THE Transport Secretary yesterday told the owner of Durham Tees Valley Airport to stop whingeing about 'green' taxes, adding: 'You're doomed if you don't pay your fair share'.

Lord Adonis poured scorn on claims by Peel Airports Group that rising air passenger duty (APD) was damaging regional airports and had killed off Durham's air link to London.

Instead, he told MPs that the level of duty "broadly meets the environmental costs" of flying, which is widely recognised as a growing cause of global warming.

And he added: "To be quite frank, I don't think aviation has a credible future unless it is able to make a bigger contribution to meeting its environmental costs.

"In my experience, all industries are worried about taxes - that's a given in any industry. All industries would dearly love taxes to be reduced for them."

Lord Adonis also predicted that his plans for a North-South high-speed rail link would reduce the need for flights to the capital from Durham Tees Valley and other regional airports.

He told the transport select committee: "I would welcome that. High-speed rail is a much better option than aviation for developing the short-distance market."

The comments will infuriate Peel, which told the same committee, only two weeks ago, that bmi's decision to quit flying from Durham Tees Valley to Heathrow was a direct consequence of a "doubling" of passenger duty.

The group protested that duty was scheduled to rise by up to 113 per cent in November this year - slapping around £40 on a long-haul flight.

It warned that the tax burden would rise again when the air industry was included in the EU's emissions trading scheme from 2012, to tackle global warming And it calculated the combined tax burden from passenger duty and the emissions trading scheme at £3.6bn by 2012 - far higher than the "environment cost"

of flying, which it put at £2bn.

In written evidence, Lord Adonis said the changes this autumn - introducing four duty bands, in place of two - would mean "passengers flying further, and therefore contributing more to aviation emissions, will pay more".

But, under questioning, he conceded that the money raised goes into the general Treasury "pot", rather than being ring-fenced for fighting climate change.

Lord Adonis' enthusiasm for a 225mph rail line through the North-East will also fuel Peel's suspicions that the department for transport (Dft) is "anti aviation".

Two weeks ago, it cried foul over subsidies handed to the rail industry, although airlines have faced allegations of a 'hidden subsidy', because they pay no fuel tax.

The committee's inquiry, entitled 'The Future of Aviation', comes ahead of a key government study, taking in the economic impact of losing an air link to London, now due in the autumn.