So, the budget has come and gone and with no mention of APD, it looks increasingly likely that the planned increase will go ahead.
TravelMole says that the industry has acted with “anger and dismay” at the news. Virtually every head of every major travel business and airline in the country has condemned the planned increase for November. The increase is starting to look increasingly nonsensical, yet I have seen very few of these travel VIPs put forward a very convincing argument against the increase.
There has been a lot of talk about how it is unfair and unjust and how a family of four will have to pay £600 more for a holiday to the Caribbean in premium economy. But nothing has really hit home and sounded particularly convincing.
The Dutch government has scrapped APD because it said that despite generating €300m annually, it was actually costing the Dutch economy to the tune of €1.3bn. The planned increase in APD will surely have an adverse effect on the UK economy, but this is rarely mentioned. Has anybody put a figure on how much it will cost the economy? I haven’t seen it. How come the Dutch can come up with a figure and we can’t?
Very few people have highlighted the muddled thinking of a government that gives the go-ahead to a third runway at Heathrow, yet threatens Heathrow’s dominance as a hub with its tax policy.
The Dutch decision wasn’t just an attempt to give their economy a bit of a fillip, but also an attempt to take some business out of the UK and make people go Dutch. Why has more not been made of this? Why has nobody put a figure to how many UK jobs are threatened?
Everybody (apart from Alistair Darling) knows that the increase in APD is a bad thing. It’s just a shame that few industry figures have managed to say anything much more headline-grabbing than that.
