AIRPORT expansion has become a very hot issue. Airlines are major carbon dioxide emitters, so it is highly appropriate that we know just what subsidy they get when the aviation kerosene they use is not taxed. I asked Treasury ministers to say what they estimate to be the cost of not taxing this fuel in the financial year 2002-03.
John Healey, the Treasury minister with responsibility for transport taxes, replied that virtually all aircraft on scheduled flights within the UK and on the majority of international commercial flights use aviation turbine fuel (AVTUR) – a heavy hydrocarbon oil. He went on to say that although AVTUR is not currently taxed, the UK recognises there is a case for taxing the fuel used in international aviation. The government therefore supports action through the International Civil Aviation Organization to remove the current worldwide exemption.
Assuming a higher fuel price didn’t lead to higher air fares and a drop in the number of passengers, levying duty on the AVTUR used in the year 2002-03 would have raised between £5.8 billion and £6.6 billion, depending on the rate of duty, the minister said.
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Wow! But you can bet your bottom dollar that the UK will not be brave enough to stick its head above the runway unless the European Union, the US and others do too.
AS A member of the European Parliament in the late 1970s, I often travelled on the same flights as John Kendrew when he was returning from Karlsruhe to his home in Cambridge. Kendrew, a Nobel prizewinner for the work he did on the muscle protein myoglobin, was then the director of the European Molecular Biology Organization. He would invariably pour out to me the woes confronting EMBO. Alas, it is still beset with troubles.
The UK and other EMBO member countries, such as France, Germany and Italy, are now insisting that the agency’s budget remains frozen at the 2003 level – which is in fact what it was in 1998. Adrian Bird, professor of genetics at the University of Edinburgh, tells me that it will seriously compromise EMBO, crippling its important senior fellowship programme. The harm done to European biomedical research through this step would be serious and difficult to reverse later.
EMBO, says Bird, typifies the best of Europe. It is a non-bureaucratic organisation run efficiently for the obvious benefit of European science. It ensures young, talented scientists can be identified and properly funded to work within Europe. UK science has benefited greatly by hosting EMBO fellows. At a time when research funding is tight, such positions are a godsend to the scientific community: molecular biology needs EMBO to thrive. It is a symbolic as well as an effective practical expression of Europe’s ambition to match the draw of the US, says Bird.
It would be tragic if EMBO were crippled for want of a relatively minor budget increase. The UK government’s present stance is misguided. Clearly it should rethink its position before it is too late.
