We should have known better. The very idea that any Government would go to the trouble of constructing a scheme as ‘baroque’ (per Chris Huhne) as the Carbon Reduction Commission (CRC) to raise billions of pounds only to hand it all back to the poor business taxpayer was always going to be improbable at best.
What is most galling though about George Osborne’s tax grab – which you can find buried somewhere midway through the Spending Review 2010 – is the fact that our new Chancellor seems utterly indifferent to that quaint old custom that says you need to share decisions to impose massive tax hikes with Parliament.
