When he gets up to deliver his Budget next Wednesday, the Chancellor could use just ten words that would start to get us on the right path: "I have decided to cancel the planned increase in Air Passenger Duty".

George Osborne has said on more than one occasion in the past few months that he is working towards the UK having a low tax environment suitable for greater overseas investment. It is a laudable plan but does it stand up to scrutiny?

This time last year, air passengers learned of the Government's intention to increase the tax on flights, Air Passenger Duty (APD), by twice the rate of inflation - a rise that gave the UK's air passengers a further lead in remaining the most heavily taxed anywhere in the world.

Since the air passenger duty was introduced in 1994, no study has been done about its economic impacts. If we are to levy the highest air tax in the world, surely we must understand the economic impact of doing so.

The summer recess is normally a quiet period for MPs. Their offices slow down, they take holidays and politics seems slower paced. The extraordinary success of the Olympics may have taken the focus of the media off Westminster but that does not mean that MPs have gotten away with a quiet summer.

Today marks 100 days until the start of the Olympics. While it seems likely the number of tourists coming to London will enjoy an upturn in 2012, there are emerging signs that thanks in part to the UK's Air Passenger Duty (APD) others will be staying away.

The simple message for the Chancellor coming out of this Budget from the travel industry is this: we support your efforts to make the UK the most competitive place to do business in the world, but to do this we need you to apply that logic to every tax, not just the ones voters have heard about.

I am a realist. The Chancellor will not announce a cut in APD today. But what I would like to see from the Treasury would be a compromise - for him to establish the principle that future Emissions Trading Scheme ticket price rises are offset by reductions in APD.

he hullaballoo surrounding a certain witness at this week's Home Office Select Committee hearing and the highly-trailed backbench debate on fuel prices obscured an equally important debate taking place in the Commons yesterday on the aviation sector.

Britain has the highest air ticket tax - known as Air Passenger Duty (APD) - of any country in the world. As an island nation, you can see why successive policy-makers have raised APD since its introduction in 1994. Most Brits have little choice but to pay the departure tax - and it's been a boon to the Treasury.