Airports UK, the aviation industry’s trade body, is set to warn the Chancellor that Labour’s Budget risks grounding airports with sky-high business rates. A draft letter seen by Sky News‘ Mark Kleinman lays bare the damage and predicts a staggering fivefold rise in rates bills to over £1 billion. Causing route cancellations and higher passenger costs…
“Investment in airport assets will decrease, routes to and from the UK will be lost (as can already be seen in Germany where taxes are rising), trade will be hurt, and British travellers will be hit with higher costs and less choice. Without our sector as a major partner, the government’s ambition to secure the highest growth rate in the G7 and unlock an investment-led approach to transforming the economy will be materially damaged… Airports cannot be expected to sustain increases of this magnitude without having to scale back investment or to cut routes. These increases are punitive against all sizes of airports and threaten the very viability of several airports, without which critical regional connectivity would be lost.”
The letter brands the Budget “catastrophic” with some airports bracing for bills 12 times higher than before and average rates in England soaring by a jaw-dropping 450%. Industry insiders fear the move could leave regional airports fighting for survival. Reeves’ Budget heading for a crash landing…
Statement by Paul Dacre, Editor-in-Chief of Associated Newspapers Limited, following Harry’s loss in court today:
“Prince Harry wrote a sad book which boasted about his killing of 25 Taliban, his drug-taking and, in cringe-making detail, how he lost his virginity. There isn’t a laundry in the cosmos big enough to wash all the dirty linen he has aired about his own family. For him, to complain about HIS privacy being invaded takes, not just the biscuit, but the whole tin. Poor Harry. I feel sorry for the way a confused and angry young man has been drawn into this case. The bitter irony is that his mother, Diana, liked the Mail. We were her paper. We took her side in her acrimonious break up with Charles. She and I would speak and meet. The Mail’s superb royal reporter was her friend and confidante. The truth is that this trumped-up action – which has cost well over £50 million and wasted a huge amount of valuable court time – should never have been brought to trial. That it did, raises profoundly disturbing questions about the conduct of elements of the legal profession. Today’s verdict is not just a victory for Associated’s magnificent journalists – several of whom have had a terrible toll imposed on their health and lives – but a free press generally. Make no mistake. This was a conspiracy, supported by Hacked Off, to destroy a paper. Financed by the orgy-loving, racist Max Mosley and involving the actor Hugh Grant, it was also a sinister bid to resuscitate Leveson Two and impose statutory regulation on the press which, even now, is rearing its ugly head in Labour’s Media Green Paper.”