Green measures are 'half-hearted' effort to reduce carbon emissions

Gordon Brown faced more criticism over the environment as MPs claimed that green taxes would decline, despite a range of measures in the Budget.

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrats' environment spokesman, said the Budget was "half-hearted" and Mr Brown had failed to ratchet up the tax on pollution needed to curb carbon emissions.

Research by the Liberal Democratssuggested the new measures in the Budget would cut 330,000 tonnes of carbon a year from the UK's domestic emissions - equivalent to 0.15 per cent of the total.

He attacked Mr Brown's decision to raise car tax to £400 for "gas-guzzling" vehicles, insisting that studies showed such a rise would only persuade one in three motorists to switch to a less polluting car.

He said that polling research by the government-funded Energy Saving Trust showed that the Chancellor needed to impose a car tax of £2,000 on "gas guzzlers" to persuade more than 70 per cent of drivers to switch cars.

George Osborne, the shadow Chancellor, joined the attack, accusing Mr Brown of snubbing advice from David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, to raise environmental taxation.

The most recent figures show that the proportion of green taxation fell from a high of 3.6 per cent of national income in 1996 to 2.9 per cent of GDP in 2005.

Mr Huhne said: "Almost certainly there will be a further fall in the proportion of green taxation. Mr Brown has been reluctant to use the tax system to help us shift our behaviour collectively towards more sustainable behaviour. If he were to do that he would raise a great deal of revenue that should be handed back in other tax cuts."

The Liberal Democrats also dismissed Mr Brown's introduction of a tax break for people who sell home-generated energy back to the national grid and criticised a £6m grant to promote household renewable energy as "very modest".

David Miliband will outline the green measures in the Budget on Monday. They include an inflation rise in the climate change levy, a £6m increase in funding for low-carbon homes and a competition to develop a carbon-capture scheme.

It also includes a pledge that all householders will have been offered help to introduce energy-efficiency measures by the end of the decade.

But yesterday in the Commons, Mr Osborne said leaked submissions to the Chancellor showed Mr Miliband had been ignored.

Mr Osborne said: "The truth is the Chancellor is not seriously interested in the environment, he never has been. It's all politics to him. The word 'climate' hardly appeared in his Budgets until the Leader of the Opposition came along.

"Pretty much the only things that were really green about the Budget were the endless recycled announcements."

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