This year’s Budget offered a welcome respite from the increases in Air Passenger Duty that have become all too familiar in recent years, but as I am sure everyone in the travel industry recognises the battle over APD is far from over.
The European Union’s threat to force the British Government to abolish the domestic return-leg APD exemption still looms over us.
Until recently, the industry has been led to believe that the Government has expected the return-leg exemption to be successfully challenged; but a Government spokesman has been quoted in the national press expressing the Government’s determination to fight the EU’s challenge.
F-Air Passenger Duty has now demanded an urgent meeting with Customs and Excise to clarify this issue. We will continue to stress that travel and tourism are industries where planning is vitally important. We want the Government to confirm it is going to fight the European Union’s challenge to the return-leg exemption.
The Treasury, in the form of the Financial Secretary Barbara Roche MP, recently admitted that the Government would gain an extra £60m per year in revenue if APD were to be applied to both legs of domestic return flights.
It is important that the EU’s challenge is not used by the Treasury as an excuse to collect a windfall tax from travellers. If the APD return-leg exemption cannot be kept, F-Air Passenger Duty will press for the £60m to be handed back to passengers in the form of reduced APD.
The F-Air Passenger Duty campaign is now almost 12 months old, and has grown in that time to take in representatives from across all sectors of the travel industry. We have spent the last year making the case that the Government should not ignore the damaging impact that APD has on our travel and tourism industry.
The Government is always telling us what a great boom to UK tourism the Millennium will be. We agree, it’s a fabulous opportunity but then every other country also thinks so.
Wouldn’t it be tragic if the first major news of the new Millennium was the imposition of an additional UK flight tax, making us less competitive than our major rivals?
We can rightly be pleased that our message is starting to get through to the political community, but this does not reduce the continued need to press the case.
Tourism is poised to take its place as the world’s largest industry. Now is the time for all sectors of the industry to come together and really punch our weight. I hope all Travel Weekly readers will join us in realising this aim.
Richard Tobias is chief executive of the British Incoming Tour Operators’ Association and chairman of F-Air Passenger Duty campaign