Following up on THIS story from last week, there was an Order laid in the House of Commons yesterday regarding Airport Passenger Duty. See HERE.
Excise,—Air Passenger Duty (Rate) (Qualifying Territories) Order 2007 (S.I., 2007, No. 22), dated 9th January 2007 [by Act], with an Explanatory Memorandum [by Command] [John Healey].
The draft Order is subject to negative resolution (i.e. if the House does not pass a resolution against it in 40 days the minister may make an order). I think that this means that the order cannot become effective before Feb 16th, hence the airlines have no right to collect the extra duty before that date although it is supposed to be effective from February 1st.
The government could have tabled an affirmative resolution in the House of Commons, I am told, which would have had immediate effect, but they obviously want to avoid the embarrassment, and are hoping that no-one spots their incompetence. Too late.
UPDATE: I am told by someone who obviously knows about parliamentary prodedure than I do that thius is not quite right. Yesterday's Order apparently only extended the territories to which the short haul rate applies. The Treasury continues to claim that under the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act it can retrospectively validate the 1 Feb implementation date on Budget Day.
6 comments:
Sorry Iain, I and many others spotted the Governments incompetence and general sleaziness about 9 a 1/2 years ago when a certain motor racing mogul turned up in No.10 with a fast million....it's been downhill ever since
And are they actually charging before Feb 16th? I ask from a distance.
There are two rules here, Iain: under the "40 day rule", laid down in the Statutory Instruments Act 1946, MPs have 40 days in which to object and try to get a negative resolution.
But the coming into force of the order isn't governed by the 40 day rule but by the non-statutory "21 day rule", according to which an instrument should be laid before Parliament 21 days before it comes into force. The 21 day rule isn't strictly binding in law - departments can breach it if they have good reasons - and the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments will tell them off later if their reasons weren't good.
But anyway, the Treasury has laid the order in time for it to come into force on 1 February. Yes, that means the order can come into force before the negative resolution debate happens - odd, but true.
If the resolution is passed, the order then can't be enforced (it'll be revoked, in fact). But under section 5(1) of the Statutory Instruments Act 1946, anything the government did in the period during which the order was in force remains lawful.
Yes - the Treasury wants its money from 1 February
The government may be able to legislate retrospectively to recover the duty from the airlines. But how can the airlines recover the duty from their customers on the strength of a law which is not yet in force, and (in theory, at least) may never come into force?
Sure they can "validate" it (not a legislative term in this context) at any time they like. They could have done so on the date of the PBR by passing a resolution of the house of commons regarding the collection of the tax, or they could do it after the Budget epeech, but the simple fact is that they haven't. Consequently the government has no right to collect the tax until either a bill is passed, an order becomes effective or a resolution is passed under the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act - none of which has happened.
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