News of the World set to attack Tory green taxes on air travel

Tomorrow's Sunday newspapers have been leaked details of Tory plans to increase taxation of air travel in a bid to reduce the industry's (alleged) escalating contribution to climate change.  The News of the World is apparently planning to talk of "four massive new taxes" when, according to CCHQ, the four tax options are only under consideration as part of a consultation on the future of aviation taxation.

According to the Press Association the Tory tax options include:

• The immediate imposition of fuel duty and/ or VAT on domestic flights (Tim Yeo has previously called for rail transport to progressively replace domestic air travel);
• The replacement of Gordon Brown's very controversial air passenger duty with a per-flight tax based more closely on actual carbon emissions;
• The introduction of an annual 'green air miles allowance' so that frequent flyers pay a higher rate of taxation (so protecting poorer families from a heavy tax on their annual summer holiday).

The public is divided on air taxation and, unlike Labour, Shadow Chancellor George Osborne has promised that the overall tax burden will not be increased.  Higher green taxes will be offset by reduced taxes on families and businesses.  Commenting on tonight's leaked news he told PA:

"I do not agree with those who argue that we need to stop flying altogether if we are to tackle climate change.  However, I believe the case for acting now to reduce the future growth in greenhouse gas emissions from aviation is compelling.  In particular, air passenger duty is not directly linked to carbon emissions and provides no incentives for airlines to use more fuel-efficient aircraft.  I want to consult with the industry, with environmental groups, and with the public in order to create a sustainable regime of aviation taxation that has broad support."

8pm update: THE NEWS OF THE WORLD STORY IS NOW ONLINE.  Here is a key extract: "The Tories will this week unveil plans to hammer frequent flyers with massive new taxes.  The News of the World can reveal tonight that Shadow Chancellor George Osborne will unveil FOUR massive new taxes.  The Tories say the radical new plans are the first step in a complete revolution which makes people pay more tax when they harm the environment.  But the airline industry said the plans would lead to sky-high ticket prices."

Editor's comment: "The NotW story does appear to have jumped the gun. Mr Osborne is talking about different options for green taxes.  The NotW appears to suggest that all four taxes are about to become Tory policy."

Comments

[Jack Stone]

The party must keep repeating over and over again when talking about green taxes that the overall tax burden is not going to increase.Green taxes are about reducing green house gases not increasing taxes.

[malcolm]

Does anyone actually read the Screws for its political coverage? Perhaps of all the Sunday press this paper will be able to inflict least damage on us despite its huge circulation.

[G Wright]

NotW's readers are generally lower class - those whom we are trying to win over. Remember that the Sun and NotW help to swing the working class vote.

It is quite amazing (scary) how many people DO acctually trust NotW for all of their political knowledge though, especially here in the North East.

[kingbongo]

malcolm, far from damaging us this is likely to secure the party's status as leaders in green thinking. This to me looks more like a kite flying exercise to see which policies attract most support. Provided the clear and unambiguous message is tax cuts elsewhere then this doesn't strike me as being bad news at all.

[Anoneumouse]

Dave really needs to mount the Milankovitch cycle.

I bet Dave can't find a real scientist anywhere in the world who can look him in the eye and, without hesitation, without clarification, without saying, kinda, mighta, sorta, if, and ah but...say "yes, global warming is with us and is caused by human activity."

There is no evidence whatsoever to support such claims. Anyone who tells you that scientific research shows warming trends are caused by human activity — be they teachers, news casters, Members of Parliament, MEP's, or European Commissioners - is wrong. There is no global warming which is caused by human activity.

Just ask him, would he and his cohorts forego their pension if they are proved to be wrong

Drink Bolls, Piss Green
.

[eugene]

Britain produces a tiny insignificant fraction of greenhouse gases. 20 years ago it was ''oh...the hole in the ozone layer''- it is not even mentioned anymore. At a Geographers conference last month, 25 % of us doubted whether Global Warming even exists.

Green taxes are just that- TAXES- a lame excuse to raise revenue and shame on the Tory Party for jumping on this undeserving bandwagon.

It is all just PC nonsense and a big turn off to voting Tory. Ryanair and cheap efficient travel - YES; More taxes- NO!

[ToMTom]

Obviously businesses should be prohibited from relieving this VAT against their VAT liability and air fares should no longer be tax deductible expenses.........that would make if much fairer if everyone had to pay the full cost of such taxes

[thatcherite]

Green taxes are part of the "Great Global Warming Swindle" as the Channel 4 documentary on Thursday night put it.

[mark]

Thatcherite @ 22.10

I agree, and the shadow cabinet ought to watch the Channel4 programme. If the public latch onto the well argued case that the programme made, they will be furious with any politician who has conned them into more taxes to fight a non-existent problem.
For anyone who missed "the Global Warming Swindle" it is repeated on More4 on Monday at 2200.

[Yet Another Anon]

Why not charge VAT and Fuel Duty on all aircraft flights whether international or domestic and scrap Air Passenger Duty and not bother with things such as per flight taxes or green air miles allowances - keep things simple.

[thatcherite]

It was Ken Clarke who introduced Air Passenger Duty. He was the original stealth tax Chancellor, e.g. insurance premium tax too. Gordon Brown learnt a lot from Clarke. Thank God we did not elect Ken leader.

[Peter Turner]

Has the Conservative Party gone potty? Did any member of the Shadow Cabinet watch the Channel 4 programme - The Great Global Warming Swindle? Did they understand it. The main elemnent put forward was both simple and elegant. A more active sun generates more heat which warms the Earth (particularly the oceans) which brings about a release of CO2 into the atmosphere. The rise in CO2 follows a rise in temperature - not the other way round.

If this is true (and it is a far simpler hypothesis than what is being thrust down our throats) then we are going down the wrong pathway and goodness knows what this wiil cost.

[Richard]

Cameron has said some good things recently on family breakdown, marriage, the EU social chapter and a new border police. Unfortunately I fear this is a bad thing that could backfire, especially if it is painted as robbing the working classes of a middle class lifestyle.

[Daniel]

Climate change = a natural phenomenon.

Deal with it, greenies.

Cameron should realize his 'honeymoon' is over. He and his buddy Osborne are starting to get very annoying with their 'green tax' stuff. Doesn't he know climate change (a natural phenomenon) is abused by politicians to squeeze through new taxes?

Dave, stop this nonsense or go away to the LibDems where you belong.

[A. Dewar]

If Dave and his mates think this will win votes then it shows how out of touch they are with real people with real lives. Whatever they may say any such taxes will affect the poor more. Bringing in that hypocrite Gore the Bore is a further turn off. I'm fed up hearing about 'green issues' and they have just lost my vote.

[Penultimate Guy]

Does anyone have a feel (or actual numbers) for the degree to which climate change scepticism is manifest within (a) party members (b) Conservative voters? Is Dave really as out of touch as some commentators on this thread seem to think?

[Paul Rowlandson]

Cameron is hopeless. He believes everything the fashionable Zeitgeist tells him. At the next general election we will be faced with a Tory Party which has taken its policies almost entirely from the Greens and New Labour. What is the point of the Conservative Party under Cameron?

[Michael Hughes]

I feel quite sad to read some of the posts on this - "The Great Global Warming Swindle?" was only a convincing programme if you had only a little grasp of the science beforehand, and perhaps even less so afterwards.

There was a seventies song that had the line "a cheap holiday in someone else's misery" - I think if we allow unbridled aviation growth the misery will be very much our own.

Without the greenhouse effect at all we would be very, very cold now - it is a question of how the effect increases with increased atmospheric Carbon Dioxide we have seen in the last hundred or so industrialised years that is of concern.

That changes in the sun affect the Earth is a given, that they are responsible for what we are seeing is very unlikely. This is what we are dealing with - probabilities. If we get a 2 degree C temperature rise we are in serious trouble - 4 degrees and there will be massive devastation - economic, political, social.

That an argument seems "simple and elegant" is important perhaps in media driven politics, but that it is an accurate hypothesis, and has some predictive value is more so given the consequences of being wrong.

Read the IPCC report as a starter. I know it is hard work to do so and sitting watching the TV is so much easier and instant - do your own research and thinking, it is too important to let others do it for you on this.

I am frankly very seriously heartened by the news of this thinking on aviation - it is indicative of real wisdom in the policies being framed. Long may it continue.

[jorgen]

Cameron is hopeless. He believes everything the fashionable Zeitgeist tells him.

I don't think he cares. To him global warming is a means of gettting votes from more gullible people: Lib Dimmies and Greens.

[Ted]

I think Osborne's proposals require some additional honing to make them work but are at base sensible and targetted at C)2 usage rather than current revenue raising blunderbuss that Brown prefers.
However I would like George when he appears on the media to talk about these to say something like "first I would like to discuss the failure of this government as regards the treatment of wounded members of our armed services" - while Green Taxes are important they will not happen until we get into power in 2009, today in Selly Oak and other NHS wards across the country the failure of our health service to provide decent care to those injured in the cause of this government is outrageous. Lets be outraged.

[malcolm]

I agree with Michael Hughes.As a general rule I would prefer taxes on all forms of pollution than on anything else.
It does amaze me that there are so many climate change experts contributing to this thread,personally I prefer to trust the the IPCC or the Royal Society.

[David Farrer]

I can see why this wasn't announced at the Conservatives' Scottish conference.

Edinburgh has been one of Britain's fastest growing airports over the last decade or so. Much of this expansion has been in business travel that's connected with Edinburgh's huge financial sector. As well as more than 50 flights per day to London we now have two daily services to the US. None of this would have been imaginable when the Tories were last in power.

Ted Heath all but destroyed Scottish fishing when he it sold out to the EU and now the Tories plan to wipe out our most important industry. How long will the Royal Bank (the world's fifth largest) keep its headquarters here under Cameron's proposals? It's not a coincidence that it's located right next to the airport. HBoS, Standard Life, Aegon and the rest are hardly likely to stay here either if their people can't fly up and down to London whenever required.

So why didn't Cameron announce this in Perth? I expect that this omission wasn't deliberate. I doubt if anyone in Notting Hill even knows about the importance of air travel to Scotland.

A conspiracy theorist might think that this plan had been drawn up by the London-based banks to kill off their Scottish competitors. Here's another theory: Cameron is in the pay of Alex Salmond. Nothing else makes sense does it?

Unless of course the Tories are completely bonkers...

[The Laughing Cavalier]

There can be only one word for the air travel tax proposals and that is 'Moronic'.

[The Laughing Cavalier]

Actually, I've just thought of two more words: 'political' and 'suicide'.

[Richard]

So once again the people of Britain will be denied a choice as all three parties adopt similar policies. If there really is a 50-50 split amongst the population on this issue then who will represent the 50% opposed to green taxation?

[Richard]

The timing of this is also irritating - when all attention should be on Lord Levy being burried we have this coming along and diverting attention to a potentially unpopular Tory policy.

[Penultimate Guy]

Richard @ 11:20

Without PR, of course, your question is moot. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

[Ken Stevens]

Whatever the underlying logic (and I'll readily admit to being a sceptic) the proposals sound like electoral suicide - the Tory version of road pricing. The less well-off, who at least can now aspire to cheap air travel, will be most affected directly. They will also be hit by the extra cost of business travel simply being loaded onto the prices of companies' goods & services. Still, I suppose that is a necessary cost so that business folk can make frequent visits to see how their foreign outsourcing of erstwhile British jobs is progressing.

If this aspect of climate change does indeed need to be tackled, then restrict availability, i.e.: don't approve expansion of airport capacity; don't support measures to enhance en route airspace capacity by improved techniques & facilities. The argument will then be that we will lose long-haul business to the likes of Schipol, Frankfurt and Paris. Well, whatever measures you take will hit our people more than our less assiduous EU partners and it is illogical to expand capacity at the same time as endeavouring to restrict demand!

If some sort of action is essential, then the current Tory regime should demonstrate a positive EU benefit by achieving pan-European coordinated action (and enforcement of compliance, for once!)
That would be the way forward, not yet another unilateral, noble, self-sacrificing ordinance.
Oh - and get elected first before you try it.

Finally (and I apologise for the length of this outsider's rant), how come it is wrong to bang on about Europe and dismiss eurosceptics who have shifted to UKIP (not me)as fruitcakes but all jolly dee to go overboard to try and garner a few green votes. I thoroughly enjoyed one of your contributor's description a week or two ago of environmental zealots as watermelons - green on the outside, red inside, - but hey at least they're not fruitcakes.

[Ted]

Richard
Yes timing is everything and for once we got our, very reasonable. proposals out before the Governments. Tomrrow Milliband will be playing catch up, his ideas will be very much more open to attack because ours were on the table first. Labour will find it hard to attack us on the basis of "so what do you propose" rather than defend their proposals.
Osborne is a good game player, his purpose isn't Shadow Chancellor, it's destroy Gordon and so far he's made a god fist of it.

[Kevin Fowkes]

In reality, the vast majority of "frequent flyers" are, like myself, those who have to frequently travel abroad for their job.

These new air taxation proposals to discourage frequent flyers will therefore bear down mostly on companies rather than individuals.

In this way it could prove to be a heavy additional tax on business and if so will be very unpopular with the Tories' natural supporters in business.

It will also make it more expensive for British companies to export their products and services.

[Cllr Paul Johnston]

Unlike Ted @ 12.44 I see no merit in rushing out a barmy policy just in order to do so before the Government does it. Am I alone?

[Tanuki]

Crazy! Haven't we learned _anything_ from the likes of the Fuel Tax protests in 2000 or the recent anti-road-charging petition?

Suggesting an additional tax on their annual two-weeks-in-the-sun is precisely the way for us to lose the votes of the middle class and the striving working-class.

Just what do we have to do to stop shooting ourselves in both feet over and over again with all this 'environmental' nonsense.

[David Sergeant]

Of course the NoW didn't "jump the gun", they deliberately produced duff information to get at Cameron.

[Josh]

Given all the recent polls, you have to admire DC's ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Replacing APD with fuel tax is a fine idea as far as I'm concerned. Given that most of my travel is from Grampian to see my family (you know, that thing Dave supports) in London, it may work to my advantage. An A319 is a plucky little plane.

What I don't like is the differential taxation, which requires the government to know your flight history. Given how much we all respect DD for his opposition to ID cards, is keeping the spirit of government supervision really help them.

I also object to George Osbourne's comment that aviation is undertaxed. Not only is it un-Tory in principle, but it's untrue. Most of the fares I pay are over 50% tax. If that is undertaxed, what wouldn't be?

[ukipwebmaster]

The Climate Con - Watch again:
http://www.ukip.tv/?page_id=3

[Dixmith]

I think we should remember who it was (Ken Clarke) that introduced the Air Passenger Duty - and why.

How does one stop the frequent fliers from taking the train to Paris/ Brussels/ Amsterdam and do their business flights from there - seriously damaging the businesses of BA,BAA, Virgin, et al

Very badly thought through policy - it will become know as the Tory Travel Tax.