Levy hopes finally dashed

The lingering hopes of introducing a £1 consumer protection levy have been dashed after a narrow vote in the House of Lords.

An amendment to include the levy ahead of yesterdays third reading of the Civil Aviation Bill, was defeated by just four votes, 119 for, to 123 against.

Supporters of the scheme admitted it was the end.

“What happens now? Nothing, that’s it,” said director of the Association of Independent Tour Operators Noel Josephides.

In the Lords, a three-line whip was imposed on Labour members to vote against the levy, which Federation of Tour Operators director general Andy Cooper insisted cost them the vote.

He admitted it finally extinguished hopes of including the levy in the bill.

But he added: “While it is probably lost in the context of the Civil Aviation Bill, 161 MPs have signed an early day motion so there is a groundswell of opinion in favour.

“MPs are aware of the issue and the majority know something needs to be done. We will keep talking to the government to ensure the issue does not go away.”

Despite the optimism, Cooper said it would probably need another high profile failure to spark the government into action.

“I don’t think the government will initiate anything so it almost comes back to something John Harding said a while back about needing a failure to trigger action,” said Cooper, referring to comments by the former ABTA president who said a failure was needed to alert customers to the risk of low cost carriers – only to see his own company collapse.

Josephides, who spent a week at the Lords lobbying members, described the result as “very disappointing.”

“The government should be embarrassed,” he told TravelMole. “We have won the argument but lost the vote.

“The only reason I can think why a three-line whip was imposed was that Labour had to save face. I assume they are also planning to introduce an airline tax very soon and didn’t want to upset the airlines before then.”

Lord Bradshaw, who tabled the amendment in the Lords, earlier told a debate that the levy would top up the Air Travel Trust Fund and protect customers against the failure of an airline.

“That is an actual and not a theoretical risk, which was brought into sharp focus by the collapse of EUjet only a few months ago when thousands of passengers were stranded,” he said.

“A £1 levy would soon build up to a sizeable sum of money. We have made provision in the amendment, since it was first moved, to arrange for the levy not to be collected once a reasonable sum of money has accumulated.

“It would not be activated again until the money was spent, so it would not be a constant drain. In many respects, it is a deregulatory measure, because a lot of people are not being regulated. We have to face the fact that the ATOL scheme is almost on the point of collapse.”