Clause 102 - Landfill tax: rate
Finance Bill
5:00 pm
Mr Peter Luff (Mid Worcestershire, Conservative)
The hon. Gentleman leads me into a full and frank confession of what happened at the party meeting in Kidderminster last week, when I am afraid that the Conservative party joined forces with the Labour party to vote against the incinerator. There you are, Mr. O'Hara, the truth will out, although I am not afraid of the truth.
As the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton remarked during his contribution—I thought that he contradicted himself but he was thoughtful—there are perverse incentives for the landfill tax. The hon. Gentleman dismissed the perverse incentives by supporting the Government's strategy that, as we read in the Red Book, is part of a strategy to increase the current standard rate of landfill tax by
``£1 per tonne for five years until 2004''.
Therefore, this is the first stage of a long and sharp increase that is well above any projected rate of inflation, and it has had serious perverse incentives in my constituency. While I welcome the fact that there may be fewer lorries on the roads of my constituency going to the Hill and Moor site, I worry profoundly about the fly-tipping that has occurred in my constituency on both a disorganised and highly organised scale.