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AMENDMENT OF THE LAW

The problem will not be the number of planes circling airports. We should take a look at the Government White Paper on the future of the aviation industry. It is projected that by 2030 the number of UK passenger flights will have increased from 230 million a year to 460 million a year. Not all of those planes will be circling our airports; they will be in transit around the planet. The volume of carbon emissions associated with that will dwarf the emissions of almost all other sectors of the economy. That is why I say that we will have to set carbon miles thresholds for every airport and let the aviation industry and the airports drive their own agenda in respect of having increased fuel efficiency, different fuel systems and the other transformations that have yet to take place in the industry. Those transformations are precisely the same as those that applied to the car industry, and which it said were impossible to introduce. Unless we set those targets and make the industry the driver of its own change, the aviation sector will continue to want an opt-out on the huge slice of the carbon damage contributions that they make in our economy.