Mr Oliver Letwin (West Dorset, Conservative)

The purpose of the clause is to increase the landfill tax by £1. My intervention is aimed at a single project: to discover by what proportion and by what means the Government are cutting national insurance contributions equivalently. They must be doing so, because no less a person than the Financial Secretary has assured us on various occasions that the aggregates tax, the climate change levy and the landfill tax remain fiscally neutral measures. Therefore, it must be the case that the Government will introduce a proportionate decrease in national insurance contributions, or introduce some other measure to the same effect. Strangely, so far the Committee and the House have not been privileged to hear from the Government by what means they will achieve that.

I know that Hansard has difficulty in revealing the tone that hon. Members adopt, so I must explain that the tone in which I make these utterances is ironic. I do not expect such a statement from Ministers, but I would be delighted should they surprise me and genuinely prove that they intend this to be a fiscally neutral measure. I fear that there will be no such action. however, and this is the clause that gives the lie to the assertion that any of these measures are intrinsically fiscally neutral.

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