Human Rights (Joint Committee)

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

I take this opportunity to pay tribute to Michael Meacher, who died today. We seem to be in the business just now of losing a number of people who were giants of this House in the 1970s and 1980s. We wish to make sure he will be remembered as an assiduous and hard-working Member of Parliament.

Let me say at the outset that we have no issue at all with the establishment of a Committee on human rights: this House should of course have a Committee on human rights. It will have a lot of important work to do, some of which has been mentioned by the Minister. We want a Committee on human rights to be established as soon as possible. It has important business to take care of, and we support its establishment. I do not have a problem with the proposed members on the Order Paper. I am sure they will be assiduous members and work to the best of their abilities to ensure that the Committee carries out its functions. I do not even have a problem with this being a Joint Committee, although I am perplexed as to why the unelected House down the road is being given parity with elected Members—those of us who bother to go to our constituents to seek a mandate to serve in the House. Why are the unelected Members, who represent absolutely nobody, being given equal membership with the elected Members who represent real constituents the length and breadth of the United Kingdom?

No, my objection to the motion is the fact that the third party of the United Kingdom has no place on the Committee. That has never happened before. In the last Parliament, how many people from the third party were on the Committee? Two. There were two Liberals on it, one from this House and one from the unelected place down the road. We have made great progress, as the third party, in this House. We are on practically every institution in the House. I have just come from the Speaker’s Commission on the Electoral Commission. We have served on all these Committees assiduously as hard-working Members. We are on practically every single Committee of the House. We even get to chair some of them—I chair one.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I do not recollect the hon. Gentleman’s party opposing the Committee’s being a Joint Committee in the last Parliament. None the less, in the last Parliament the Liberal Democrats polled 23% of the popular vote, whereas his party polled 4% across the whole UK. Is that not the difference?

[Pete Wishart]

This is astounding. My party supports proportional representation. I am pretty certain the hon. Gentleman does not. We operate under the electoral system designed for this place, and it is called first past the post. We won 56 of 59 seats in Scotland, and we are the third party of the UK, in terms of membership of the House and party membership across the UK.

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[Pete Wishart]

My hon. Friend is quite right: the Committee will have a huge amount of work to do. The Conservative Government are threatening to do away with the European convention on human rights—they are threatening to take us out of it—and now we shall not have an opportunity to scrutinise the issue in the Joint Committee.

Moreover—I am sure that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) will mention this in her speech—the human rights settlement is profoundly important to the devolution settlement in Scotland. It is built into the very mechanics of the Scottish Parliament. No Bill can be passed in the Scottish Parliament without reference to human rights, but no Scottish Member of the House of Commons is a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Indeed, it has no members from north of Derby.

[Mr Jackson]

I think that one would have to have a heart of stone not to feel for the hon. Gentleman. His selflessness on this occasion is quite touching. However, I am trying to follow his logic. Is he suggesting, notwithstanding what the Deputy Leader of the House has said, that we should suspend the Standing Orders specifically to ameliorate the effects of a policy decision by the Scottish National party not to play any part in representation in the House of Lords?

[Pete Wishart]

Let us look at the House of Commons membership of the Joint Committee. We have no representation as the third party in the House of Commons, although we are represented on practically every other Committee in the House. We have 56 of the 59 Scottish seats in Parliament, but no attempt has been made to reflect a geographical spread in securing membership of the Joint Committee.

Let me suggest a couple of ways in which we might be able to rectify the situation. I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will listen carefully. She, or someone, will have to tell me why there must be parity with the House of Lords. The House of Lords has never been held in such contempt as it is now among the British people, who see it as nothing other than an affront to democracy and a repository for donors and cronies in the United Kingdom parties.

I need to know this, Mr Speaker. Why does the Joint Committee have to have six members from this House and six from that House? Surely we could come up with an arithmetical formulation that would allow an input from the Lords? I want to hear from them, because I think that they have a contribution to make. Why can we not have eight members from this House and nine members from that House, and cut the number from the House of Lords correspondingly? Is there anyone in the Chamber now—and I look to the Deputy Leader of the House—who can tell me why that cannot happen? Surely it is up to this House, as the predominant and the elected House, to set the rules and parameters for the Joint Committee.

English Votes on English Laws

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir William Cash]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Pete Wishart]

I have already given way to the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), so I will give way to the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson).

[Mr Jackson]

The hon. Gentleman is being very generous. Is he really saying that we should replace a settled position which is part of the constitutional architecture of the House with a discretion for the Scottish National party in respect of what is or is not a Barnett consequential issue? Surely he cannot be suggesting that we do that.

[Pete Wishart]

This is the way mutual respect works across this House—by doing things constructively and through having a relationship. If the Leader of the House disagrees with me about a Barnett consequential issue, let’s talk about it; do not impose legislation to make us second class in this House. How about resolving things through discussion, negotiation and partnership, instead of trying to ensure that we become second class in the united UK Parliament of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?

Business of the House

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Thursday 10th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. As usual, a great many right hon. and hon. Members are seeking to catch my eye, but I remind the House that there are two statements to follow the business question and then a significantly subscribed debate, the contributors to which I am naturally keen to accommodate. Therefore, exceptionally, it may not be possible to accommodate everybody at this session today. To maximise my chances of doing so, I will require extreme brevity from Back Benchers and Front Benchers alike.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

May we have a debate on expeditious deportations? Last week, Lithuanian career criminal Mantas Pronckus appeared for the third time at Peterborough Crown court having been arrested, charged and sentenced twice before. He had apparently agreed, in an informal arrangement with the Home Office, to leave the UK permanently, but had clearly failed to do so. When are we going to upgrade arrangements at the borders to protect our constituents and permanently exclude the likes of unpleasant criminals such as Pronckus?

Business of the House

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I will not repeat myself at length, but the Prime Minister made it very clear yesterday and I have already said today that about 3,000 children’s centres are open and only 49 have closed.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

There is concern in Peterborough and Cambridgeshire that the future funding of the clinical commissioning group might be based on historical primary care trust budgets, rather than on the formula developed by the Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation, which focuses on such things as demography, age and rurality. Will the Leader of the House implore Health Ministers to base future health funding fairly and equitably on empirical data?

[Mr Lansley]

I completely understand my hon. Friend’s point. Although I will obviously ensure that Ministers at the Department of Health see what he has said, that is no longer a matter for them. By virtue of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, that matter is no longer susceptible to the kind of political influences we saw in the past. It will be determined by NHS England and, as I understand it, we do not expect it to do so until its board meeting in December.

NHS England has conducted a fundamental review of allocations, and it has statutory responsibilities that are set out in the Act. Under the mandate—openly—the Government have made it clear that we expect

“the principle of ensuring equal access for equal need to be at the heart of the NHS England’s approach to allocating budgets.”

I think that that will be of help to my hon. Friend.

Business of the House

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Thursday 7th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

If I may, I will not comment in detail on that, but I will ask my hon. Friends at the Treasury to respond to the point that the hon. Lady makes.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

As a Conservative member of the Public Accounts Committee, may I begin by making it clear to Opposition Members that no pressure was exerted on any Members in respect of universal credit?

May we have a debate on technical and vocational education in Peterborough? The number of NEETs—those not in education, employment or training—is falling, the number of apprenticeships is rising and youth unemployment is dropping, but we need to drive up skills. Serendipitously, this week a very strong bid for a university technical college in Peterborough comes before Ministers. Will the Leader of the House nudge them in the right direction?

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, including for his confirmation of the point I have repeatedly made now at these questions to Labour Members, who do not appear to be able to understand when they are being told a simple fact.

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s reference to a UTC. We have a UTC being developed in relation to skills to support the life sciences industry in Cambridge. The possibility of a UTC in Peterborough is an interesting and important opportunity. The UTCs will help us ensure that young people have the training to support economic growth in the future. In terms of the applications, I expect my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education to announce the successful projects in January.

Business of the House

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the Leader of the House for announcing next week’s business. We have all been watching with concern as events in Egypt unfold. There are many British nationals in the country, so will the Leader of the House ensure that Members are regularly updated on this fast-moving situation?

The Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill returns to this place on Monday, as the right hon. Gentleman has announced. The hon. Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie) and I asked him last week whether he would provide extra time to ensure consideration of all the necessary amendments stemming from the recommendations of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards. I thus thank the right hon. Gentleman for responding by granting an extra half day, which will allow some extra time for this important Bill? Will he confirm that he will protect the additional time he has allocated so that we do not lose it to Government statements and find ourselves back where we started?

This Government have a woeful record on telling the media what is happening before they tell this House—in breach of the ministerial code. Yesterday, we reached a new low with the Defence Secretary’s spectacular failure to provide Members with crucial documents relating to his statement on Army reserves. You, Mr Speaker, have rightly admonished the Defence Secretary in the strongest possible terms, and today’s Order Paper says that there will be a clarification statement, but by the time I rose to speak, we had still not received it. Surely the Defence Secretary should now have the guts to come back and subject himself to the scrutiny of Members, who will finally have adequate information in front of them.

I pointed out a few weeks ago that the Education Secretary is at the bottom of the Government’s correspondence class, with a damning report from the Procedure Committee showing that eight out of 10 of his responses to MPs are answered late. This week, we have discovered why: he has been so busy composing an edict on the content of his departmental letters that he is not doing the day job. Apparently, he has demanded prose worthy of Jane Austen, George Orwell and, rather oddly, Matthew Parris. Does the Leader of the House agree that if the Education Secretary spent less time telling everyone else how to do their jobs and more time doing his, we would not have a shortage of a quarter of a million primary school places? Does he also agree that this is further proof that with this Government it is all about spin and never about substance?

The Back-Bench Bill to be presented by the hon. Member for Stockton South (James Wharton) is becoming a classic parliamentary farce. I hear that in order to keep Members here for the big day, the Prime Minister has been forced to invite his mutinous colleagues round for a barbecue tonight. While millionaire donors get kitchen suppers at No. 10, the poor Back Benchers are shoved out into the garden.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

It will not be a pyjama party.

[Ms Eagle]

If it is a pyjama party, perhaps Rebekah Brooks should be there.

I am told that the Prime Minister will be flipping the “posh burgers”, while the Cabinet will be dishing them out. That may sound like a rare treat, but there will be trouble if members of the Cabinet do their burgers the same as they do their policy: reconstituted, undercooked and over-garnished. I certainly would not relish them.

I note that the Tory Taliban continue to fire on all cylinders. Tomorrow they will debate the introduction of a Margaret Thatcher day, and next Friday they will debate the abolition of any protection against sexual harassment in the workplace. Their alternative Queen’s Speech is so off the wall that I cannot help wondering what they will come up with next. A Bill to disfranchise all but the landed gentry, perhaps? The repeal of the Factory Acts? A Bill to confirm that the earth is indeed flat?

It is not just the Prime Minister’s Back Benchers who are out of touch. On Tuesday, Tory welfare Minister Lord Freud denied that there was any link between the rise of food banks and the Government’s benefit chaos. Since the Government’s benefit changes, there has been a sevenfold increase in visits to food banks in Wirral. They were visited by 9,000 people this year, and in most cases the reason was the benefit changes. This is a Government who have given a tax cut to their millionaire donors while plunging a third of a million more children into poverty. May we have a debate on what they can possibly mean by their increasingly ludicrous phrase “We’re all in this together”?

This week, in an attempt to seem like a man of the people, the Prime Minister told a group of Kazakh students that he aspired to be the most high-profile member of an élite club at an élite school: Harry Potter. That outraged Potter fans everywhere, and inspired The Daily Telegraph to organise a poll which concluded that he was actually more like Draco Malfoy. The Defence Secretary cannot make a statement to the House, the Education Secretary cannot answer questions, and the Chancellor cannot organise a burger stunt. Is not the reality that the Prime Minister is presiding over a Cabinet of muggles?

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[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question. I had not had, but now have, an opportunity to see early-day motion 337. I will take an opportunity, as I know many hon. Members will, to read it and perhaps to read about it. I very much welcome what she has had to say; she rightly raises important issues that we need to commemorate and always reflect upon in current circumstances.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

May we have a debate on the anomalous situation of precipitous demolitions ahead of planning applications being considered? High Trees in Eastfield road, Peterborough, a striking Victorian house, previously occupied by the Family Care charity, faces the threat of demolition as a result of a speculative application for 90 student bedsits by a mystery developer. Will the Leader of the House persuade his colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government to look again at this issue, so that we can avoid precipitous demolitions ahead of planning application consideration and, thus, protect our heritage and built environment?

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. I can imagine how he and his constituents might be alarmed by an experience of that kind. I will, of course, raise it with my colleagues at DCLG and encourage them to respond to him regarding what powers are available and how they are appropriately used. He might note that our DCLG colleagues will be here answering questions on Monday, which might give him an opportunity to raise the matter then.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

Absolutely. I have to say to those who have a grievance against conventions or against House of Lords reform that I am afraid the ship has sailed. They had their opportunity, but it passed them by.

The amendments have been made in addition to the improvements made here in the Commons during the progress of the Bill. We managed to secure a commitment that an annual canvass would still take place in 2014, that the option of a rolling opt-out was removed and that a civil penalty would be created for those who refused to respond when requested to register to vote. The Bill still left this House with serious problems, however, which is why we voted against it on Third Reading when it was last before us.

I would like to use this opportunity to place on record our appreciation of those who tabled the amendments in group 2: Lord Hart of Chilton, Lord Rennard, Lord Wigley and Lord Kerr of Kinlochard. This amendment received support from across the other place, and a Labour peer, a Liberal Democrat peer, a Plaid Cymru peer and a Cross Bencher tabled it. It was passed by a majority of 69. We welcome the amendments made to the Bill in the other place. We shall not, therefore, be supporting the motion before us today to disagree with the Lords in their amendments.

The effect of the amendment we are debating will be to postpone the review of parliamentary boundaries by one electoral cycle.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Let us focus on the practical ramifications of the right hon. Gentleman’s vote today. Is he really prepared to tell his constituents in Tooting that it is appropriate, fair and equitable that, by the time of the general election after next, in May 2020, the enumeration data on which the electorates are based will be 20 years old? Some of the constituencies in my county of Cambridgeshire are the fastest growing in England, and they will have well over 100,000 electors by then, while some in Wales will have fewer than 40,000.

[Sadiq Khan]

It is a bit rich for a Conservative Member to lecture us on equality and fairness. I will come to those issues later in my speech.

The amendment will also similarly delay the reduction in the number of MPs by 50 to 600, as a result of which the next general election will take place on the current boundaries with the number of MPs at 650.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Thurso]

I disagree with that. I went through the Lords Hansard and underlined the names of all the Cross Benchers I could see in each of the voting lists. There were slightly more of them in one list than the other, but there were quite a number in support of this amendment. I remember that one of the great dictums of their lordships’ House is that all peers are equal, so I would look to the result, which was 300 on one side and 69 or so fewer—231—on the other side.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

The hon. Gentleman is an experienced parliamentarian, so he will know that it has hitherto been the practice of the other place not to amend secondary legislation substantially—or, indeed, at all—even on some very contentious subjects and Bills over the past few Parliaments. Why, therefore, has this happened on this particular occasion?

[John Thurso]

I recall very well that, when I and others were given their P45s and left that place, one of the discussions that we had was about why on earth we in the other place should not register dissent on secondary legislation. Indeed, that has occasionally happened, which serves to demonstrate that there is a changing dynamic. Because of that changing dynamic, we need to look at the constitutional arrangements in the round, and that topic will form the substantive element of the last part of my argument.

Business of the House

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. There is heavy pressure on time today, as I have already indicated, making it imperative that contributions from Back Benchers and Front Benchers alike are brief. Moreover, I remind the House that, in accordance with convention, hon. and right hon. Members who came into the Chamber after the Leader of the House had begun his statement or who exited during it, should not stand and expect to be called.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend will know that from January next year 29 million Bulgarians and Romanians will potentially have access to the UK under the free movement directive. This Government are at risk of exhibiting institutionalised torpor on this issue. There has been no proper liaison with local authorities, no proper analysis of the likely numbers coming here and no analysis of whether we can vary the free movement directive to protect our core public services and our employment market. Will my right hon. Friend ask the Prime Minister to look at this matter as a matter of urgency, because we have only 11 months left?

[Mr Lansley]

I can reassure my hon. Friend that the Government are actively considering the issue. Rather than adopting the last Government’s attitude to the accession of member states, we are deploying as much of the extension of transitional measures as is available to us. My colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government are in contact with local government representatives, and my hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration is leading a ministerial group which is considering matters relating to access to benefits and other services for those who come here. We do not want to exaggerate, as it were, the pull of this country rather than others for people exercising free movement in the European Union as a result of the differential in that regard.

Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I wish to say a little about what the new board members are going to do in terms of getting trained and educated about what we do in this House. Their statutory responsibility is to determine Members’ pay and allowances—I emphasise the word “allowances” because that is the expression in the statute, although that is not how it has been interpreted by the current board and its chairman.

It is surely important that anybody who is looking at terms of pay and conditions should understand a bit about the job of the people whose pay and conditions they are sitting in judgment over. As you may know, Mr Deputy Speaker, on the morning of 22 November this year the current chairman of IPSA, who sat on the board that selected the four candidates whose names are before the House tonight, told the “Today” programme that he knew a lot about what Members of Parliament did in their constituencies, but admitted to ignorance about what they did in this great House of Commons. That is after three years in the position, which he holds for only five years. In other words, after 66% of his time in post, he still admits that he is ignorant. He said that the only thing he knew about what Members of Parliament did was that they attended, as he put it, “a zoo” on a Wednesday. Later that day, I asked my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House whether he would organise a programme of education for Sir Ian Kennedy. He assured me that Sir Ian had always shown a willingness and desire to learn more about the work of the House, and obviously put him in a strong position to be able to show leadership to the new members of the board.

Pursuant to that, I wrote to Sir Ian on the following day, 23 November, setting out in detail everything that I had done in this House on Thursday 22 November, including asking a question about him. That covered the time between about 8.30 am and after 10 o’clock at night, when I returned to my constituency home. In the letter, which I said I was quite prepared to have treated as an open letter, I invited him to come along and shadow me for a day in the House so that I could show him exactly what we do here because he is so ignorant of it. I had assumed that by now, in the knowledge that we were having this debate, which my right hon. Friend flagged up when he responded to my business question, the chairman of IPSA would have responded to me, but he has not yet done so. I therefore wonder whether he really is interested in finding out what we do here. I hope that other members of the board will have a greater appetite for learning about it before they feel able to comment on our pay, allowances and pensions.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

On the subject of pay and conditions, and the transparency and probity that IPSA is responsible for upholding in this place, does my hon. Friend deprecate, as I do, the fact that despite a very strong lead from the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the Government, IPSA set its face against that policy in paying its interim chief executive, through a tax-avoiding personal service company, the sum of £39,000?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I said that this is a very narrow motion, and that is certainly way outside its scope.

[Mr Jackson]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The comments that I made relate specifically to the duties and responsibilities of board members, which are to protect the probity, honesty and transparency of this place, and I would respectfully submit that that is in order.

General Matters

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Tuesday 18th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I am glad to have this opportunity to discuss a vexed issue of tax policy, namely air passenger duty, which has been described succinctly by the TaxPayers Alliance as an unwelcome burden on family holidays, a cost to business and redundant now that the European Union’s emissions trading system is being applied to aviation.

I declare an interest at the outset as the constituency Member of Parliament for Peterborough, which houses the international headquarters of Thomas Cook, so tourism and leisure issues are important to me. This is also a wider issue relating to business competitiveness, the impact on family budgets and household incomes, and the ongoing debate about sustainability, the environment and climate change.

The fair tax on flying campaign has been one of the most successful campaigns in recent parliamentary history. More than 130,000 individuals have written to their MPs in support of early-day motion 174, which calls on the Government to undertake a comprehensive study of the full economic effects of aviation tax in the United Kingdom, including its impact on employment.

APD was introduced in 1994 at an original rate of £5 per person for short-haul flights and £10 for flights elsewhere. In 2008, the then Government announced that the per-plane duty proposal that they had suggested the previous year would not go ahead and that, instead, APD rates and geographical bands would be restructured. Following the general election, the coalition Government have explored plans to switch to a per-plane duty, as outlined in both the coalition agreement and the 2010 emergency Budget. The overall APD tax take increased significantly from 1 April 2012, after the Government implemented an 8% APD increase.

A typical family of four pays an average of more than £115 in APD each year. A family of four flying in economy class to Florida from the UK would pay £262 in APD, whereas in France the equivalent tax is £38. Compared with seven years ago, APD rates have risen 160% on short-haul flights and up to 360% on long-haul flights, with inflation over that period being about 18%.

The tax has a significant and deleterious effect on the economy. The British Chambers of Commerce found that APD could cost the economy a staggering £10 billion in lost growth and up to 250,000 fewer jobs over the next 20 years. Many European countries, including Belgium, Holland and Denmark, have abandoned their aviation taxes because of the negative effects on their economies. In the longer term, analysis undertaken by Oxera in 2009 shows that the UK economy will forgo £750 million in wealth and 18,000 jobs because of the rises in APD since November 2010, with about half of the extra revenue raised offset by tax revenue losses in the wider economy.

Although it has to be conceded that the research on APD is piecemeal, it does point to significant damage to the economy in the long run. The Government’s figures project 7,000 fewer flights in 2011-12 as a result of the APD increase in 2010. A 2011 report by York Aviation estimated that APD would result in Scotland losing 1.2 million passengers, 148,000 tourists and £77 million in revenue by 2014.

Aviation is vital to the UK economy. It contributes £53.3 billion or 3.8% of GDP. It supports 963,000 UK jobs—352,000 directly in the sector and 344,000 indirectly through the supply chain. A massive amount of economic activity is dependent on the success of tourism, leisure and aviation.

[Keith Vaz]

There is a burden on the traveller not only through the additional tax, but through the increase in the cost of visas.

[Mr Jackson]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point about the impact on people who take long-haul flights, such as to India or the Caribbean.

APD is having a significant impact on people who want to come to the UK from growth economies, such as China. Such people would spend money and drive growth. In 2011, the Tourism Alliance produced a report entitled “Air Passenger Duty: the Impact on Visitors from China”, which found that the UK’s share of the Chinese market had more than halved from 0.5% in 2001 to 0.2% in 2010. If the UK had retained its share of the outbound market from China, it would have gained more than £1 billion in additional tourism revenue from China over the last decade.

Britain has the highest air taxation of all European Union and G20 countries. It is so high that the Treasury will collect more than twice as much in passenger taxes this year as all other European countries combined. Only five other countries in Europe have a similar tax. In August 2010, the German Government approved an air travel levy. It was introduced on 1 January 2011 and ranges from the equivalent of about £7 per passenger for short trips to £39 for long-haul trips. That is well below the UK’s APD, which starts at £13 for short-haul trips. In 2009, the Netherlands followed Belgium in abandoning its equivalent of APD because, although it raised the equivalent of £266 million in one year, the Dutch calculated that the loss to the wider economy was more than £950 million. Germany has set its rate at about half the UK’s level.

Given that one of the Government’s economic ambitions is for Britain to have the most competitive tax system in the G20, it is extraordinary that the World Economic Forum’s recent tourism competitiveness report ranked the UK 134th out of 138 countries for air ticket taxes and airport charges. That was before the 8% rise in the last Budget.

This tax is having a direct effect on constituents across the country—ordinary working people on modest salaries who want to go on holiday. That is the important point that Treasury Ministers need to think about when preparing next year’s Budget.

The British Chambers of Commerce has found that UK airports believe that rises in APD have contributed to a number of key routes being lost at local airports. Peel Airports, which operates Liverpool John Lennon airport, Robin Hood airport Doncaster Sheffield, and Durham Tees Valley airport, provided an analysis of its lost routes in a joint submission to the Treasury by the Northern Way, a coalition of regional development agencies in the north of England. Following the doubling of APD in 2007 and the subsequent rises, Liverpool John Lennon lost six domestic services, five European services and two long-haul services to north America, and Robin Hood airport Doncaster Sheffield lost one domestic service, six European services and three long-haul services.

People will inevitably say that this tax is about maintaining some kind of traction on air travel and aviation in order to reduce the dangers of climate change. However, attempts to justify the tax on environmental grounds have been unpersuasive, and particularly with the application of the EU emissions trading scheme to the aviation sector, I believe that the aviation tax should eventually be phased out.

In his 2011 book “Let them Eat Carbon”, the chief executive of the TaxPayers Alliance, Matthew Sinclair, noted research by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that suggests that by 2050 aviation will still be responsible for only 5% of the human contribution to climate change. That figure, although significant, is still pretty marginal. With aviation expected to continue to make up such a small share of global emissions, stopping people flying is not critical to limiting climate change, and we know that aeroplanes are now quieter, cleaner and more efficient than ever. APD is excessive, unfair and inefficient as a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and it is duplicated in a number of other policy interventions. I therefore believe that it should eventually be abolished.

In their working paper “The impact of the UK aviation tax on carbon dioxide emissions and visitor numbers”, Mayor and Tol found that the 2007 increase in UK aviation tax had had

“the perverse effect of increasing carbon dioxide emissions, albeit only slightly,”

while reducing the number of travellers to Britain.

A 2008 cost assessment by the Department for Transport found that the aviation tax was excessive following the doubling of air passenger duty rates in February 2007. The Government have since—surprise, surprise—stopped carrying out such studies, but results show that even with a high estimate for the social cost of carbon, it is hard to justify the current APD rates on the basis of aviation’s contribution to climate change.

In the run-up to the autumn statement and next year’s Budget in March, the Government have an excellent opportunity to reconsider this tax, which I believe is regressive, inefficient and, above all, damaging to what we all care about—British jobs and British growth. Even more important, we as hon. Members must defend the interests of our constituents. They are not wealthy and do not own Learjets and jet across the world at the drop of a hat, but are decent working people who wish to have a holiday with their family. At the moment, we are clobbering them, but next year we have a real opportunity to right that wrong and bring in a fair tax regime that will compare with other such regimes across the world. We should do the right thing, and I believe that over the next few years, this tax should come to an end.

Although no Treasury Ministers are sitting on the Front Bench, I hope that they will listen to people power—some 130,000 people have written to hon. Members about this issue, and it is time for a change.