Aviation tax plans outlined by Cameron

Conservative Party leader David Cameron is to detail his plans for how aviation taxes should be charged at a conference in Blackpool this week.

He told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show that the party will reject the idea of charging VAT on domestic flights and instead push for taxes based on the actual pollution that individual flights cause.

Allowances where a certain number of flights are allowed before taxes are paid will also be junked by the party, Mr Cameron added, going on to criticise the fact that the current system allows aircraft that are almost empty to pay less tax than those that are full, despite both types producing the same amount of pollution.

"We're going to change that and have a flight tax, what we call an airline pollution duty and we will tax the individual flight," he commented, concluding: "The right way to handle air travel is to tax the pollution that flights are responsible for."

Simon McNamara of the European Regions Airline Association recently claimed that green air taxes do little to help the environment as they are not high enough to deter travellers from using flights to get around.

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