The countryside has always occupied a special place in the hearts and minds of the British people and this has recently been amply demonstrated by the recent public march in London by many thousands of people. The causes that led to the public demonstration are both many and varied and some have more to do with what might be more properly interpreted as party politics rather than more straightforward environmental issues. Nevertheless, environmental issues and particularly the developmental pressures operating on the countryside certainly featured among the concerns expressed by those who live in rural areas and also by environmentalists resident in both town and countryside alike. It would be wrong to dismiss the concerns now being expressed as those which affect only a minority of citizens. The issues involved, encompassing as they do, Government commitment to sustainable development, range much wider afield and are likely to have significant future impact not only upon the lifestyles of individuals, whether they live in the town or countryside, but also upon significant parts of the economy, particularly the construction and transport sectors. This applies, not only to the UK, but to every country signed up to sustainable development - though the immediate pressures will be less where the land supply is less restricted.

The UK is, I believe, beginning to witness the transformation of sustainable development from a narrow minority interest into a popular mass movement. The London countryside rally and emerging concerns about the amount of land required for future development together with growing public concerns about the growth of road traffic and associated air pollution are signs of this. While popular enthusiasm may wane, as the associated costs of policy changes become clearer, the general trend of public opinion in relation to these issues is pretty well established for the foreseeable future. Government is beginning to tackle some of these other issues for example with the introduction of the landfill tax and its most recent increase to £10 per tonne in the Budget but comparatively little logic has yet been applied to environmental taxation and the focus, as for all taxes, appears have been upon ease of collection rather than upon purpose.

The estimated number of new homes required in the UK by the 2020s is estimated to vary between 4-5 million ie: greater than the number of homes which currently comprise Greater London. The Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) is campaigning for 75% of new housing to be built on previously developed land. The CPRE points out that planners and other decision-makers often keep issues like housing, waste disposal and new roads in `separate pigeonholes' and that until people realise that these issues are fundamentally linked, the full implications of rural development patterns will not be realised while opportunities for improvement will be missed. It is exactly this sort of linkage that has not yet been addressed in relation to environmental taxation. The sort of links which the CPRE is highlighting include the impact of new housing on levels of quarrying, water abstraction, extra road traffic and increased levels of waste production.

The Government has responded to the expected increased need for development land by announcing that more consideration will be given to local requirements, including the need to protect rural areas, and to increasing the proportion of homes built on previously developed or `brownfield' sites. The Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, also recently announced that consideration is being given to introducing a tax on greenfield development though such a measure was noticeably absent from the Budget. These two announcements nevertheless amount to significant policy changes. Only in February this year (in responding to the UK Round Table on Sustainable Development did the Government announce that it was retaining the previous Government's target of accommodating 50% of new housing on brownfield sites and that it wished to open up a debate on environmental taxation as a first step in assessing the scope for bringing forward sensible measures to help achieve sustainable development.

In the period immediately prior to the 1998 Budget the usual pressure groups (ie: including those representing consumers and taxpayers) were busy analysing taxation trends not least where motoring was concerned. Thus the Automobile Association was pointing out that while the Chancellor of the Exchequer was committed to increasing road fuel taxes by 6% more than the rate of inflation, those most adversely affected by higher motoring taxation were some of the most socially disadvantaged - an example of the difficult social pressures which arise with the introduction of any new tax or an increase in existing tax whether green or not. The harmonisation of environmental taxes within the UK (let alone between EC Member States) obviously has quite a long way to go when we have a situation in which taxes on domestic energy consumption were recently reduced, given that 50% of energy used is in buildings and when there is an ongoing commitment for above inflation increases on road fuel tax when transport only accounts for 25% of energy use.

`Greater energy efficiency in construction would make a significant contribution to the UK's target of reducing CO₂ emissions to 20% below 1990 levels by 2010' the Fourth Report of the British Government Panel on Sustainable Development stated in its latest report published in February. Increasing the amounts of recycled materials used in construction, perhaps by using taxation to disincentivise the use of virgin raw materials has also been mooted in the recent past. The Budget failed to address these areas in a significant way - with a reduced rate of VAT for insulation materials restricted to low income households whose energy use is already lower than the average. It cannot be sustainable for the burden of environmental taxation to be levied disproportionately on any one sector of the economy while largely ignoring other areas which contribute a significantly greater amount to overall emissions or consumption of resources. The 1998 Budget sadly failed to begin to address environmental taxation in a rational manner - once again focusing merely upon the ease or efficiency of the collection process. Environmental taxation is thus in the process of becoming discredited. In announcing a review of taxes to curb energy use by some sectors of industry, (aviation is excluded for reasons of international treaty obligations) the Chancellor has gone some was to redress the balance. Energy use, however, is only one component of sustainable development and it is regrettable that the review will not also examine the taxation of other types of environmentally damaging consumption (ie: virgin raw materials). Whether the review will do much to help logicize the principles of environmental taxation remains to be seen but is certainly required if public support for environmental taxation is not to be undermined.