Excheq-Air

The Air Passenger Duty increases that were announced by Gordon Brown in the Pre-Budget report on the 7th of December, came into effect today

The problem is that neither the airlines nor the government have the legal right to collect the increased duty.



There is a constitutional clause in law,

Edw. II 1322 Revocatio Novarum Ordinationum
"Ordinances or provisions concerning the King and the realm made by subjects shall be void and none such shall be made except by the King, Lords and Commons in Parliament".

The Prince's Case (1606) 8 Co Rep 1A; 77 ER 481; [1606] EWHC Ch J6 A document on the Parliamentary Roll is conclusive as to its validity as an Act if it shows on its face that everything has been done which the common law of the United Kingdom has prescribed for the making of an Act of Parliament - that the Queen, the Lords and the Commons have assented to it: "If an Act be penned, that the King with the assent of the Lords, or with the assent of the Commons, it is no Act of Parliament for three ought to assent to it scil. The King, the Lords and the Commons."

This was reiterated in the Bill of Rights of 1689 the government cannot raise taxes without enacting legislation.

That levying money for or to the use of the Crown by pretence of prerogative, without grant of Parliament, for longer time, or in other manner than the same is or shall be granted, is illegal;

This clause was confirmed by the ruling in the case of Bowles v. Bank of England [1913] where Parker J. ruled
By the statute 1 W. & M., usually known as the Bill of Rights, it was finally settled that there could be no taxation in this country except under authority of an Act of Parliament. The Bill of Rights still remains unrepealed, and no practice or custom, however prolonged, or however acquiesced in on the part of the subject, can be relied on by the Crown as justifying any infringement of its provisions. It follows that, with regard to the powers of the Crown to levy taxation, no resolution, either of the Committee for Ways and Means or of the House itself, has any legal effect whatever. Such resolutions are necessitated by a parliamentary procedure adopted with a view to the protection of the subject against the hasty imposition of taxes, and it would be strange to find them relied on as justifying the Crown in levying a tax before such tax is actually imposed by Act of Parliament.

Seems the wings are going to come off this little flight of fancy
.