My right hon. Friend was a very able Minister for tourism and he did a superb job. He is right: APD is a tax on our constituents who seek to go on holiday, but it is also a tax on those who want to come here to enjoy the wonderful countryside and the great features of our society, with the associated benefit to our economy.
The APD, as hon. Members know, is the highest in Europe. Denmark, Norway and Holland have scrapped it. Ireland, as my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long) pointed out, has all but scrapped it—it intends to do so in the near future.
As the hon. Member for Witham argued, we have to look at this in terms of the wider economy. I wish to look at it particularly from the perspective of the Manchester city region, and it is good to see the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady) in his place. I know that he has a great commitment to Manchester airport. I also see my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer), who is a former chairman of the airport. It now serves more than 200 destinations, has 24 million passengers a year, and employs 19,000 people on the site, with many thousands more provided in the wider economy. It is estimated to bring in around £3 billion to the UK economy as a whole.
One of my principal concerns, which I have already mentioned, is that APD is a tax on our constituents. Let us reflect on that for a second. Hard-working families already paying tax on their hard-earned incomes have to pay tax again if they want to take their children on holiday. We ought to think about that. In particular, let us consider the economic problems that APD creates. There is clear evidence that airlines are not coming to Manchester airport because of APD. In particular, AirAsia X has dropped its plans for a route from Manchester to Kuala Lumpur and routed instead to Paris Orly. The airlines will go where the profits are greatest, and with those profits will go the jobs and all the additional economic value.