The Quality of Life report is factually wrong, arrogantly London-centric and would tax the holidays of hard-working families.
The report consigns the 50 million Britons not living in or around London to the status of second-class citizens for whom time is considered an unimportant commodity and the dream of high-speed rail is contradicted by the nightmare of today’s reality.
The UK already taxes flying more heavily than any other European country. easyJet would welcome the proposal to replace Air Passenger Duty with an aircraft emissions charge and to scrap the current system that taxes family holidays, but not private jets.
But adding VAT to domestic air travel would simply put up the cost of family holidays, without providing any link to the CO2 emissions of a particular flight. It would also threaten the existence of many domestic air routes from communities all over the UK.
The report is simply wrong to claim that trains are taxed more than flights at present. Diesel trains, such as the Virgin Voyager, emit more CO2 per passenger than easyJet flights per passenger and electric trains pay no fuel duty, there is no VAT on rail tickets and there is no equivalent of Air Passenger Duty – which already adds £20 for every return air journey in the UK.
Believing that rail journeys are a viable substitute for short-haul air travel is an argument of the metropolitan London elite. For those living in the West Country, Wales, Scotland and many other parts of the UK the train is inconvenient, slow and expensive. Anybody suggesting that people in Northern Ireland can take the train must be living in cloud-cuckoo-land.
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