Yahoo Finance Scrap air passenger taxes or risk 8,000 jobs, MPs tell Rishi Sunak
Twenty-nine MPs and peers have written to Rishi Sunak to urge him to scrap air passenger taxes for a year or risk losing nearly half the air routes that could be otherwise saved and 8,000 jobs.
In their letter to the Chancellor, exclusively revealed to The Telegraph, the 29 - nearly half of whom are Conservative including three former ministers - said that the move could encourage an extra 21 million passengers to travel once the UK came out of lockdown.
A research report by York Aviation also suggested it could generate £7bn in gross value added to the economy, more than three times the revenue that would be generated by keeping air passenger duty (APD).
“Without extra Government intervention, the New Economics Foundation predicts up to 124,000 jobs will be lost in the aviation industry and its supply chains,” said the MPs, led by Henry Smith, chair of the all-party Future of Aviation group.
“To prevent a complete collapse of the industry, and to protect regional connectivity, we are calling on you to suspend Air Passenger Duty for 12 months to get Britain flying again.”
Britain has some of the highest APD rates in the world, with a tax of £26 per passenger on short haul economy flights to most of Europe, and £150 per passenger on long haul flights.
Mr Smith said: “Our aviation industry has been amongst the hardest hit by the pandemic and has faced this brutal reality without the levels of support afforded to other sectors and it is high time the Government brought forward a full package of support measures.
“This must include a 12-month suspension of air passenger duty as soon as international travel resumes. We risk holding back our aviation sector and wider economic recovery by continuing to levy the highest aviation taxes in the world.”
The other MPs include former ministers Crispin Blunt, Steve Brine and Tim Loughton, DUP Westminster Leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson MP, and representatives from Labour, the Liberal Democrats, SDLP and Alliance parties.
They cited York Aviation’s research that suspending APD would protect regional airports by saving 45pc of otherwise-lost routes in the UK and safeguard transport links in under-served areas of the country. In total, it would protect 8,000 jobs, it found.
The MPs said an APD freeze would also give families a financial incentive to take postponed holidays and help make key routes viable to operate again. It would also boost trade as more than 60 per cent of UK air freight comes in the hold of passenger planes.
Flights are set to be decimated by the Government’s foreign holiday ban during the second lockdown and follows a summer in which air traffic was still down 70 per cent year on year despite the introduction of travel corridors.
Proposals to reduce quarantine to as little as five days under a testing regime planned for next month could, however, help kickstart travel, if the Government travel ban is lifted when the national lockdown is reviewed at the start of December.
A taskforce on testing, chaired by Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, and Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, is due to report to Boris Johnson this week.
It is expected to recommend quarantine should be reduced to at least seven days and possibly five days in light of new scientific evidence which showed that tests on the fifth day detected 83 to 90 per cent of Covid cases - the same rate as on the seventh day.
