Last week a small team of Greenpeace activists delivered a letter to the Chancellor Rishi Sunak, signed by 167,000 members of the public, to the Treasury on Horse Guards Road in Westminster. The letter is calling for airline bailouts to have conditions attached. The letter is in the form of giant paper aeroplanes, and an electronic version emailed to the Treasury.
Sam Chetan-Welsh, a political advisor for Greenpeace UK, said –
“With these letters the public joins charities, businesses, MPs and the government’s own climate advisors in calling on the Chancellor to put conditions on bailout money. Companies must protect both the workers who supported them, and the climate that supports us all. And yet airlines – some of the most polluting businesses there are – have already been handed almost two billion in public money without any strings attached. All we’re asking from the government is to use public money for the public good, not bonuses for polluters. We all know we must cut our carbon, and that means airlines will need to cut flights – subsidising loss-making businesses to keep them polluting is a false economy which we will all pay for.”
