Tory leader backs green taxes on cars and flights

The Conservative Party's quality of life policy review proposed a tax on workplace parking spaces, VAT on internal flights, and a halt to London airport growth.

It also urged a tax on gas-guzzling cars, as well as higher vehicle excise duty and bans on wasteful electrical appliances such as plasma TVs.

The report brought outraged protests from Tory traditionalists, who labelled its proposals vote-losers and job-wreckers.

It went further than expected, rejecting the endless pursuit of wealth, and saying a Tory government should put other measures of happiness first and step off a "hedonistic treadmill". It even called for shorter working hours for stressed Londoners.

The contrast with Margaret Thatcher's championing of business was deliberately stark. A dismayed Lady Thatcher chose the same day to pop into No 10 for a cosy chat with her new admirer Gordon Brown.

Mr Cameron responded by announcing a "family fund" into which the proceeds of taxes on pollution would be put. The cash would be ring-fenced and each tax would be "matched pound for pound" with tax cuts and discounts for families. The Tory leader sought to contrast the pledge with what he said was Gordon Brown's reliance on stealth taxes disguised as green levies.

The 550-page report says greater wealth has failed to make people happier and may even be making them more miserable: "Ever increasing material gain can become not a gift but a burden."

Mr Cameron called the report the "most thoughtful" by any party on lifestyle issues - but pointedly refused to back all the proposals. "I think this is a very good report and there is much of it that we will include in our manifesto," he said.

He has already backed away from a plan to impose charges on out-of-town supermarket car parks.

There was embarrassment for the Tories when the review's chairman, former environment secretary John Gummer, admitted to owning three cars, including a seven-seat 4x4. He said the others were an electric car and a Fiat Panda, and his trips were carbon-offset by planting trees.

More worrying for the Tory leadership were the attacks from their own side. MP David Wilshire, whose Spelthorne constituency borders Heathrow, warned Mr Gummer, and the report's co-author Zac Goldsmith, that jobs would go abroad.

He said of the environmentalist: "Zac doesn't understand aviation - it's a global business. If we fiddle about on a unilateral basis we will damage the British economy, cost my constituents jobs, and then we can watch the Chinese open another 49 airports." Tory MEP Roger Helmer dismissed many of the ideas as "absolute anti-Conservative nonsense".

Labour peer Lord Bach, chairman of the Airport Operators Association, said: "Putting VAT on tickets amounts to a tax on visiting family and going on holiday."

But Greenpeace called the report "a significant set of proposals" and Friends of the Earth director Tony Juniper said it was "enormously important". HALCAN, which campaigns against Heathrow expansion, hailed it as a welcome change from Labour's "aggressive" policy.