From ETN Global Travel Industry News

The British High Commissioner to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean says she does not expect her government to revisit its Air Passenger Duty (APD) rate to the Caribbean any time soon.

“It’s something that lots of people around the Caribbean have raised with me, and they’re right to do it… I understand some of the impact this is having and how strongly people feel about it, and I think the Caribbean in some ways has a good case to make,” High Commissioner Victoria Dean.

“My Foreign Secretary William Hague discussed this in Sri Lanka earlier this year… with a number of leaders from this region, and they made very clear to him again their concerns about the impact that this was having, and he said that he understood those concerns, that he was unlikely to be able to change this soon with the way that the UK economy is faring at the moment asking my government to do something expensive isn’t easy to do; but that he understood the concerns and that he took away to have a look at it once again with his colleagues at Treasury,” she told WINN FM during an interview on the Breakfast Show.

“I have to be honest with you I don’t think it’s going to change very, very soon, but I do understand the concerns of the Caribbean on this issue,” she added.

The APD is an excise duty which is charged to passengers travelling on flights from the UK. The Caribbean is lumped into the highest tax band that makes travel to the region more expensive than travelling from London to the United States.

Caribbean governments and tourism stakeholders have argued that it is unfair to a region that is tourism dependent, and have been lobbying to have the tax removed. The UK government instead, in April increased the rate.

Dean said on Wednesday she was not convinced that the higher APD was a deterrent for passengers travelling from the UK. She said there was some indication in Barbados that arrivals from the UK were increasing, and she that she was not sure that travellers considered the breakdown of the cost of airfare, looking rather at the overall cost of trip.

PHOTO: British High Commissioner to Barbados and Eastern Caribbean Victoria Dean / barbadosadvocate.com

For more on this story go to:

http://www.eturbonews.com/40825/high-commissioner-uk-government-unlikely-adjust-adp-rate-caribbe

From Wikipedia

Air Passenger Duty (APD) is an excise duty which is charged on the carriage of passengers flying from a United Kingdom airport on an aircraft that has an authorised take-off weight of more than ten tonnes or more than twenty seats for passengers. The duty is not payable by inbound international passengers who are booked to continue their journey (to an international destination) within 24 hours of their scheduled time of arrival in the UK. (The same exemption applies to booked onward domestic flights, but the time limits are shorter and more complex.) If a passenger “stops-over” for more than 24 hours (or the domestic limit, if applicable), duty is payable in full.

As part of the 2008 Pre-Budget Report, Air Passenger Duty was restructured. These new charges take distance into account, making long distance flying significantly more expensive. Critics of APD’s claimed environmental credentials point out that the tax takes no account of the efficiency of the aircraft. An airline using an old inefficient plane is treated equally to one using the latest most efficient engines. Charges initially rose on 1 November 2009 and then again on 1 November 2010. Before this, Air Passenger Duty was controversially doubled from 1 February 2007, and the lower rate was extended to all the countries within the Single European Sky.

Air passenger duty is paid upon booking, but not collected until an occupied seat flies. Should a passenger be unable to fly they have a right to claim the paid tax back from the airline, although many airlines will charge an administrative fee for this service.

From 1 November 2011 Northern Ireland will be exempt from the higher rates of Air Passenger Duty. This is due to Continental Airlines threatening to stop the direct Belfast – Newark flight due to lack of demand because of the tax.

The Chancellors Autumn Statement, on 29 November 2011, announced an 8% increase in UK APD set for April 2012.

The tourist minister of Kenya, Najib Balala, criticised the Air Passenger Duty for hurting tourism and economy in developing countries.

EDITOR:

APD came up in “Caribbean Question Time UK”

From Operation Black Vote

It was called Caribbean Question Time UK, with the challenging subtitle: “We can make a difference.”

And that was the exact message passed on throughout the evening, as a Caribbean-British audience met MPs from the country’s three main political partiesThe ornate hall in Westminster – a stone’s throw from the Houses of Parliament – was the perfect setting for a discussion about the role of being Caribbean in modern British society.

Organisers and politicians alike repeated the message for the Caribbean voter in the UK: if you want to make a difference, get organised, vote, become councillors and MPs and make sure your collective voice is heard.

The event on 3 December was called Caribbean Question Time. Based on the BBC TV political audience programme Question Time, it followed that format, allowing members of the audience to put politicians on the spot over issues of the day.

The panel consisted of Simon Woolley of Operation Black Vote (OBV), Mike Gapes (Labour), Nick de Bois (Conservative), Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat) and Dr Floyd Millen of the think tank Yes Minister.

As the evening moved on, it was clear that the Caribbean Diaspora was also being put on the spot, with constant challenges reminiscent of John F Kennedy’s comments: “Don’t ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

Get involved

The Caribbean edition of Question Time brought MPs from Britain’s three main political parties to answer questions which had been sent in advance and read out by their senders as members of the audience from the floor.

The topics ranged from Britain’s controversial Air Passenger Duty (APD) to whether Britain had fallen out of love with the Caribbean.

The theme of the panellists’ responses remained the same: make your vote count and come together, so that the mainstream political parties cannot ignore you.

Labour MP Mike Gapes urged the audience to get further involved in politics at local, national and European levels.

He said that while the Labour party had made early moves to bring the first Caribbean MPs into British politics in 1988 with the election of Jamaican-born Diane Abbott and Guyanese-born Bernie Grant, those gains had slowed.

We have made some progress, but not nearly enough,” he told the packed hall.

That answer clearly led to the issue of the sacking of Diane Abbott from Labour’s shadow cabinet earlier in the year.

Simon Woolley of Operation Black Vote (OBV), one of the organisers behind the event, raised Ms Abbott’s removal from the shadow cabinet, but concluded by throwing the real challenge back at the audience.

He pointed out that Labour had sacked Ms Abbott “because they could”.

Mr Woolley added that politicians treaded more carefully with decisions involving Asian representatives, because they were aware of the possible backlash from the Asian community.

They did it [removed Diane Abbott] because there’s not feedback from us,” he told the audience.

APD lobby

One door that Caribbean groups have been trying to open up is the APD, which has, year on year, raised the cost of travel to the Caribbean.

The issue is over the Caribbean being placed in a tax band that makes its tax level higher than flying to Hawaii, which sits in the US tax band.

For the Tories’ Nick de Bois, this was an example of a business case to be made by Caribbean and other lobby groups on the economic gains to be made by the government if it moved the Caribbean to another band.

A former businessman himself, Mr de Bois suggested a lobby based on calling for band allocation changes, which would make more money from the APD but place the Caribbean in a more advantageous tax band.

Labour’s Mike Gapes said that it would not make sense to call for the scrapping of the APD.

He pointed out that the Treasury [Finance Ministry] was always reluctant to give up any source of income.”

Simon Hughes of the Liberal Democrats pointed out that the anti-APD lobby had been running since 2009.

Just making noise has not changed the argument,” he told the audience.

Pointing out that the APD raised £2.9bn for British coffers, he suggested one option could be proposing a change of bands, to be based on cities rather than countries, which would mean that Hawaii fell into a different category from Washington.

As MPs urged the Caribbean and other lobby groups to “come up with a cleverer argument” on the APD, audience members could be seen taking notes.

The applause was less vociferous at this stage, but the message was clearly being noted.

To read the whole story go to:

http://www.obv.org.uk/news-blogs/caribbean-question-time-uk