David Soskin, chief executive of Cheapflights.co.uk, has reacted angrily to government suggestions that it could increase air passenger duty and introduce VAT on certain flights to counter contribution of aviation to global warming.
The Government is believed to be considering a range of measure to cut greenhouse gas emissions following the publication of the Stern review, which warns of the devastating economic impact of the global warming.
Environment secretary David Miliband has written to chancellor Gordon Brown suggesting a levy on cheap flights to help reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
However, Cheapflight.co.uk’s Soskin accused Labour of only trying to make up political ground lost to the Tories on the environmental debate. “The Stern report is about global warming, which is a serious issue. But on the specific issue of aviation, the fact is it only contributes 3% of greenhouse gas emissions. If you got rid of aviation, you would still have the other 97% to deal with.”
He said putting a levy on air travel in the UK alone would have no impact on carbon emissions. “There is no point unless everybody else is doing it. It is not something that the UK government has the power to do by itself.”
Soskin said that, although emissions from aircraft were rising, this was because passenger number had escalated. In fact, the aviation industry has worked hard to make aircraft cleaner and cut emissions per passenger, he said.
He backed the development of bio-fuels for aviation and an industry-wide voluntary scheme to encourage passengers to off-set carbon emissions by investing in alternative energy or tree-planting.
If the Government goes ahead with increasing aviation duty on environmental grounds, the industry should produce a “robust” response, Soskin said.