Finance Bill

The Conservative party is holding a consultation on this sensitive issue. One of the questions in the consultation asks whether there is a way of imposing taxes on air travel that would be less penal for those on low incomes, and that would get away from the obvious obstacle in clause 12. Perhaps even worse than the underlying reality of clause 12—which is its aim of taxing the poor out of planes—is that, although those people on low incomes have already bought their tickets and carefully calculated their family budgets, perhaps for a once-in-a-lifetime trip that they could not normally afford in other circumstances, the Government have suddenly come along and said, ““We have bad news for you. All your family members have to pay this extra air passenger duty.”” The fact that those people have already paid for their tickets and that that is a done deal has no impact on the Government; they are stony-hearted men and women, and they are going to impose the tax anyway. I will be guided by my hon. Friends on the Front Bench, and I suspect that they will suggest that we let the Government get on with this, because the reality is that I do not think that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) has enough people crowding around the Chamber to defeat the Government on this measure. Either the Government must change their hard heart, and their mind, and find another way to raise this £100 million, or those people will be badly damaged. I shall give the Government some free advice, as I often do. They could make themselves considerably more popular on the eve of the local elections if they cancelled this tax on people travelling around and paid for it by cancelling the identity card scheme. Indeed, if they did that, we would be able to have other tax reductions as well—