Air Passenger Duty

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ms Abbott]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who makes his point very well. He raised the question of the avowed environmental intent of the duty. I remember that when passenger duties were put forward under a Labour Government, Ministers said that they were there largely in order to help the environment and discourage unnecessary airline travel. This Government have stated that the rises in air passenger duty are partly intended to help achieve environmental goals.

Far be it for me to accuse any Government—whether it be my own or the present Government—of glossing over the reality, but the truth is that if APD were really about achieving environmental goals, it would be calculated differently. For instance, APD is calculated according to only one element of a given flight—the distance travelled, not according to whether the plane is full or half-empty. A whole range of other factors are relevant to environmental impacts, including the type and age of the aircraft, the time it spends in the air and how heavy it is, but the Government choose not to take those factors into account in calculating aviation tax rates.

As I have said, if this is really about the environment, why is no duty charged on private aircraft? The failure to establish a way of calculating the duty that would actually minimise the effect on the environment gives people the impression that, although Ministers may indeed believe in the environmental benefit, it may be no more than a pretext on the part of their officials.

If we want to persuade people to abandon planes for other forms of transport, it is surely logical for APD to bear more heavily on short-haul flights, to which there are genuine alternatives in the form of trains and boats. What, though, is the alternative for the retired nurse living in Hackney who wants to return to Jamaica every couple of years to see her friends and family? There is no such alternative, but we are imposing these big APD rates on her flight, or that of her family.

Having raised the issue under the last Government, I have taken the earliest possible opportunity to raise it again now.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I joined my hon. Friend in some of her representations to the last Government. My impression was always that Ministers found the issue too difficult to deal with, and that civil servants thought it a nice tidy way of arranging things to impose air passenger duty in accordance with the locations of the capitals of the countries to which people were travelling. However, would it not be possible to devise an equally simple APD system based on, for example, time zones? Surely a determined Minister who wished the duty to reflect the real distance involved would be able to corner his or her civil servants into achieving such an end.