Air Services (Competition) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, the Chamber is much emptier now than it was for the earlier SI. I am intrigued that we are replacing the air services competition regulations, which apparently have never been used, with an SI which we hope will never come into force. This is almost comedy stuff. The Explanatory Memorandum states that,

“this instrument makes the corrections needed for it to function as domestic UK law after Exit day”.

What is the position regarding the replacement? If negotiations on it are going on at the moment, presumably the Department for Transport is involved in them. I would be interested to hear where they have got to. Are they on the point of producing the replacement or is it some way down the line? If it is on the point of being replaced, do the Government envisage bringing forward another SI to reflect the new regulation? Or will this be the first instance when we are seriously at variance with Europe: in other words, when it adopts a new regulation but we are still working on an old one? This picks up the point I made earlier this afternoon when I asked about divergence between Community and UK law. It needs to be addressed.

One always learns things in these debates. I was fascinated to learn that my noble friend—and good friend—Lady McIntosh began her romantic life by talking about cabotage. I found something else to talk about when I first met my wife, but we do not need to go into that. Looking at the slot allocation regulations, the question that keeps coming to me is: why should any airline stay based in the United Kingdom at all? What advantages are we going to offer them? I can see the advantage in being in a union of 27 countries where there is a common base and common legislation, but what will be the advantage of being a UK airline? I can see none at all. Britain cannot do without airlines. We are not going to stop them flying here, but at the same time we have nothing to offer them that will be better, in any way, than what they will be getting from the EU. The Commission will no longer have a role in relation to airports.

According to the explanatory statement, article 9 says:

“Instead of any invitation to tender to operate a”,


public service obligation,

“route being open to Community air carriers only, this will be open to all air carriers with traffic rights to operate services within the UK”.

Is not the logical corollary that our rights to bid for public service obligation slots in the rest of Europe will be withdrawn? If we are going to open up and say that non-EU airlines can bid for these slots, surely the natural reaction would be to say that we are changing the whole basis of things. So this is not bringing EU law into UK law; it is bringing it in with one quite fundamental change, by opening it up to all air carriers with traffic rights to operate services within the UK. What is the thinking behind this? Why have we inserted this into a regulation that is supposed to bring EU law into line with our law, while making a big divergence by letting non EU-registered airlines bid for these slots? I would welcome the Minister’s observations on why this has been done.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, the services SI is about unfair practices. It allows penalties to be imposed on air carriers guilty of unfair practices against the UK industry. Since these powers have apparently never been used at an EU level, it is probably right, just for once, to say that this is purely technical—although the Minister forbore to say so. However, the concept of an EU-wide approach, which is what we are abandoning here by replacing “EU” with “UK”, would be much more likely to be an effective deterrent against such practices than the UK operating on its own. The noble Lord, Lord Balfe, has just wondered out loud why an airline would base itself in the UK in future. This is another example of how we are opening ourselves up to being in a much more vulnerable position through our future isolation.

In her introduction, the Minister said that these EU regulations were being replaced. Will she clarify whether the Government intend, in due course, to replace this SI with an updated version when the EU has updated its regulation—or are we going to be stuck in a time warp with outdated legislation?