Meeting of the Parliament 08 May 2019
This very second, I am reading straight from the Scottish National Party’s website, in a section that is ironically named “Scotland: open for business”:
“We ... want to increase international connectivity and support our thriving tourist industry, so we’ll use new powers coming to the Scottish Parliament to halve Air Passenger Duty, one of the highest taxes of its kind in the world, and ultimately abolish it.”
What has changed? The much trumpeted and long-awaited reduction to the tax has been canned. It was a flagship policy that the SNP praised and defended to the hilt, but SNP members are all now frantically looking on social media to delete their tweets. Nicola Sturgeon is trying to walk a political tightrope. In one breath, she promises support for tourism, aviation, oil and gas and exports while declaring emergencies in another. She is giving hostages to fortune with policy changes that are bereft of intelligent scrutiny and the consequences of which have either been ignored or simply misunderstood.
Yesterday, Gordon Dewar of Edinburgh airport put it simply when he said:
“We’ve gone from personal commitments to all-out cancellation in ... two weeks, which shows just how reactionary this decision is.”
He went on:
“airports and airlines have been led down a path of failed promises for three years by this Scottish government.”
Those are his angry words, not mine.
Last night, the Scottish Chambers of Commerce, which is a sensible voice of business—[Interruption.] Some members do not think that it is sensible, which is a shame. Thank goodness they are not in government. The Scottish Chambers of Commerce said that the decision had been taken
“Despite years of consultation ... and detailed technical and economic evaluations”,
and that the decision will
“do nothing to reduce emissions”,
but instead will
“cut Scotland off at the knees”.
What credible Government proactively does that to the business community? It is not one that those of us on the Conservative benches will sit in.