Clause 5 - Acquisition of information etc.
Finance Bill
6:00 pm
Mr Paul Boateng (Financial Secretary, HM Treasury; Brent South, Labour)
I would not claim for myself an in-depth knowledge of the technology, but I am lucky to work with several men and women who have such knowledge. As the right hon. Gentleman well knows, in this job one often meets—not only in the context of photo calls with various inanimate pieces of technology but generally—people who are real enthusiasts in that field. That is especially true in relation to biofuels, where enthusiasm sometimes borders on obsession. The right hon. Gentleman well knows that phenomenon. I have learnt much about that subject, and am very interested in it.
In the course of my experience in this Committee when in opposition, I learned that Ministers must not, under any circumstances, for one moment allow themselves to be lulled, above party-political consensus, into believing that this is the place to write future pre-Budget reports, or enter into commitments to publish documents of any sort. I do not intend to be lulled by the right hon. Gentleman's blandishments into such a false sense of security. However, I can assure him that, as I think he can sense, such is the interest in that field and in the environment generally, shown not only by this House, in questions, but by the Environmental Audit Committee and others, that the process of review on environmental taxation has of its very nature to be a live one.
There is no hidden agenda here. We all want the same thing: to see the challenging Kyoto targets met. It is in our interests to ensure that we keep the matter under review, to be as open as possible about the processes that make up that review and to invite comment and contribution from as wide a range of informed people as possible. That is the nature of our intention to keep those matters under review. The formula has progressed a little since the right hon. Gentleman's day and now has a meaning that, I fancy, it might not have had when he uttered those self-same words.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 2 agreed to.