Air Passenger Duty: Regional Airports

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)]

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I will keep my remarks short because I know that many right hon. and hon. Members wish to contribute. Blackpool airport is in my constituency. Sadly, it is one of the airports, along with Plymouth and Manston, that has closed in recent years.

At its peak several years ago, Blackpool enjoyed more than 600,000 passengers per annum. It had Ryanair and Jet2 flights to Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and the Isle of Man. The decision to close the airport last year was a devastating blow to the local economy. Not only was there an impact on people’s ability to fly out of Blackpool to holiday resorts; it also sent out a message that the wider tourist economy was not fully open for business. With Blackpool and the Fylde coast, we, too, have world-class golf courses such as Royal Lytham and St Annes, so the facility of an airport is important. When the Open was on, for example, a large number of private and corporate jets used that facility, which brought in high spenders to access our golf courses.

We have talked about many things that could be done to help the small, regional airports. One that seems glaringly obvious is some flexibility on air passenger duty. I am aware that the Government have looked at that in relation to Northern Ireland, to introduce some fairness on long-haul flights, and that powers are to be devolved to the Scottish Parliament. That is quite right, because it is an important economic tool—[Interruption.] I could not hear what my friends from the Scottish National party were saying, but it is important that that power is used to try to generate and stimulate flights.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a good case for Blackpool airport, which I have flown out of. We have heard cases for Birmingham, Prestwick and Belfast, and I could make a very similar one for Manchester; a case could be made for Bristol and Newcastle and for the large London airports. Is this not simply a bad tax? Every regional economy, along with the Exchequer, would benefit if it was abolished.

[Mark Menzies]

It is certainly a very unpopular tax, as we would discover if we asked any of our constituents when they booked flights and saw what they were paying in air passenger transport duty or if we spoke to any business person who had to take regular long-haul flights; the tax would be a huge cost to their business.

When we move to a situation where Scotland has power over its air passenger transport duty and may decide to abolish it altogether, there will be a market distortion, particularly in the north of England. Although that is welcome for Scotland, those of us with regional airports in our constituencies are deeply concerned that it could see the migration of the few flights left from some small airports, with the necessary knock-on loss of those regional airports to our economies. I urge the Treasury to put a plan in place so that airports—those in the north of England in particular—are not disadvantaged when Scotland is able to exercise those tax-varying powers.

It also seems odd, when we are trying to shift traffic away from the over-congested runways of the south-east, that we are not using every tool in our box to try to get some of those flights into the midlands, the south-west, Scotland and the north of England. There are so many people whose journeys do not originate in the south-east but who migrate their journeys because that is where the flight connectivity is. Again, I ask the Treasury to work with the Department for Transport to see whether we could implement some mechanisms to vary air passenger transport duty to try to stimulate alternatives outside the over-congested runways of the south-east.

I conclude with a plea for Blackpool and the small regional airports that are hanging by a thread. Blackpool reopened several months ago, but there are flights only to Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man. Small regional airports such as Blackpool need all the help they can get. At a time when aviation is booming, it would be a real travesty if they were to lose their place as part of our national transport infrastructure.