There is one golden rule about major financial statements made in the House of Commons and it is that nobody should express an opinion until they have read the small print.
Of course, like most sensible rules, it is totally ignored. Attention-seeking backbenchers who support the Government rush out of the chamber to say how wonderful it all is while critics line up to give their equally stereotyped responses.
But these parliamentary set-pieces are a lot more about spin than substance and last month’s Spending Review by George Osborne was no exception. It is only in the cold light of day that nasty news of the kind the chancellor is not keen to advertise begins to sink in.
Take two examples from opposite ends of the energy scale. Large companies which are paying through the nose to fund the Carbon Reduction Commitment Scheme were understandably furious to learn that – unmentioned in Mr Osborne’s speech – a “stealth tax” of £1billion had just been introduced.
This was done by a very simple device. Previously, the proceeds of the scheme were to be recycled among the virtuous companies which did most to reduce their carbon footprint. Hey presto! By the time Mr Osborne sat down, the money is to go straight to Treasury coffers while virtue goes unrewarded. Now that really is a stealth tax and morally wrong.
At the other end of the scale, the Warm Front scheme which provides insulation measures in the homes of the elderly and less well-off is to be slashed. No surprise there given the general tenor of Mr Osborne’s priorities, but still a pretty mean-minded attack on something that has worked well and – unusually for government programmes – delivered totally tangible benefits.
There were plenty of swings and roundabouts in the chancellor’s statement and related decisions for the energy industry. And I’m sure the full significance of the strategy he has embarked upon still hasn’t been appreciated.
Of course, all chancellors need upbeat announcements so a £1billion Green Investment Bank sounds pretty good.
Until you stop to think that, such is the scale of the task, £1billion won’t actually go very far towards the mammoth investment required if the way Britain generates electricity is to change radically.
But is it? That really is the question which will be determined over the months and years ahead. Nothing that Mr Osborne or his colleagues said deviates from the declared objectives on developing renewable energy and reducing carbon emissions. We still have our targets and the rhetoric continues unabated. The Coalition aspires to being “the Greenest-government ever”.
Well, maybe. But what seems to me to run through many of the less-heralded announcements is a growing awareness of what all this is going to cost the taxpayer and consumer at a time of economic austerity. And there are already signs of backing-off from the blithe assumption that the “consumer will pay”.
Take for instance the Renewable Heat Incentive. Everyone has welcomed the fact that it is to go ahead but there has been a crucial change in how it is to be funded. There is to be a capped figure of £860million over 10 years rather than, as previously intended, a surcharge which would be shown on electricity bills.
So on the one hand, the scheme survives. On the other, it is heavily constrained rather than open-ended at consumers’ expense. Similarly, the feed-in tariffs on small renewables have survived – but with clear signals that they too will be capped before too long.
Then there was the abrupt abandonment of the Severn Barrage as a vast tidal project on the straightforward grounds that it was going to cost too much. I wonder how many more highly capital intensive projects, particularly offshore, will go the same way as it becomes apparent that they can only proceed with the guarantee of massive consumer subsidy?
And, of course, there is an alternative. Also released among the flurry of announcements late last month was confirmation of the eight preferred sites for new nuclear power stations. None of them, sadly, is in Scotland because of the SNP’s ideological objections to a Hunterston C or a Torness B. Instead, SSE and Scottish Power (in partnership with Gaz de France) plan to build on the other side of the Solway Firth, at Sellafield.
If renewables start to look too expensive and too dependent on consumer subsidy, nuclear could become the chosen means of delivering a lower-carbon energy mix. Or the other alternative is that while there would be no formal renunciation of targets and commitments on carbon reduction, the market would quietly reassert itself and new gas-fired power stations would start to pop up.
At this juncture, there is probably no preferred strategy far less a devious masterplan.
But I am pretty sure that energy policy is not going to be untouched by the cuts agenda. And the assumption that either taxpayers or consumers will pay for the wholesale transformation of Britain’s energy mix looks a lot less safe than it did, even a month ago.