Tory MP calls for domestic flight cull

A leading Conservative MP has said that domestic flights should be taxed almost out of existence.

Environmental audit committee chairman Tim Yeo said he wanted to see "virtually no" flights within the UK taking off in a decade.

Amid clamour over the emissions caused by politicians' holiday flights, Yeo said radical action was needed closer to home first.

He said he now always travelled to Scotland by train "as a matter of conscience" and insisted there was "no reason at all why people should fly around the UK".

"Those flights should be knocked out," the former environment minister told GMTV in an interview to be broadcast by the Sunday Programme this weekend.

"What we should do is tax domestic flights so heavily and use the money to improve the railways so that in five years' time everyone is choosing to go by train within the UK.

"That would make a big step in right direction. The long-haul flights are harder to tackle, but the domestic flights we can be taking action on right now and we should be.

"I honestly do believe that within 10 years there should be virtually no domestic flights."

He attacked the government for being "pretty timid" over aviation taxation.

"There is an opportunity here to show that Britain is really serious about climate change, about carbon emissions, about reducing the amount of flying, and if we did that I think the world would sit up and pay attention and we'd be setting an example that other countries could follow," Yeo said.