My Lords, that is an unfair suggestion. I am certainly not playing north Wales against south Wales—I am informing noble Lords of what happened when we were out on the road. There is only one international airport in Wales. If we are talking about APD in relation to long-haul flights, that means only Cardiff in relation to Wales, as things stand; that is undoubtedly the case. I am the first person to stand up for Wales, as I hope that the noble Lord will accept, but we cannot do that in isolation from what is happening in the rest of the country. If the measure being talked about is unfair, I am afraid that it will not see the light of day in the context of looking at what is fair for the United Kingdom. Yes, we must stick up for Wales, but it has to be done in the context of fairness.
I shall progress the argument a little to see if there are other things that we can be doing. As I have said, we do not want to look at the position of market distortions, but we want to help Cardiff Airport if we can. We looked at a review of this to see whether it would be possible to devolve APD to Wales while supporting English regional airports against the impacts of reduced APD. However, there are no obvious options that could mitigate against the impacts on regional airports elsewhere, if devolving the tax to the Assembly meant that Bristol could face 25% fewer passengers. That is significant. I shall ensure that I circulate full details of our review into these options to noble Lords so they can see it.
I hope that noble Lords will accept that this is not a desire not to do what is best for Wales, but a desire to do what is best for Wales while recognising that we
cannot fail to be fair to the rest of the country. If that happens in this case to be England, I make no apologies for that. Bristol Airport does not have the ability to vary APD, and we cannot do that in the context of the Bill.
I have listened carefully to the debate, and I shall circulate the details of the review, when we had a look to see if there was anything that we could do. There was a long debate in the Silk commission, and it was not along party-political lines; it was generally divided on the issue of what we could do for Wales, partly because of fairness and partly because of the issue that still exists about state aid and the fear of action in relation to that—valid action. On that basis, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment. As I say, I shall circulate details of the review that we had to see whether there was anything that we could realistically do to help Wales—and, in this context, that means Cardiff Airport.