Member

Why are the Government doing this? Who benefits? The Treasury will see an extra £1.8 billion in tax revenue because it has doubled the carbon tax. Through this legislation, by reducing free allowances, it will take even more from ordinary families who are already struggling. That is in fact the entire point: the aim of the carbon tax is to gradually increase costs for British industry until businesses have no choice but to spend hundreds of millions of pounds that they do not have at the moment to decarbonise their production. That is the whole point, otherwise they have to shut down or move abroad. The fact that companies are choosing to do the latter means that there will be no reduction in global emissions, because those businesses are just moving elsewhere. There will be fewer jobs in Britain, certainly, and more businesses in countries that have more polluting regimes—so more carbon in the atmosphere overall.