Finance Bill

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I was not attacking low-cost airlines; I was merely saying that because of low-cost airlines, there is a lot more flying. This tax is fundamentally a tax on the good airlines which have a proper number of people on their planes, because a full plane costs a lot more in tax than an empty plane. The idea that it does not matter that the Government are taxing airlines retrospectively, because airlines can pay the tax out of their profits, is the most peculiar piece of logic that I have ever heard. The truth is that the Government are taxing the airlines, which will either pay the tax themselves or pass it on. The fault is the Government’s, not anybody else’s. My objection is that what the Government are doing with taxation is not helpful when it comes to emissions or green taxation generally. There are, for example, 39 flights a day to Manchester from London, which is not a sensible way of using our slots, but there are also aeroplanes that can fly across the country and provide a real service to places such as, for example, Cornwall. Because such flights involve turboprops there are fewer emissions, and the flights can be very full. I am not opposed to examining that particular proposal, although it needs to be part of a whole package. We need to talk about slots. I understand that it is often cheaper to have a short-haul slot than a long-haul slot, which cannot be sensible. There is a whole range of such issues that must be looked at. I have admiration for the Financial Secretary, who is a decent man. I am not making a party political attack, but how has he allied himself with the Treasury, which has not done any of that work, which has not produced a reasonable basis for the tax and which has not bothered? The Treasury has fiddled about with a tax that it knows does not work and pretended that the tax is environmental. That is why I am interested in the amendment—but I must tell the Liberals that nothing would get me to vote for Liberal taxation proposals. I have got a very long memory, and I remember Liberals who supported tax on domestic fuel until there was a by-election, when they changed the policy overnight in order to win that by-election. The Liberals and taxation are about taxes that people do not think will hurt—the moment that taxes hurt, the Liberals get rid of them. The Liberal party is the party that no one can take seriously on the environment, because the Liberals resile from anything that is difficult. I would vote Labour a dozen times before ever voting Liberal, because at least you know what you are getting. As a constituent of mine said on the doorstep, ““The choice in this village is between the Conservatives and the Liberals, and you never know where you are with the Liberals. If God had been a Liberal, we would have had the 10 suggestions.”” Homespun humour gets to the heart of the issue, so do not come telling us about your taxation policies, Liberals, because we know what they are—never do the tough thing; always talk the sweet talk. That is why I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman) has done the right thing, which is to say that we will vote for this tax because it is a tax to raise money, and tell the Government that we would like two things from them. Either they accept the sense of the Liberal amendment and say that they will produce some properly audited, sensible proposals so we can all see the figures and make an environmental decision in the future—or, if that is not possible, that the Government themselves will say that there needs to be a different way of looking at taxation on aircraft that is much more closely associated with the damage that aircraft do to the environment. Finally, I am usually able to say such things on the side of the Government with a clear conscience, but I remember that our Prime Minister changed his view even on this matter from the morning to the evening, when he was pressed on the perfectly reasonable question why he felt in the circumstances of today that to take two holidays a year in the Caribbean and none at Chequers was reasonable. Between the morning and the evening, he moved from pooh-poohing aircraft taxation to coming forward with a nicely chiselled but largely irrelevant proposal. We need to be frank about this measure—it is intended to raise money—but we need also to tell the Government that they have done a serious disservice to the environmental movement by pressing it in this form, and urge them to make up for the damage that they have done.