Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I am speaking as an engineer. Businesses need a climate of certainty within which to plan. If governments in other countries and the EU were to establish a vehicle registration tax cut of 20% but refused to extend the measure beyond one year, that would not encourage investment decisions about car manufacturing that encouraged innovation. It would be better to remove the termination date from the exemption and if hydrogen cars or biodiesel cars are developed in the future, the law can be changed. The exemption at the moment breeds uncertainty which is the one thing that businesses cannot handle. If the VRT reduction is removed, hybrid cars will become uneconomical in terms of people's willingness to buy them and will cease to sell. This is not the way to encourage investment in environmentally innovative technology.