Gregory Barker MP: The big green budget?

Gregory Barker MP, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, criticises the lack of new ideas on the environment in yesterday's Budget.

Today we found out that not only has Alistair Darling no new ideas or credible strategy of his own to beat Climate Change, he doesn’t even have the bottle to steal our ideas any more! 

What has been trailed since before Christmas as “the Big Green Budget” was Darling’s opportunity to present his own compelling strategy of how to beat Climate Change. What a yawn! What a huge missed opportunity! What a huge betrayal of future generations. David Cameron was absolutely spot on in his reply when he said that not only was this government facing a credit crunch, it was facing a credibility crunch as well! Nowhere is that more true than on Climate Change.

At the centre of the Chancellor’s supposed new Global Warming agenda was legislation to permit a review of the potential to impose a plastic bag tax at the end of the year! How pathetic! The Daily Mail has run a brilliant and welcome campaign on plastic bags but it is much more about the ecological and littering impact of these unwelcome eyesores than a plea for action on Climate Change. The Chancellor, for cheap political expediency has completely blurred the two. The fact is that the emissions of just one 747 flight to Australia equate to the manufacture of over three quarters of a million plastic bags. As a measure to clean up our seas and save wild life, to reduce litter and protect the environment more generally the plastic bag campaign has huge merit, but as the central plank of a strategy to combat global warming it is hopelessly unambitious.