Dear Paul and Alistair,
I would like to see and be part of the solution to climate change.
We all know that flying is one of our fastest growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions. There are many journeys, particularly within the UK and Europe, that I would happily take by train and sleeper train rather than flying, were it not so much more expensive.
As you make my flights more expensive with taxes and emissions trading, please can you make sure that all the money goes towards making greener forms of travel cheaper? Particularly trains? Otherwise, travel per se will get more expensive and that’s bad for everyone – tourism, business, my quality of life...
I’ve got some specific questions on the detail.
- Emissions trading sounds like it has potential, but won’t make much difference in the short term. Given that we might realistically have an EU emissions trading system that we’re all happy with by 2020, what are you going to do to stabilise and reduce aviation emissions in the next ten critical years?
- In the short term you could increase Air Passenger Duty, or the new aircraft duty to be introduced next year, but please tell me: where does the money go? Iraq? Farm subsidies? It’s important to me. I’d like the money to be hypothecated and used to make trains cheaper and better. Most other European countries ringfence their taxes on air travel. Can we?
- A short to medium term option is to tax kerosene. Please can you tell me why we don’t tax kerosene on domestic flights (and use the money to make trains cheaper)? There are no legal restrictions. The US, Norway and The Netherlands do it. The UK is officially in favour of re-negotiating the agreements in international law that are preventing the EU from taxing kerosene on international flights. If we’re really in favour, why not start where we’re able to, here in the UK? It’s a bit odd that someone who drives from London to Edinburgh will pay 67p of tax for every £1 they spend on petrol, but flying, they pay 0p for every £1 spent on kerosene. It’s estimated that if kerosene were taxed at the same rate as petrol, (duty and VAT), it would bring in £9bn a year. That’s a lot of very good, cheap train journeys...
- Please could you tell my why the EU can't tax kerosene on flights within the EU, and use the money to make trains cheaper? The EC says on its website that it wants to. The European Parliament voted 439/74 in favour of doing it. I understand there are legal barriers to taxing kerosene on flights outside the EU and they’re being renegotiated, but why don’t we create kerosene tax deals for UK-Norway, UK-Netherlands and UK-US flights? And shouldn’t Europe be free to do what it wants within Europe, provided we don’t hurt anyone? Isn’t it a really important sovereignty issue? Given that we want to, what is stopping us from taxing Kerosene for all flights within the EU (and using the money to make trains cheaper?)
- Finally, please can you tell me why you’re supporting airport expansion when we’ve committed to reducing our CO2 emissions by 60% by 2050, the IPCC is already saying that’s not enough, and aviation is one of our fastest growing sources of emissions? Seems a bit un-joined up. It seems like a way of thinking that is part of the past, not the future. Sure, we need a few intercontinental flights, but most European travel can happen by train. Definitely domestic travel. We’ve got enough capacity for that, don’t you think? Isn’t it time for some better design?
Very much looking forward to hearing from you,
Your humble voter,
