THE Conservatives are proposing to offer tax cuts worth thousands of pounds to householders who make homes more energy efficient.

A policy group set up by David Cameron is recommending rebates in stamp duty, reductions in council tax and cuts in the Vat levied on materials that save energy.

They would help buyers to recover much of the £9,800 stamp duty paid on the average detached house purchase, and let them make savings of hundreds of pounds a year in council tax. The measures will be set out in an 800-page report from the Quality of Life group led by Zac Goldsmith, the millionaire environmentalist, and John Gummer, the former environment secretary.

The proposals, which also cover transport, food, waste and “wellbeing”, are designed to trump Gordon Brown’s attempts to woo the “green” vote. In one of his first policy announcements as prime minister, he proposed five “eco-towns”.

However, some of the group’s proposals are likely to provoke a backlash from rightwingers when they are debated at the Tories’ annual conference in Blackpool in three weeks’ time.

A proposal to restrict airport expansion and impose taxes on flying has already been criticised by John Redwood, who chaired a policy group on competitiveness. A proposal to impose extra tax on gas-guzzling cars is also widely expected.

Other sections of the report call for restrictions on supermarkets and suggest that the high-fat high-sugar foods promoted as cheap by retailers are costing the nation billions of pounds in health costs and reduced productivity.

For some, the most controversial idea may be the proposed abandonment of GDP (gross domestic product) as the main measure of the nation’s success. Goldsmith and Gummer suggest it could be replaced with the so-called Happy Planet Index (HPI), devised by the New Economics Foundation and Friends of the Earth, which tries to include measures of human wellbeing and happiness in measures of national success.

“David Cameron set up this group to be radical in the wake of three serious election defeats by Labour,” said Goldsmith, who plans to stand as Tory candidate for Richmond, southwest London, at the next election. “The world is changing fast and this is the party’s chance to take the lead in adapting to that.”

The report, due to be published on Thursday, says one of its primary aims is to reduce Britain’s energy use. Goldsmith and Gummer focused on buildings because the energy used in providing them with heating, lighting and other services accounts for about half the nation’s carbon emissions.

“We propose a partial rebate of stamp duty if all cost-effective energy efficiency improvements are adopted at the time of sale or shortly after,” says the report. “This should be combined with a zero rate of stamp duty for zero carbon homes. We also favour a discount on council tax payable in respect of all homes which are built to the highest environmental standards.”

A key aim of both authors was to make green measures attractive by offering people incentives to “green” their lives, rather than penalise them for failing to do so.

The report proposes curbing the rise in “electricity-guzzling” home appliances. It recommends power consumption standards for appliances, particularly devices such as plasma televisions and tumble dryers, which use a lot of electricity. Power companies would have to install smart-meters in every home, giving customers more details on electricity use.

It is, however, in the report’s chapter on “wellbeing” that its authors may run up against the limits of the Tory party’s willingness to change.

The chapter was expected to cover issues such as working hours and suggestions for encouraging fathers to spend more time with their children. Insiders say that party chiefs feared such ideas might be too “woolly” and easily lampooned. But the final version will still propose replacing GDP with the HPI as a measure of national progress.

The index is based on three indicators, two of which are objective: life expectancy and the ecological footprint, a measure of people’s impact on the environment. The third is derived from people’s reports of their level of life satisfaction. Studies show such reports correspond well with levels of physical and mental health.

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