Gordon Brown's Green Budget Farce

I was contacted by the Guardian last week to see if I would be willing to comment on Budget Day, on whether the prime minister's promised green budget actually delivered. I said then that such promises of a green budget by Gordon Brown were almost as regular as daffodils in March but were as regularly blown over by April's reality of yet another brown climate-destructive budget.



Sadly yesterday proved to be no exception. The much heralded and dubious electric car revolution was not even mentioned in the chancellor's speech. Instead we had the usual give-aways to New Labour's lobbying friends in the oil, car and nuclear industries. The passing mention of nuclear turned out to be buried in a massive new budget of over £400 million. The chancellor declared his undying commitment to squeezing every last drop out of the North Sea oil fields, whilst the bonanza for upmarket rich car-buyers continued apace.



Take for example a Rolls Royce customer. If you were buying a new Rolls Royce this year, you will already be benefitting from a £7,500 reduction in VAT and now if you want to turn in your old 11 year old Rolls Royce, you get given another £2,000. What a great way to spend taxpayers money that we have to borrow to spend! To balance this out, the poor driver will have to fork out an extra £5 in Vehicle Excise duty next year and £35 the year after to acknowledge its extra emission.... and the RAC is already complaining about the miserly 2p rise in fuel duty.



The so-called new money for domestic renewable energy installations is just actually a decision not to shut down the current grant scheme, as was scheduled for this June, rather than a new scheme. However, such promised grant money in previous budgets proved to be just a con, when the dust cleared from Budget Day. We will see what happens this time.



Likewise the supposed new money for off-shore windfarms is seemingly again not new money at all ,but money to be re-allocated from other technologies from the Renewables Obligation which is paid for by electricity customers and not by the government.



The much vanunted £100 million for new energy efficient council housing will pay for less than 2 new such homes in each of the UK's local authorities.....and so the depressing usual litany of green cons went on.



As this is likely to be Labour's last budget that will cover a full year in office, we have to accept that Brown and New Labour have tragically squandered the opportunity to make a real step change in responding to our climate crisis. Green taxes have been slashed during their term in office. Aviation and private transport emissions have soared and the number of homes in fuel poverty is beginning to rise, when they promised to eliminate such fuel poverty. Twelve wasted years is their epitaph.



Instead of that bright new envinronmental dawn promised in 1997, Labour simply continued the Conservatives love affair with the nuclear, aviation, oil, car, coal and GM industries. The revolving door between the government, senior civil service and corporate interests fuelled by party political lobbyists ensured that big business interests came first and not the public's or the planet's.



However, that does not mean that we cannot change things for the better. Instead it means that we each have to work that much harder in our own lives, communities and work-places to generate a real step change in the take up of urgently needed green practices. We will now achieve this despite the government and not because of it. When we succeed, maybe it will mean we will have an even greater sense of achievement?