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9.10 pm
Mr. Damian Green (Ashford): It is always interesting to follow the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott). I do not agree with her that the Chancellor makes a convincing Tory, but I agree that Labour voters will find him unconvincing, whatever clothes he is trying to put on.
The hon. Member for Shipley (Mr. Leslie) cast doubt on whether my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean) was in a position to know the instant public reaction to the Budget. I am happy to report to him and the House that, about half an hour after the Chancellor sat down, the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Pond) and I appeared on a radio programme, and that, after the hon. Gentleman had said that the new Jerusalem had arrived and I had said that the Budget was essentially a con trick, members the public were asked their views, and they all said substantially the same thing--that the Budget pretended to give with one hand, while it took with the other, and that there was nothing in it for them.
I am also happy to report that the public's views had nothing to do with my penetrating analysis or eloquence because the interviews were pre-recorded, so the Chancellor can take all the credit for that instant disillusionment with his measures. Obviously, the people of Kent have more savvy than the Labour Back Benchers who waved their Order Papers earlier.
I do not want to travel to the wider shores of macro-economic policy, as so many colleagues have done so. I should like to make three points that are especially pertinent to my constituency and other parts of Kent, and two wider national points on aspects of the Budget that deal with training and lifelong learning.
My first--very practical--point concerns the Chancellor's non-change in alcohol duties. Although that will be welcome, it will not be enough to prevent what is becoming quite a serious fiscal and social problem for the whole country, but especially a social problem for my constituents and others who live in Kent, which is the first port of call for smugglers of drink and tobacco. The Treasury is aware that levels of beer duty, which the Chancellor has left unchanged, are seven times higher than levels of French beer duty, and that that gap provides a straightforward and easy economic incentive to smuggling and fraud.
Every day, about 1.5 million pints of beer are smuggled. One in three pints of beer drunk in Kent is now bought in France. Some of that trade is legal, but the vast bulk of it is illegal, and it costs the Treasury about
£900 million a year in lost tax revenue. The Chancellor made some announcements about improving the resources of Customs and Excise to tackle the problem, but he must know that those improvements are only a fig leaf. As long as the economic incentive is there, the trade will carry on.
Alcohol smuggling is not only a fiscal issue but a serious social issue. As a result of keeping tax too high, paradoxically, alcohol is too cheap, because so much smuggled alcohol enters the country, and therefore it is more accessible to children. The journal of the British Institute of Innkeeping drew attention to the fact that a police camera sequence filmed in the centre of my constituency showed youngsters as young as 11 or 12--who, the police discovered, had got drunk on illegally smuggled alcohol--trying, as they put it, to stop the traffic. They were wandering around the streets, hopelessly drunk, putting themselves and other motorists in severe danger.
The fact that our alcohol taxes are too high is not simply a matter of the Treasury losing income and revenue; it is a social disaster happening under the Government's nose. I urge them to set in train a full-scale review of excise duties, because that would be not only in the Treasury's interests but in the wider interests of law and order.
I am sure that the Minister knows that tobacco smuggling poses an equally serious problem. I am sure that every hon. Member approves of the use of high taxation in an attempt to discourage smoking; that is not at issue. However, at the moment, it is not working. One in seven packets of cigarettes smoked in this country is smuggled, so cigarettes are available much more cheaply than the Government, any health professional or any hon. Member would wish them to be. The Chancellor is shooting himself in the foot, and the money that the Secretary of State for Health spends on anti-smoking propaganda is wasted because the Government cannot bring themselves to address the issue. I have been told by my local police that they have known packets of 20 cigarettes to be available in schools in my constituency for as little as 35p. Quite apart from the revenue aspects, a serious health aspect is clearly involved.
Mr. Tyrie:
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government should take a leaf out of William Pitt the Younger's book? He faced the same problem. The excise duty was falling because of the increase in smuggling. There were calls to increase the number of Customs officials to go chasing the smugglers. He did the opposite. He lowered the excise duties, particularly on spirits. As a result, revenues increased. He found a superior means by which revenues would increase--lower rates of duty. That is a much better way to deal with the problem.
Mr. Green:
My hon. Friend makes an elegant historical point.
There is a further serious social issue. The smuggling is attracting professional criminals to what is otherwise a peaceful and tranquil part of the country. The police warn that unpleasant criminal gangs are assembling and taking over local areas. They warn that there will soon be gangland shootings in small villages in east Kent unless
something is done about the matter. This is more than a Treasury issue. It is a serious law and order issue which the Government have it in their power to address. Unfortunately, they do not seem to have the will to do so. I urge them to deal with it.
The third issue that concerns my constituents is the accelerating increase in petrol duty that the Government insist on introducing. The right hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Foster) referred to it in the context of his constituency. That was many hours ago. Those of us who sat through the speech of the hon. Member for Halton (Mr. Twigg) may think that it happened in a previous lifetime.
For my constituents, cars are not a luxury. They are not even a necessary evil. They are a necessity for people to get to work and to lead an ordinary life. The Government seem to be trying to shove the car into the category of goods which, in principle, they would like to ban. They cannot quite bring themselves to do that, so they will tax its use out of existence. There may be arguments for that in urban areas, but there are no arguments in rural areas.
The Government are making rural motoring impossible for the less well-off. As the right hon. Member for Bishop Auckland observed, the better-off shrug and bear it, but people who have a car as a marginal good and worry about the price of petrol face increasing difficulty. The Government have got themselves on to a treadmill, which they must get off. If not, we can only agree with the right hon. Gentleman's conclusion that the Government have no regard for rural areas and those who live there.
Lifelong learning is one of the Government's great catch phrases, but I am forced to conclude that it is no more than a slogan. The Chancellor devoted part of his Budget statement to individual learning accounts. For anyone who knows anything about the scheme, that section of his speech was slightly surreal. He spoke about how the scheme could be extended, how it would be tweaked, and how it would be tied in with the use of computers.
The fact is that individual learning accounts do not exist. They are chimera in the Chancellor's mind. He spoke of extending them, but he cannot extend them until he introduces them. Last year, the Government produced a Green Paper on the issue and promised us a White Paper. We have seen no sign of the White Paper. The Department cannot tell us when it will come out.
The Government said originally that the scheme would be introduced on 1 April. There are still no details about them. [Hon. Members: "1 April."] I intended to refrain from 1 April references, but, as my hon. Friends have not done so, that may be an appropriate date for the Government to consider introducing the scheme.
The Government say that they will provide £150 a day which, with the £25 a day that the individual claimant must put in, will allow two days of training on Windows. That is all well and good, although it will not transform the life chances of anyone who goes on such a training scheme funded by an individual learning account. So far, those things do not exist, yet the Chancellor devoted a section of his Budget statement to them. I shall be delighted if a Treasury Minister can explain what on earth the Chancellor was on about.
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