Daily Telegraph: Leader: A new Chancellor, and a new stealth tax

In his Budget on Wednesday, Alistair Darling invoked concern about global warming to justify a new road tax regime. In the name of greater carbon efficiency, he proposed incentives to encourage drivers to choose the least polluting car. From 2010, there will be a new first-year rate based on CO2 emissions from the car. Cars that emit less than the proposed 130g European standard will pay no car tax in the first year, but a higher first-year rate will be introduced for the most polluting cars. Anyone listening to the Chancellor was entitled to assume that only those driving the most fuel inefficient, "gas-guzzling'' vehicles would be clobbered. However, some number-crunching by the ever-vigilant Taxpayers' Alliance has calculated that, in fact, nearly nine in 10 cars will attract higher rates of tax under Mr Darling's proposal. Just nine per cent of vehicles will benefit from the new system. The biggest losers will be popular family cars.

Yet the Budget stated: "As a result of these reforms, the majority of motorists will be better or no worse off in 2009.'' To describe Mr Darling's statement as misleading would be generous. We have become accustomed to the smoke and mirrors used by the Treasury to disguise the true consequences of Budget decisions that were never openly announced. Mr Darling is continuing the tradition. The duty changes are designed to raise an extra pounds 1 billion by 2011, something the Chancellor omitted to tell MPs, and look suspiciously like another tax on the hard-working majority.

Mr Darling is becoming worryingly accident-prone. In his brief tenure, he has created problems with capital gains tax changes and planned charges on non-doms.

He is also predicting growth of between 1.75 per cent and 2.25 per cent in the coming year and we are entitled to ask where it is going to come from as the world's biggest economy is, in all likelihood, entering a recession and when market jitters continue despite a $200 billion injection from central banks. Domestic fiscal policy continues to damage the wealth creators and the middle classes who pay the bills.

Let us hope Mr Darling's professed optimism about economic prospects is well-founded, it may well be and it is certainly too early to predict disaster as the economy beyond the Square Mile looks to have escaped the worst buffeting inflicted on the markets.

But the Chancellor fluffed his opportunity on Wednesday to show that he appreciated the difficulties that lie ahead. We looked in vain for a feelgood announcement to show the Government was prepared to play its part in offering a helping hand to the hard-worked and over-taxed. Instead, his stealth tax on motoring promises to be a political car crash. He must reconsider.