Easyjet slams Tory tax plans

EasyJet boss Andy Harrison said the following to Radio 4's Today programme this morning:

"Domestic air travel is already very highly taxed... EasyJet's average domestic fare is £27, of which £10 is already air passenger duty (APD), which represents a tax of well over 50%.

If you widen the debate out to the regions, to Northern Ireland, to Scotland, to the North East, rail is simply a slow, expensive, and often non-existent alternative...

The critical thing is to get people flying in new aircraft.  The Tories are talking about taxing gas-guzzling cars, but the way APD works at the moment is that people pay the same whether they are flying in an old aircraft, a new aircraft, a half-empty aircraft or a full aircraft.  We think the green agenda is important but we need to have intelligent, effective taxation not some of this tax which is quite simply the result of sloppy thinking."

He noted that easyJet was already paying £150 million in APD - four times its carbon cost according to Government statistics.

Noon: More below from Easyjet:

"The Quality of Life report is factually wrong, arrogantly London-centric and would tax the holidays of hard-working families.

The report consigns the 50 million Britons not living in or around London to the status of second-class citizens for whom time is considered an unimportant commodity and the dream of high-speed rail is contradicted by the nightmare of today's reality.

The UK already taxes flying more heavily than any other European country.  easyJet would welcome the proposal to replace Air Passenger Duty with an aircraft emissions charge and to scrap the current system that taxes family holidays, but not private jets.

But adding VAT to domestic air travel would simply put up the cost of family holidays, without providing any link to the CO2 emissions of a particular flight. It would also threaten the existence of many domestic air routes from communities all over the UK.

The report is simply wrong to claim that trains are taxed more than flights at present. Diesel trains, such as the Virgin Voyager, emit more CO2 per passenger than easyJet flights per passenger and electric trains pay no fuel duty, there is no VAT on rail tickets and there is no equivalent of Air Passenger Duty - which already adds £20 for every return air journey in the UK.

Believing that rail journeys are a viable substitute for short-haul air travel is an argument of the metropolitan London elite. For those living in the West Country, Wales, Scotland and many other parts of the UK the train is inconvenient, slow and expensive. Anybody suggesting that people in Northern Ireland can take the train must be living in cloud-cuckoo-land."

Comments

[James Maskell]

Well, weve lost EasyJets support for the next General Election then. Well done guys. Who are we going to alienate next?

[Bill]

And don't forget trains are subsidised by the
taxpayer.

[alex]

Isn't he being misleading about widening the debate to the regions? I thought they were talking about routes where train travel could be as convenient as air (aka. London to Paris or London to Manchester)...Edinburgh to Belfast, for example will not fall into that category (unless we build a tunnel). Perhaps VAT on domestic flights is too blunt an instrument, but surely its worthwhile looking at how we can keep internal travel as low carbon and efficient as possible? Politics of and again!!

[Moral minority]

Air passenger duty is a mean stealth tax that was introduced by Kenneth Clarke. Clarke also introduced insurance premium tax, another stealth tax. Gordon Brown learnt all his tricks from Our Ken. Gummer and Goldsmith are merely carrying on Ken's and Gordon's nasty habits.

[Chad Noble]

COMMENT OVERWRITTEN.

[Old Hack]

Despite being 547 pages long, the report is still too vague about what might be done to reduce carbon, particularly by adopting new technologies for transport. Tax is still seen as the key, but surely there are other ways to reduce carbon than stiffing us for living in the modern world?

It's worth noting that EasyJet are attempting to deal with the environmental issues of air travel and their point about old vs new planes is good. We should encourage replacement of older planes and further incentivise new technology with better tax breaksboth in the air and on the road.

EasyJet have gone to the trouble of putting a proposal for an 'ecojet' which makes sense. I hope (and suggest) they take a stand at the party conference and put their point of view.

http://www.easyjet.com/EN/About/Information/infopack_environmentalpolicy.html

http://www.easyjet.com/EN/News/easyjet_ecojet.html

http://www.easyjet.com/common/img/ecojet09.jpg

[Adam in London]

Has he even read the aviation chapter of the report? Gummer and Goldsmith propose changing APD from being per passenger to per flight, and are clear that whilst they'd love to be able to simply tax fuel use instead, international aviation conventions prevent this.

What an idiot.

[Radical Tory]

Easjet is of course correct. I'll be using them more and voting tory less. Well done Cameron et al you just lost another vote. You think you can get enough liberals to make up for the people you are alienating? If Cameron thinks this he's in for a shock.

[Jaz]

EasyJet is the one of the problems with the whole debate on air travel.

They single-handedly made airflying so cheap, it's increase demand for air by a huge amount.

You can bet that Cameron will win out this debate, atleast he is not "pretending" to be green like Brown.

[Radical Tory]

Jaz - why is it a problem to offer poor people the chance to travel to far away places. Why do you seem to dislike poor people? You must really hate China, do you think they should just all live in poverty as well?

Why would Cameron win this debate? His ideas are just weird and not in touch with the country. Also people don't even want this debate! They care about schools, hospitals etc not making it more difficult for them to travel.

I won't be voting tory come the next General Election just like many other sensible tories.

[Raj]

Radical Tory, I doubt you ever voted Conservative in your life so there's no vote to lose!

[Radical Tory]

Raj - I haven't just voted Conservative I've also stood as a tory candidiate in local elections. However this is not about me. Please focus on the issues. If you don't think tories are being turned of by Cameron than you will get a shock come the next General Election. I'm trying to warn the Cameroons, if they want to bury their heads in the sand so be it.

[ukipwebmaster]

We love you guys:
http://www.ukip.tv/?page_id=138

[Gnosis]

Raj,can you actually try to comment on the issue and stop attacking Rad Tory,this is a forum for ALL veiws and he still has the right to say what HE wants,he is not alone on his veiws,i have been a conservative all my life (i am 38) and i really don't like what mr goldsmith and mr gummer have come up with either as for easyjet i think they are not the problem at all they live in a competative market as we all do so if they can sell seats cheaper then thats a good thing after all don't you ever look for value for money in your day to day life ?

[Conservative Man]

The most revealing comment was on a Channel 4 programme a couple of months ago (No, not the great global warming swindle). It asked could one fly and not feel guilty, which apparently is a concern of the programme makers and those who commissioned it. At one point it was pointed out the modern aircraft were good in that they emitted less pollution and used far less fuel than their counter parts of a couple of decades ago. The greenie retorted, no that was in fact bad as it had made air travel cheep, and therefore contributed to more people flying. Are Gummer and Goldsmith in danger of becoming neo-Luddites? If they are not careful, they may be spun that way…

[Raj]

Radical Tory

"I haven't just voted Conservative I've also stood as a tory candidiate in local elections"

Yes, of COURSE you have. I really believe you - as much as I believed Tony B.Liar's 45 minute WMD claim.

Isn't it interesting that we have "Traditional Tory" and now "Radical Tory". Anyone else think they've been spawned by the same anti-Conservative machine?

"I'm trying to warn the Cameroons"

Warn them about what? Moving left of hunting gypsies with fox-hounds?

[Richard]

How about offering to cut taxes as an incentive rather than impose them? Alternatively, how about ceasing this irritating desire to tell people how they can and cannot travel?