5 December 2006 - The European Parliament’s spokesperson on aviation and climate change has warned that doubling Air Passenger Duty - likely to be proposed in Gordon Brown’s Pre Budget Report tomorrow – won’t reduce demand for flying, or aviation’s growing greenhouse gas emissions.

Green Party MEP Caroline Lucas, the European parliament’s ‘rapporteur’ on aviation and climate change, said: “Research has shown that the majority of low-cost flights are in fact made by the most well-off in society, most of whom will take a price hike on the chin and fly anyway.

“Latest figures from the Civil Aviation Authority show the average income of UK leisure passengers travelling through cheap flights hub Stansted Airport topped £50,000 in 2005, dispelling the Government myth that cheap flights are somehow democratising air travel by providing opportunities for the less well-off to fly.

“Any actual reduction in demand will be negated by planned increases to UK airport capacity: an expansion backed wholeheartedly by this Government.”

“Aviation is the fastest-growing source of the greenhouse gas emissions that are fuelling climate change, and we must cut them quickly if we are to prevent its worst impacts. Doing so will require international action – and this could better be achieved by calling time on plans to expand airports and runways around the country and exercising real global leadership on the issue, not tweaking charges to passengers.”

Gordon Brown is expected to announce a doubling of APD as part of a range of green measures including an increase in fuel duty and car tax in his 10th pre-Budget report.

Dr Lucas added: “Brown is playing gesture politics: trying to outflank the Tories on sounding Green and pretending this is an approach to the budget which will prevent climate change.

“The truth is it will be wholly inadequate. Brown has been Chancellor for the last ten years and presided over a growth in the UK ’s CO2 emissions and the so-called ‘green’ measures we expect him to announce tomorrow are unlikely to change either.”

ENDS