{"id":2705,"date":"2015-06-04T15:16:53","date_gmt":"2015-06-04T14:16:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housingenergyadvisor.com\/blog\/?p=2705"},"modified":"2015-07-03T10:21:39","modified_gmt":"2015-07-03T09:21:39","slug":"fox-judges-ruling-on-energy-saving-defies-common-sense-conservative-meps-have-criticised-a-ruling-by-the-european-court-of-justice-today-banning-britain-from-cutting-vat-on-energy-saving-materials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housingenergyadvisor.com\/blog\/fox-judges-ruling-on-energy-saving-defies-common-sense-conservative-meps-have-criticised-a-ruling-by-the-european-court-of-justice-today-banning-britain-from-cutting-vat-on-energy-saving-materials\/","title":{"rendered":"Fox:  Judges ruling on energy-saving defies common sense"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Conservative MEPs have criticised a ruling by the European Court of Justice today banning Britain from cutting VAT on energy-saving materials.<\/p>\n<p>Ashley Fox, leader of Britain&#8217;s Conservative MEPs, said the judgment against the UK Government was &#8220;unfortunate and unwelcome&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The infringement judgment from the Court in Luxembourg said Britain was breaching the EU&#8217;s VAT Directive by applying a reduction across board in the rate of VAT applied to energy-saving materials for housing.<\/p>\n<div style=\"float: right; padding-left: 10px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-top: 5px;\"><script async src=\"\/\/pagead2googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script><!-- HEA blog 300x250 --><ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"style=\"display:inline-block;width:300px;height:250px\"data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-2370067811734011\"data-ad-slot=\"5331067377\"><\/ins><script>(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/script><\/div>\n<p>The judges said such a reduction should only apply to social housing. The UK&#8217;s lawyers insisted that a policy promoting housing improvement may produce social effects, but their argument was rejected.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Fox said: &#8220;When you consider the importance these days of promoting energy-saving, this judgment is most unfortunate and thoroughly unwelcome. It defies common sense.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;People will be aghast when they see the EU on the one hand hectoring member states about carbon reduction while on the other handing down judgments like this.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Conservative MEPs have criticised a ruling by the European Court of Justice today banning Britain from cutting VAT on energy-saving materials. Ashley Fox, leader of Britain&#8217;s Conservative MEPs, said the judgment against the UK Government was &#8220;unfortunate and unwelcome&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-saving"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housingenergyadvisor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2705"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housingenergyadvisor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housingenergyadvisor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housingenergyadvisor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housingenergyadvisor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2705"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.housingenergyadvisor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2726,"href":"https:\/\/www.housingenergyadvisor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2705\/revisions\/2726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housingenergyadvisor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housingenergyadvisor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housingenergyadvisor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}