Meeting of the Parliament 03 June 2014
There we go. There is an example of a positive contribution being made from outside Scotland.
Let us now look at what we are saying about the tax, what it was meant to do and the effect that it is having. Of course, we all know that it was initially proposed as a green tax. It was meant to tax people who were travelling by air and who were, as a result, polluting, but it is now simply considered to be a revenue-raising measure. Nevertheless, we should never make the mistake of believing that taxing people out of the air is likely to have a positive effect on the environment because—as we all know—not only have passenger numbers increased in recent years, but predictions that airlines would not invest in new cleaner aircraft have turned out to be wrong. The result is that the emissions from our aircraft—especially when they are measured per passenger—are dropping very quickly as fleets are renewed and efficiency is improved.
A key aspect of that is that larger aircraft will tend to use hubs. As a result, we in Scotland will rely—as we always have—on feeder services to the major hubs, and cannot hope to bring all those services directly into Scotland. The consequence is that we must concern ourselves not only with the air passenger duty that is being paid in Scotland, but with that which is being paid in London.
So, as I stand here, I am willing to hold out the olive branch and say “Yes—the Calman commission said that air passenger duty should be devolved.” Yesterday, the Conservative Party published the Strathclyde commission report, which sets out what we are prepared to do in the event of a no vote. It is a detailed document that goes into—at great length—the generous proposals for devolution that we will have, in that event. The SNP is getting most excited about one small part of it—the part that said that we would like to see the devolution of APD. However, the SNP misses the point that even if APD were devolved and we were to abolish it all—not just the 50 per cent that the SNP has committed to during the lifetime of the first Parliament of an independent Scotland—the only way that we could properly rid Scotland of APD would be to abolish it on a United Kingdom basis, so that Scottish passengers would not have to pay it at the London end as well as the Scottish end.