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AEF meets new transport minister

26th June, 2009

AEF met the new Secretary of State for Transport, Lord Adonis, on 25th June. AEF and a number of other national NGOs meet the transport minister twice yearly. This meeting gave us the opportunity to meet Lord Adonis, who has just replaced Geoff Hoon.

Lord Adonis is strong lobbyist for railways and had been in the press a couple of days before, saying how high-speed rail could replace short-haul flights.

A wide range of issues was raised at the meeting, with transport and climate change predominant. We urged the government to include international aviation in its emissions targets, and not to seek ways of avoiding it.

We also asked the government to support a proposal at the forthcoming negotiations in Copenhagen for UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) to set targets for aviation because ICAO had manifestly failed to address the issue of greenhouse gas emisson for the last 9 years. This received a favourable response.