News: Tory calls for £100 air passenger duty
Flights > News > # 916 (21/08/2006)
Former Conservative MP Steven Norris is calling for a huge hike in air passenger duty in a bid to tackle pollution.
The one-time transport minister and two-time London Mayoral candidate said he wants to see the tax rise from £5 to £20 for short-haul flights and from £20 up to £100 for long-haul trips. In an interview with The Guardian newspaper, Mr Norris, who now fronts the Tories’ transport policy review, said: “You have to avoid creating a culture based on cheap aviation which will be as pernicious as the way of life based on car ownership has been in terms of urban planning. We've now got a generation living in France, working three days a week here, [which] thinks nothing of going to Prague for a stag night.”
Add to:
Related Airports:
Comment:
Considering that David Cameron has come up with few concrete policies since becoming leader of the Conservative party, it is surprising that Steven Norris has chosen to be so specific with regards to taxation on flights. Norris is not the most shy and retiring of politicians – he has followed fellow Tory cad David Mellor into the world of radio presenting – but suggesting a £100 levy on long-haul flights is surely his most desperate publicity stunt yet. A £20 tax on short-haul flights is equally ludicrous.
At Flightmapping.com, we have always been in favour of a reasonable and proportionate environmental charge on flights, but the figures being bandied about by the former Transport Secretary would unfairly price many people out of the market. This kind of blunt tax is a lazy and regressive way of making passengers pay for the environmental damage caused by aircraft. Last week, David Cameron admitted that an increase on aviation tax was likely under the Conservatives, but he was at pains to point out that it would be in proportion to other modes of transport. I hope that the Tories will follow their leader’s mantra and not that of the wannabe Mayor of London.
Many environmentalists have asked why flight tickets do not incur VAT, and why aviation fuel is tax-free. With regards to the VAT issue, it might be worth noting that Ryanair's average one-way fare is just £27, a rate which would attract £4.73 in VAT. Other airlines might well have much higher average fares, but at least VAT would be proportional to the cost of the ticket. The reasons for aviation fuel being tax-free are due to international agreements which date back to the Chicago Convention of 1944. The European Union is a working on a raft of measures to introduce both aviation fuel tax and an emissions trading scheme to cover flights. So why should the UK act unilaterally on this matter?
The logic behind Norris' argument seems to be as much about headline grabbing as it does about any kind of rational policy. The current Labour Government was elected on a pledge not to increase income taxes, following a series of election defeats in which the economy was the most important issue. As there is little to distance the economic policies of the current government with their Conservative opponents, the pointscoring has moved over to the environment, and with this being a traditional Liberal Democrat stronghold, the Conservatives have to somehow outdo their rivals in order to grab the headlines. We have moved from Harry Enfield's “I am considerably richer than yow" Brummies to the Islington and Notting Hill luvvies telling us that they are considerably more environmentally and ethically sound than everyone else. In a pre-budget campaign back in March, Friends of the Earth called for a £10 increase in air passenger duty on short-haul flights, so it looks like Norris has just taken this figure and added on another fiver for good measure.
So is there really a sound environmental reason to slap a fourfold increase on flight taxes? A local Conservative official once asked me if I felt it was "immoral" that airlines were "giving" flights away for prices as low as £1. It now seems that rather than praise the huge economic success of the no-frills airlines, the Conservatives want to join those on the loony left and the enviro-fundamentalist fringes who want to see them fail. Granted, any cost increases will always bring about some decrease in demand, but if we take the Ryanair figure of £27 per flight as an example, the taxation rates would work out as a whopping 74% of this figure. Looking at how Ryanair have already pulled a number of flights from Sweden in protest at the Swedish Government's imposition of a £7 aviation tax, we can imagine how many jobs will be lost if this proposal ever came to fruition. The environmental benefits will also be limited, as the whole purpose of offering heavily discounted flight prices is to ensure that as many seats are filled as possible, thus reducing the overall levels of pollution per passenger carried. Politicians can claim most of their transport costs on expenses, so why should they care about a £20 surcharge on a flight back to their constituency, but it would add a massive £160 to the cost of a family of four taking an internal round trip within the UK.
More worryingly, if the UK acted on its own, that there would be a huge disincentive for international airlines to want to route passengers through London or other British airports, especially if the suggested £100 charge on long-haul flights was levied in all directions, potentially adding £400 to the cost of a return flight between the USA and Asia via the UK. This would cause unnecessary and untold damage to the UK economy, whilst doing virtually nothing for the environment, as these passengers would merely relocate their flight transfers to Amsterdam, Paris or Frankfurt. This is why it is so imperative that any environmental legislation which governs the pollution caused by flights must be introduced in a levelheaded and equitable manner. We suggest that Norris’ crazy plans are put to bed quickly if the Conservatives are serious about getting back into office in the near future.
