What a shame Red Dawn was false Dawn

PRAY silence for Red Dawn, aka Ms Primarolo, Financial Secretary to the Treasury. Two years ago, supporting an amendment to one of Ken Clarke's budgets, she said that a certain measure was essential "in the name of justice, jobs, democracy and energy efficiency".

Never mind the bathos of the last two words, and the fact that she seems unaccountably to have left out motherhood and apple pie. The entire Labour Treasury team trooped into the lobby to try to get the amendment through - failing by only a single vote.

Now that Labour is finally bringing in a Budget of its own this week, surely the measure in question will be included. Well, it may be, but I'm not holding my breath. For the self-same Dawn Primarolo has been saying that it can't be done.

The measure itself sounds boring, but is actually very important, both in itself and as a guide to whether the Government is serious about implementing its green rhetoric.

At present, in a wonderful piece of looking-glass logic, you have to pay three-and-a- half times as much VAT on insulation and other energy- saving materials as you do on the fuel itself. This is positively mind- boggling when the Government is committing itself to heavy cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide - the main cause of global warming - from burning fuel.

Two years ago, Ms Primarolo was pressing to make the two rates of VAT the same. And she still admits that this would have "a measurable effect on carbon dioxide emissions".

But so far all that ministers have said they will do in the Budget is to reduce the VAT on materials used in "certain government-funded programmes" for insulating the houses of the poor. This is good, as it will help reduce fuel poverty. But, as Ms Primarolo admits, it will do little to cut pollution, as the poor will, rightly, go on burning the same amount of energy to get more heat.

Now, you shouldn't of course believe that the Treasury is refusing to apply this simple measure across the board because it doesn't want to lose a relatively minuscule amount of revenue. We have Ms Primarolo's word for it that it is all down to Europe. Those nasty Brussels bureaucrats, it seems, say that it is against EU rules.

Strangely, Belgium has already done just this without any trouble from Brussels. And despite promising to approach other EU countries to try to get the rules changed, Treasury ministers have so far failed to raise it with a single one.

o TIME now for me to consume a chunk of humble pie. A few weeks ago I voiced fears that the powerful new Commons environmental audit committee, which John Prescott called "a terrier to snap at the Government's heels, "would turn out to be more of a lapdog". I was worried that its chairman, John Horam, had shown little interest in the issue in the past and that the committee had failed to get Ms Primarolo to give evidence before it.

But Red Dawn then turned up (complaining about press coverage) and Mr Horam seems to have got hooked. Last week, the committee proved it has teeth by producing a report lambasting the Government for failing to deliver on promises to pursue "green" taxes, which would both cut pollution and boost employment.

It certainly seems to have drawn blood from Ms Primarolo who - after officially saying she "very much welcomed" the document - reportedly upbraided a Labour member of the committee in the Commons tea-room for failing to toe the party line.

Which seems a bit rich from the woman who earned her nickname as a Bennite stalwart of the hard-left Campaign Group of MPs, backing fundraising for the Morning Star, comparing the House of Commons to Holloway Prison, and pledging not to pay the poll tax.

o MEANWHILE I am sad to report a rare setback for the hunting, shooting and fishing lobby in Parliament. Some time ago I got a gold-edged invitation to the opening of an exhibition last Thursday in the House of Commons, put on by the British Association for Shooting and Conservation.

Then an apologetic letter came. The exhibition had been postponed "until a later date" by order of the "House authorities". For why? The self-styled "Voice of Shooting" had managed, with characteristic sensitivity, to schedule the event for the day before the second anniversary of Dunblane.