We’re living in a climate emergency situation. Of all the issues that the next Prime Minister will face, the climate crisis is the most urgent and severe.

The destruction of our environment and our natural world is accelerating. We can all see this in our own daily lives and from the reports of extreme weather and species extinction around the world.

This week, new data issued by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service identified that the average global temperature has been 1.5°C above the pre-industrial era for 12 successive months.

This information should help to focus everyone’s efforts on making significant progress in tackling climate change by ramping up investment in key priorities such as public transport, including our railways, to reduce emissions.

To cut emissions and reduce domestic flights, UK Government Ministers must act to ensure that train travel is cheaper than flying.

We know that our MPs could ensure flying is taxed in a way that reflects the enormous impact it has on our climate.

There is a need for transformative changes to reduce how much we fly, but we need to do this fairly.

This can be delivered by a frequent flyer levy being implemented.

A levy would impact upon the 15% of people who take 70% of the flights. It would add additional costs to those who fly multiple times within a year, whilst making exceptions for those in remote areas who are using lifeline services.

Following on from France’s lead, the UK Government can also ban short-haul flights where journeys can instead be taken on fast and affordable trains.

We can support work by MPs to ban domestic flights for journeys that take less than three hours by train.

Rail is cleaner and greener than aviation. Therefore, it is puzzling why travelling by rail in the UK is far more expensive than in many other countries.

Currently, the cost and reliability of cross-border rail services in the UK cannot compete with the cheap and readily available domestic flights by low-cost providers. This means that in too many instances, people are unable to make the low-carbon choice.

We need to make rail travel between Scotland, England and Wales the default option. This can be achieved by the new UK Government bringing an end to the tax reliefs on aviation.

Income generated from taxes on aviation could cut the price of trains and increase the number of direct rail connections between cities across the UK. This is vital investment at a time when Scotrail has introduced timetable changes due to staff shortages caused by an ongoing pay dispute.

Rail freight operating companies are also actively looking for opportunities to invest.

The new UK Government can address the widening gap between road and rail costs. Renationalisation of the West Coast Main Line and a commitment to making both East and West Coast services permanently operated by public sector operators, reinvesting profits into service improvements, decarbonisation, and affordability is crucial.

We need urgent action by the UK Government to invest in expanding and improving our rail network.