Air Passenger Duty

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

I have a large Caribbean community in Mitcham and Morden, many of whom moved to Britain 20, 30 or 40 years ago. For them, air travel is not a leisure choice, but something they save up for over many years, often from low incomes, scraping together every spare penny to visit their friends and families. For most of us in the Chamber, the people we treasure live close by—my mum lives round the corner. We are not charged £81 in tax to see our friends and families, but to my constituents that is what air passenger duty really is: a tax on friends and family. Let us not forget that those constituents are also a lot less well off than we are. Many are pensioners; others are in low-wage jobs, having come to this country to do the kind of work that the rest of us did not want to do.

Earlier this autumn, I hosted a party here in Parliament to celebrate 50 years of Jamaican independence. Mitcham and Morden has a large Jamaican community, and I wanted to celebrate the role that people from that country and the rest of the West Indies play there. Most had never been invited here before, and I am pleased to say that hundreds of people came along. It struck me that this was a community that had had it hard, yet despite often encountering prejudice and discrimination, they had never stopped. They had worked hard to put food on their children’s plates, yet they also found time to help the community, whether through the church or by setting up local youth groups.

Most of all, it struck me that those people were not only proud to be British but determined never to forget where they had come from. They were proud of their culture, proud of the country that they were born in and proud of the country that they now live in. And they have every right to be proud, because they have improved this country, and Mitcham and Morden in particular. However, I am not proud of the effect that this tax has on them and their families.

I appreciate that when air passenger duty was introduced by the Major Government, it was done with the best of intentions. There are problems with emissions, and the aviation industry has an obligation to reduce them, just as every industry does, but I do not think that imposing a duty on every passenger is the best way to encourage airlines to make their planes produce fewer emissions. It is too crude, and regulating emissions achieves better results, as we are now discovering thanks to the efforts of the European Union—not a body that is often praised. At the time, however, APD seemed a modest way of tackling the problem and, right up until 2007, economy class passengers paid only £5 for flights to Europe, and £20 for flights beyond. Sadly, since then, under this Prime Minister and the previous one, air passenger duty seems to have become more about raising revenues than reducing emissions. In the past two years, APD on flights to the Caribbean has risen nearly two thirds, to £81.

What makes the tax so unfair is that it disproportionately targets poorer, ethnic minority communities. Because of the anomaly that says the capital of Jamaica is more than 4,000 miles from London, while the capital of the USA is not, passengers flying to Kingston have to pay more than people going to airports in the States that are further away. In 2010, that anomaly cost passengers to the Caribbean £5 more than passengers to the US. Now the difference has more than trebled, to £16.

What my constituents want to know is: how can it be fair that those travelling to Kingston should have to pay 25% more duty than much better-off passengers flying to Los Angeles, which is about 20% further away? If anyone were to look at this from an equalities point of view, they would be appalled. The impact falls disproportionately on the lower paid and on the black community. Like many Members, I have been petitioned by hundreds of people about this unfair tax, and the unfair anomaly that I have just mentioned is a major concern.

It was disappointing that the Government’s consultation did not respond to those legitimate concerns. It is already difficult and expensive to fly to Jamaica. I had a quick look on Expedia before coming here, and in the week starting 17 November there are only three days on which it is possible to get a direct flight to Kingston, although there are direct flights to Los Angeles every day. As a result, the cheapest return to Kingston costs more than £900, while a return to LA is just £564. Clearly, that is not all because of air passenger duty. It is because there is not enough capacity at London’s airports, which is why I support an extra runway at Heathrow, to bring in extra jobs and cut travel costs for my constituents.

However, those differences show that the cost of travel for our low-income, ethnic minority constituents is already disproportionately high. Air passenger duty is a regressive tax that only makes that situation worse. If it is about cutting carbon, it should be based on real emissions, and it should not favour wealthy passengers travelling to developed countries such as Canada and the US over people travelling to developing countries in the Caribbean. This Government have failed to take advantage of the opportunity offered by their consultation to introduce a fair alternative, or to tackle emissions meaningfully. That is a source of considerable disappointment.