Continuing the campaign against Air Passenger Duty
29 Jan 2014
This evening Diane Abbott MP organised a meeting of the All Parliamentary Group on the British Caribbean to raise the issue of reform to Air Passenger Duty. She chaired a panel of speakers which included Gilmour Smith from the Diaspora Air Passenger Duty committee, Luke Pollard from ABTA, Dave Hodges the parliamentary and external affairs manager for Virgin Airlines, Baroness Howells and David Lammy MP.This levy is imposed on all travelers taking flights from UK airports, but is structured in a tiered system which imposes higher fees on flights which are further away from the UK.
Diane Abbott said “The problem with what has been conceived as a green policy is that in many cases it has become more economical for people who are travelling long distances to fly outside of the UK and then take connecting flights on to their destination. This disproportionately affects people from the Caribbean who wish to return home to visit family. With the year on year increase in the cost of Air Passenger Duty it presents a serious risk of imposing economic restrictions on the family lives of people living in Britain. There is clearly a need for urgent reform not only to make this tax more effective at tackling the environmental objectives it was created to achieve, but also to ensure that is more equitably distributed across people using international air travel”
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