Meeting of the Parliament 15 March 2016
Mark McDonald makes a good point. It would be interesting to hear a conversation between Alison McInnes and Carol Benzie, the chief executive of the airport, in which Alison McInnes tries to talk against something that, according to one study, would have led to around 0.7 million additional passengers passing through Scotland’s airports in 2015, rising to 0.9 million by 2020, as well as the direct, indirect and induced impact of a 50 per cent reduction in operational impact, and nearly 4,000 additional jobs and £200 million per annum in gross value added by 2020. Those are the beneficial effects of the measure.
As well as the Government having to address the issues of people who have concerns about the matter, it would be interesting to hear Alison McInnes—I do not know whether she is arguing for APD staying as it is or for increasing it even further, bearing in mind that it is already the most expensive tax of its type in the world—address the concerns of people who support the move.