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Aviation minister Kelly Tolhurst claims the government is ‘working at pace’ on the issue of protection for refund credit notes should a supplier cease trading


Caption R/L


Aviation minister fails to clarify if RCNs protected


Tolhurst fobs off committee MPs when quizzed about refunds. Ian Taylor reports Tolhurst gave a confusing response


The government has claimed to be “working at pace” to confirm whether refund credit notes for cancelled holidays are financially protected by Atol. But aviation minister Kelly


Tolhurst gave scant reassurance to the industry or consumers when she appeared before Parliament’s Transport Select Committee last week, a day before the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) added package-holiday companies to its investigation of breaches of consumer law during the Covid crisis.


32 28 MAY 2020


when asked by Simon Jupp MP: “Can you confirm the vouchers people have received instead of a refund are protected should the company go out of business?” She pointed to the distinction


between the Package Travel Regulations (PTRs) “which are for holidays” and Regulation 261 “which is just [for] airline refunds”, explaining: “It’s the PTRs where there is Atol support.” Then she said: “So it is true,


depending on the contract between


the customer and the operator, though one of the [industry] asks has been around vouchers being underwritten rather than refunds. That is something we’re working on at pace. We’re trying to work with HMT [Treasury] to get to a policy outcome.” In fact, vouchers are explicitly


excluded from Atol protection by the Atol Regulations, but refund credit notes should be protected under the existing Atol rules so long as issued in


Continued on page 30 travelweekly.co.uk


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