Transport secretary promised EasyJet not to levy green taxes

The transport secretary, Grant Shapps, promised EasyJet that green taxes would not be levied on airlines six months before the company was given a GBP600m coronavirus crisis loan with no environmental conditions attached, newly released documents show. Direct lobbying against environmental taxes by Britain’s biggest airline are revealed in Freedom of Information Act responses obtained by Unearthed, Greenpeace’s investigations unit. Evidence of the lobbying came as airlines across Europe were set to receive more than E26b in taxpayers’ money for coronavirus bailouts with no binding environmental conditions attached, according to data compiled by Transport & Environment, Carbon Market Watch and Greenpeace. The meeting with Johan Lundgren, the boss of EasyJet, took place shortly after Shapps’s appointment as transport secretary last year. During the meeting, Shapps reassured the CEO he wanted the Department for Transport to be pro-aviation. In a separate meeting a month earlier with the CE of Heathrow, John Holland-Kaye, Shapps also stated that he wanted to reorient the transport department to be “more proactive in promoting aviation”. The easyJet boss used his meeting to criticise the Netherlands’ plans to levy green taxes on airlines, while Shapps “agreed this was not a way forward”.<br/>