the tax on jobs--to encourage people back to work and to encourage companies to employ people rather than machinery, and we should cut VAT so that people do not have a big net increase in their bills.
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