I add my congratulations to the Members who secured this debate, not least because the motion is supported by a large number of Members across the whole House. I should declare a particular interest, as Edinburgh airport—voted best European airport 2011 in the 5 million to 10 million- passenger category—lies within my constituency. As a result, I recently took part in the all-party aviation group’s inquiry, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr Donohoe). Its report made 15 recommendations, four of which related directly to air passenger duty and mirror the tone of the motion.
When APD was introduced in 1994, I do not think that anyone foresaw the likely levels that it would reach 18 years later. The problem is that in those intervening years insufficient notice has been taken of whether those levels were reaching what Gordon Dewar, the chief executive of Edinburgh airport, has described as a tipping point at which they have a detrimental impact on the economy as a whole.
As the hon. Members for Crawley (Henry Smith) and for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) said, it is sometimes argued that APD is an environmental tax. Perhaps before the inclusion of the aviation sector in the EU emissions trading scheme, that was a valid argument, but it is far more difficult to make it now. If
the tax were levied on a per-plane basis to encourage higher occupancy, or if its levels reflected the fuel efficiency of the planes involved to encourage airlines to upgrade their stock, then perhaps that argument could be made again, but as it stands APD is simply a revenue raiser—and an attractive one to the Treasury, at that, because it is easy to administer, has low collection costs, and to a large extent it is hidden from the end consumer. Nevertheless, the Treasury must examine it to ensure that its overall impact on the UK’s tax take is positive, not negative, as seems to be the case.