News: Easyjet slams Tory green report

Flights > News > # 1465 (14/09/2007)

Budget airline Easyjet says increased flights taxes recommended in the Conservatives’ Quality of Life Report would unfairly hit British families in the pocket.
A group headed by former Environment Secretary John Gummer and the green campaigner Zac Goldsmith, has called for VAT to be introduced on domestic flights and all plans for growth at UK airports to be suspended.
But Easyjet has lambasted the report for being “factually wrong” and “arrogantly London-centric”.
An Easyjet spokesman said: “The report consigns the 50 million Britons not living in or around London to the status of second-class citizens for whom time is considered an unimportant commodity and the dream of high-speed rail is contradicted by the nightmare of today's reality.
“The UK already taxes flying more heavily than any other European country. Easyjet would welcome the proposal to replace air passenger duty with an aircraft emissions charge and to scrap the current system that taxes family holidays, but not private jets.”
The no-frills giant said adding VAT to domestic air travel would put up the cost of holidays without providing any link to the carbon dioxide emissions of a particular flight and could also result in the closure of many domestic routes.
The spokesman added: “The report is simply wrong to claim that trains are taxed more than flights at present. Electric trains pay no fuel duty, there is no VAT on rail tickets and there is no equivalent of air passenger duty – which already adds £20 for every return air journey in the UK.
“Believing that rail journeys are a viable substitute for short-haul air travel is an argument of the metropolitan London elite.
“For those living in the West Country, Wales, Scotland and many other parts of the UK the train is inconvenient, slow and expensive. Anybody suggesting that people in Northern Ireland can take the train must be living in cloud-cuckoo-land.”

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