John Redwood

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FINANCIAL INCENTIVES FOR MICROGENERATION

Mr. Redwood: I rise to support the amendments, because I share the impatience of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, and of the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson), at how small the incentives are in the Bill as drafted. The amendments would make some contribution towards making them a little more generous.

There is a growing view in the House and outside that much more power could be generated in environmentally friendly ways by individuals and families through their own domestic property. Of course we are not talking about people having a large power station in their back garden and abusing the thing; the Government have made it quite clear that the measures are limited to microgeneration schemes, and they have a rather low threshold for their definition of such schemes. It is therefore even more strange that they should double up the restrictions by putting in clauses that prevent people from producing a little more power than they need for their own requirements on average over the days, the weeks and the months as they look at the balance in and out of their system. I hope that the Minister will succumb to the pressures from inside and outside the House and at least accept the amendments that get rid of that unnecessary restriction.

The tax reliefs on offer in the Bill as drafted are not very generous. The allowance on chargeable gains is unlikely to produce any money for most of the people who might take up the scheme. We are concentrating only on the income tax relief, which relates only to surplus generated power, so if we are told that there can be no installation that might produce surplus power on average, it means that no tax relief is on offer. The way the definitions will be phrased under the legislation means that they will give with one hand and take away with the other.

The House, apart from Members on the Treasury Bench, is trying to persuade the Government to be more generous, ambitious and bold in future by including the requirement for annual review. We hope that will bring the Government two realisations: first, that the tax relief they are offering at present is almost zero and that from zero will come little; and, secondly, that as the schemes will not catch on quickly because the tax relief on offer is far from generous, perhaps in a future year, in a future Bill, it will be seen that something bolder and bigger is needed.

John Bercow: My right hon. Friend is forging a progressive consensus with the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson) to which I am a happy subscriber, but I am puzzled and my brow is furrowed. Can my right hon. Friend explain to the House why there is an instinctive disinclination on the part of the Treasury annually to report? Is it because the Treasury thinks that others report to it and that it is not in the business of lowering itself to report, or is there a better reason that has hitherto escaped me?

Mr. Redwood: Tomorrow the progressive consensus takes over at No. 10 Downing street. We hope that the obstacle has been the current Prime Minister and that when we have a new Prime Minister who wishes to forge a progressive consensus he will want to join the hon. Member for Nottingham, South, my hon. Friends the Members for Buckingham (John Bercow) and for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman), me, and even the Liberal Democrats on this occasion, to show that he is truly persuaded that the progressive consensus is now in favour of much more microgeneration and that he understands furthermore that fiscal incentives are an extremely good way of changing behaviour.

The House knows that I do not normally favour tax increases and regulations to change behaviour. However, if a tax reduction is on offer it is more my kind of behaviour-changing inducement, so I recommend it strongly to the Government if and when they want to join the emerging progressive consensus. I have often found that the ideas I propose in the House are a little ahead of their time, but this may be one that is not so far ahead of its time that we shall have to forgo all value from it for the foreseeable future.

Mr. Newmark: In achieving the consensus, does my right hon. Friend see a day when the new Prime Minister might install a wind turbine on the top of No. 10 Downing street?

Mr. Redwood: We shall probably not see that any time soon, even with the change of tenant at No. 10 Downing street, but as the hon. Member for Nottingham, South said, perhaps the House can do rather more under the previsions of the clause to provide examples of how we could generate more of our own energy. Members have already said that we generate a lot of hot air that could be used. I suspect we should need a spin turbine rather than a wind turbine, and the new tenant at No. 10 may be particularly good at offering a model that would offer facilities from which he and we might benefit.

I urge Members on the Treasury Bench to understand the strong feeling that much more could be done. My hon. Friends and others clearly understand that at present the technology is not cheap enough to take off across the board, which is why so few people are adopting it, apart from those such as the hon. Member for Nottingham, South and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, who are showing the way. However, to get our constituents enthusiastic about microgeneration we need to introduce real tax relief. The provisions do not do that; the amendments would help a little, but the amendment that requires an annual report might in due course persuade even the Government that they should join this exciting progressive consensus.