The Budget: Very Brown

Whilst being trailed as a Green Budget, Alistair Darling's speech revealed it to be predictably a very Brown one with the barest tinges of Green around the edges.

Before the Budget, the Green Party called for a genuinely Green approach as the urgency of tackling climate change becomes ever more acute. According to the recommendations of the Stern report - an economic assessment on climate change produced for the Treasury - Gordon Brown should be ensuring that the UK invests 1% of GDP per annum on reducing carbon emissions - but thats not happening and the Labour Government shows no sign of grasping this issue. A truly Green Budget would have delivered a major investment programme for renewable energy, reductions in energy demand through efficiency and the scrapping of airport and motorway expansion plans.

In his speech, Alistair Darling claimed yet again that the UK is a world leader in tackling climate change yet failed to reveal that under Labour, carbon dioxide emissions have not fallen since they came to power in 1997.

Cllr. Dr Rupert Read, Green Party Lead candidate for the 2009 European Elections said

"Gordon Brown's first budget as Prime Minister was an historic opportunity for Labour to have actually put its green rhetoric into action. But predictably, apart from a few Green tinges around the edges, Brown and Darling have not taken the opportunity. This was clearly still a very Brown Budget, not a Green one.

Whilst rightly saying how important it is to tackle climate change, Labour remain utterly contradictory. They want an 80% target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and plan to have a future Carbon Budget - which are steps in the right direction and are long standing Green Party measures. But targets and budgets are not worth the paper they are written on unless they result in real action. In the same speech today the Chancellor openly backed more roads, airports and urbanisation and ministers have this week backed more coal fired power stations.

The Chancellor cannot seriously claim to be acting on climate change when he boasts today of "increasing capacity on the roads ... delivering a fifth terminal at Heathrow ... and more runways at Heathrow and Stansted.

The Chancellor said he wanted to see "substantial reductions in emissions from transport". We welcome the changes to vehicle duty to reward owners of the most efficient cars and tax much more heavily the gas guzzlers. But true to form, the Chancellor has also announced a postponement of the rise in fuel duty. We also welcome the small rise in aviation tax. But any reductions in emissions from these measures will be blown away by the huge expansion of motorways, airports and urban sprawl being so aggressively backed by Labour.

Finally, we heard about postponed measures on carrier bags and energy efficiency in buildings. These proposals are totally inadequate. Urgent action is needed to tackle the problem of manufacturers and retailers churning out vast quantities of non-recyclable plastic bags and packaging that end up either in landfill or being incinerated. And on building efficiency, its more of Labour's favourite trick of jam tomorrow. Their zero carbon proposals on housing and non-domestic buildings are all postponed well into the next decade. Local planning authorities need the powers now to require low and zero carbon developments, but the Government has consistently refused to do this."