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Press Release

Five weeks to go – Chancellor urged to act on APD in Budget

15 February 2012

With just five weeks to go until Budget Day, Simon Buck, Chief Executive of the British Air Transport Association, said:

"The Government is investing more than £120 million over the next four years to encourage millions more overseas tourists to visit Britain. This is an ambitious but important objective and vital for UK tourism and jobs, given, for example, that France attracts six times as many Chinese tourists compared to the UK.

Due to our geography, most foreign tourists visit the UK by air. But the UK has the highest taxes on flying in the world and George Osborne is planning on further increasing this tax by 8% from 1st April - over twice the rate of inflation.

This will mean UK taxes on flying will be almost ten times as high as the European average. However, several European countries such as Ireland and the Netherlands have drastically reduced or scrapped their taxes on flying because of the damage they do to their tourist industry.

With just five weeks to go before the Budget, the Chancellor needs to ditch the increases he has planned and announce a phase out of the tax if the Government is serious about boosting UK tourism."



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