I'm dreaming of a green Budget

Dave Powell

16 March 2012

I had a dream last night in which George Osborne came round to my house for a cup of tea and started crying and telling me how sorry he is about all the things he's been saying about the environment. Was lovely.

But even in the dream I knew it was a dream, for two reasons. Firstly because George kept patting me on the head and calling me "Nick". And secondly because even dulled by sleep I had enough about me to realise that this was a magnificently unlikely thing to happen.

Less than a week until Budget day then, and everyone's hunkering down for the worst. In the Independent on Wednesday there was a grim fortelling of what looks like the day any pretence of this being the "greenest Government ever" finally plunged beneath the waves. It's been flailing and spluttering for a good year or so now; now the Chancellor looks set to shove it out of its misery with his size nines.

Headline horror in store looks like being the release of the Government's new national planning policy framework (NPPF), which, in the words of the Independent article, has

been fiercely attacked for suggesting that there should always be a presumption in favour of development, and that two principles of the system should be dropped: that ordinary countryside has a value, and that brownfield sites should be built on before greenfield sites.

Other delicacies on the menu could be:

• the unsheathing of Government proposals for taking an axe to environmental regulations in the name of growth
• yet more pointless umming and ahhing on promised fuel duty increases (pointless because it's the price of oil that's interminably rising, and a few pence on or off via tax is sticking plaster stuff at best)
• and, if Vince Cable gets his way, doom for the Carbon Reduction Commitment, an admittedly clumsy, but broadly right in principle, tax on business

It should all have been so different. It was promised to be different. The dusty days of 2009 seem so very far away, when in opposition Osborne made a slew of promises about how cuddly and green and responsible the Treasury would be under his watch. I've summarised his pirouetting on the low-carbon economy in a new briefing.

What sticks out for me is his handbagging of the then Chancellor, Alistair Darling:

How telling that Alistair Darling has not given a single major speech on the environment for two years now. That attitude is going to change if the Government changes.

Well, nearly two years on from the election, we're still waiting. If I was Cameron or Clegg - or anyone else in Westminster whose reputations rest on standing up their "greenest Government ever" pledge - I'd be a tad worried.

I'm not naïve enough to expect the Budget to be an orgy of wind turbines, trees and flowers. I'd settle for one that said green jobs, secure clean British energy, much better insulation, and the protection of our green and pleasant land was a good thing.

I've put together five big ideas for what the Chancellor could do - if he thought this stuff was important, rather than a pain in the bottom for business and therefore to be flung to the hounds.

I can dream, can't I?