Greeny News

Why is the 'greenest government ever' slashing environmental bodies instead of pursuing tax avoiders to raise funds?

A bonfire of the environment is being stoked methodically along government corridors. Yet, simultaneously, banks still refuse to renounce the bonus culture that blinded our financial system and created the conditions for cuts.

As expensive City PR firms brace to defend this year's anticipated banker's bonus trough, key offices and departments vital to intelligent, joined-up government on issues ranging from climate to health and food are being cut.

For a coalition that promised to be the greenest government ever, they are painting themselves the colour of the oil sludge currently washing around the Gulf of Mexico.

The axe is falling everywhere, as if policy has been left in the hands of a frenzied lumberjack. Little seems safe, from the neck of the Sustainable Development Commission to the emasculation of the Food Standards Agency, and the expected cull of projects and jobs working on climate change and related issues under the umbrella of the Foreign Office and the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).

DECC alone has had to find cuts of £85m from the budgets of the Carbon Trust, Energy Saving Trust, and offshore wind and geothermal energy projects.

Schemes on bio-energy and environmental obligations delivered through regional development agencies also stand to lose out. The cuts are part of the £6.25bn wave announced by the chancellor, George Osborne, in May. (Remember, £6bn was also the estimate for the collective bonus-package awarded to itself by bankers in the City of London last year.)

At the same time, new quangos with good-sounding names, but ill-defined briefs and expected outcomes, are being created, such as the "Office of Tax Simplification".

To say that these cuts are "shortsighted" doesn't quite catch the self-defeating recklessness of the coalition's approach.

Good policy is about the intelligent allocation of resources. Today, the nation's security and future prosperity depend on how well equipped we are to adapt to the new global landscape of energy and environmental change. The knowledge, expertise and emerging enterprises that will allow us to do so should be treated like next year's seed stock â€" the very last to be eaten in times of crisis. They are ultimately what will get you out of trouble.

Before even considering such a reduction (There is a strong, practical and economic arguments to do the opposite, investments, rather than cutting), each second path should be explored in the first place.

Putting effort into tax simplification, for example, is obviously politically attractive. But tax is complicated partly because successive governments allowed an elaborate dance between accountancy firms and the tax authorities. Those who can afford the top accountants end up using increasingly elaborate schemes to avoid paying tax, in ways which are against the spirit of the law, if not the letter. The authorities, in response, look for new ways to catch the avoiders.

But, a more aggressive approach to collecting unpaid taxes, prosecuting evasion and clamping down on avoidance, perhaps with a general provision against it, could raise upwards of £50bn for the public purse.

This would change fundamentally the landscape of the cuts debate. Wondering why this course of action is ignored leads to unsettling speculation. Are elements of the coalition actually revelling in the seemingly incontestable opportunity to slash away at the public sector â€" settling unfinished business from the 1980s? Ironic, if so, as it was a private banking failure that created the problem, and the public who bailed them out.

That aside, there remain multiple possible wins for the coalition. If they can find the courage and common sense, there is a chance to reboot the economy on to a better, more secure, dynamic and employment-friendly path through green investment.

Today, 1 August, is the 10th anniversary of the start of the fuel protests that crippled Britain in 2000. Now there is worsening climate change, an increasingly unreliable global oil supply and a more vulnerable food system. The bonfire of the environment creates the impression that the coalition government is set to do worse than merely repeat the mistakes of the past: it seems to be preparing, deliberately, to make worse ones.

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