Thomas Cook

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, in response to the part of my noble friend Lord Rosser’s question about the cost to the UK taxpayer of this business going into administration, the Minister answered with reference only to the repatriation costs. I might say, and I will support this in a moment, that she grossly underestimates them by just doubling the Monarch costs.

What is the cost to the UK taxpayer of all the implications of the administration of this business, including the cost to public funds? ATOL is a public fund put together by the accumulation of levies on holidaymakers and travellers, as are the CAA’s funds that are being used here. Only yesterday there was an estimate in the Financial Times of the cost to the ATOL fund alone of £600 million. It is there in detail, explaining that because of the EU directive the fund will have to pay back to the people who have booked holidays in advance the cost of those holidays that they are not now going to get, and it will take it months to do it.

How much tax does Thomas Cook owe the Government in air passenger duty, VAT and other taxation that it has collected? How much will all these thousands of people who are going to be made redundant cost the Government in benefits, retraining and support? What are the implications for the pension funds? Surely the Ministers who made this decision not to give £250 million to Thomas Cook in the short term had an estimate of these figures before them. What was that estimate? How much was this going to cost the Government if they went down the road that they went down, with the inevitable result that this business went into administration?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

My Lords, I fear that the noble Lord is making the wrong comparison there. On the £250 million, we made the assessment that, even had we been able to provide the guarantee of funds that was requested, the company did not have a viable future. It was severely in debt and losing a significant amount of money. We would have been in the same situation in the future but £250 million poorer. Also, it is not the Government’s usual position to prop up private companies that have got themselves into trouble.

When it comes to the total costs of the failure—there are many, and we understand that—some are clearer than others at this time. On repatriation, for example, I did not just double the Monarch cost—I said that this repatriation is twice the size of Monarch’s, but it is also more complicated. However, we are mitigating that by having conversations with a third party. We learned from the Monarch case that some people do not behave in the way you would expect: in that case, a significant portion of people chose not to be repatriated using the Government. They found other ways of getting home—we do not know how, but they did not arrive for their flights.

Estimating the costs is extremely difficult. It is up to us to keep the costs as low as possible, but ATOL customers who have future bookings can claim from ATOL—that fund is underwritten by the Government. Again, we cannot be absolutely clear about the cost because it will depend on how many people end up claiming, but every person who applies to ATOL to get a refund for their booking will receive it—and that is right.