South West Green Party

Darling bottles it in a budget that's Brown, not Green

13 March 2008

Green Party Economics spokesperson and Euro candidate Molly Scott Cato today expressed her disappointment that Labour's budget will fail to help voters in the South West address climate change or child poverty.

The Chancellor, Alistair Darling, claimed that a key Budget target was confronting climate change, yet he failed to introduce any significant green taxes and reaffirmed his commitment to expanding airports. Darling missed the opportunity of a windfall tax on energy company profits to tackle fuel poverty and delayed his timid 2p rise in fuel duty. In contrast the Green Party's Budget was carbon-costed for the second year running to reduce emissions 6-9% each full year. Labour now intend to carbon-cost their budgets starting in 2009, but have failed to do so this time.

Green Euro candidate Molly Scott Cato commented:

'Greens welcome the £20 increase in child benefit, but it falls well short of what is required to meet the government's laudable targets for cutting child poverty. The £3.4bn that it would take to halve child poverty by 2010 is instead being spent on occupying Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008 alone.
 
'To reduce traffic by 15%, Greens would restore the fuel escalator and significantly increase fuel duty this year, compared to Darling's miniscule 2p rise which has now been pushed back. if the Chancellor truly believes petrol will be cheap in six months' time, real questions must be asked about his grasp of basic economics.

'This is a missed opportunity in creating a greener and more just society.'

The Green Party's budget measures for social equity include:

- raising the state pension to £100 a week

- free personal care for the elderly and free school meals

- a new 60% tax rate for those receiving more than £100,000 per year

The Green Party's budget measures for the climate include:

- reducing traffic by 15% by re-introducing Thatcher's fuel duty escalator over two years.

- insulating 4 million homes each year for 5 years instead of Government plans for 20,000 homes each year. 

- a significant cut in CO2 emissions and reduction in road deaths by reducing speed limits to 55mph on trunk roads, 40mph on rural roads, and 20mph in urban areas.

- an increase in Air Passenger Duty to £100 for all flights, to reduce the total number of flights by an estimated 13%

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