news election special

Readers’ questions

ttglive.com

You asked..

You submitted your questions to the political parties via our Vote for Travel survey – we reveal the rest of our survey findings. To see more of yourquestions answered,

recognise that if it is too high it will have a negative effect on export tourism, jobs and tax revenue?

1

■ “We have clearly pledged in our manifesto to reform APD to encourage a switch to fuller and cleaner aircraft.”

What are your plans for Air Passenger Duty – do you

We need high-speed rail links connecting Scotland, Wales and England. Would there be any prospect of this if you win the election?

2

Conservatives Labour

■ “At the 2008 pre-Budget report, we announced that from November 2009, APD would be structured around four distance bands, set at intervals of 2,000 miles from London. This reform ensured that those flying farther, and therefore contributing more to emissions from aviation, will pay more. Reforming APD would need to take into account the present economic circumstances, to mitigate the potential impact on the air-freight sector and the impact on employment.”

Lib Dems

10

30.04.2010

■“We believe that we should do all we can to ensure people use alternatives to aviation where that makes sense. We will introduce a per plane duty to replace the per passenger duty. We will remove the banding structure that exists under APD and instead use the actual distance of the flight to determine the duty. The duty will take into account the Nitrous Oxide emissions, the number of engines and maximum take off weight. A cost factor will be applied to each mile of a flight.”

■ “A Conservative government will begin work immediately to create a high-speed rail line connecting Lon- don and Heathrow with Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, with construction starting in 2015. This is the first step towards achieving our vision of creating a national high-speed rail network to join up major cities across England, Scotland and Wales. Stage two will deliver two new lines bringing the north-east, Scotland and Wales into the high-speed rail network.”

■ “In March we set out proposals to revolutionise the rail network, setting the foundation for us to achieve our goal of delivering a north to south high-speed route. An initial core high- speed network will link London to Birmingham, Manchester, the East Midlands, Sheffield and Leeds, with trains running at up to 250 miles per hour. Connections on to existing tracks would be included, allowing direct high-speed services to cities such as Glasgow and Edinburgh – bringing Scotland within 3.5 hours of London.”

■ “We will set up a UK infrastructure bank to construct major new projects such as high-speed rail. We will build a new high-speed rail network which will free up capacity on existing rail services and provide a low-carbon alternative to domestic flights. In the long term we want to deliver a high-speed rail network that connects many parts of the UK and will start this with a high-speed link between England and Scotland.”

Travel and First Choice was allowed to merge with Thomson – would you allow further mergers?

3

■ “Obviously we will always be concerned where market power is concentrated in the hands of too few firms in any industry, as this would harm competition. However, the regulation of individual industries and markets is a matter for the competition regulators.”

Two years ago, Thomas Cook was allowed to merge with My

■ “This is a decision for the European Commission, in consultation with the Office of Fair Trading.”

■ “A lack of competition can lead to poor service and unresponsiveness. Over-consolidation was a key driver of the banking crisis of 2008. We will overhaul competition powers to en- courage thriving local businesses and reduce the trend towards monopolies. We will refocus competition policy to consider the impact on local competi- tion with measures including setting up a local competition office within the OFT, and giving trading standards of- ficers the power to refer cases of un- competitive market share to the OFT.”

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