Aviation: Hand-luggage Restrictions

Baroness Warnock Excerpts

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the noble Lord suggested that airlines in other countries do not have this problem, but they do. One difficulty for musicians is that they can fly out from, say, Heathrow with one airline which accepts their instrument but when they try to fly back with the same airline on a return ticket they find that they cannot get back. One solution might be to regulate but the difficulty there is that we will go for the lowest common denominator and that might discourage the industry from coming up with an innovative solution. During my meeting with members of the Musicians’ Union, I urged them to take the opportunity to talk to airline and airport operators to try to come up with a solution to the problem or at least to improve the situation.

[Baroness Warnock]

I should like to ask the Minister to ensure consistency. Does he agree that an international trans-airline industry policy is needed? I declare a mild interest in that I am a patron of the English Concert, which, like many other English orchestras, depends for its existence on overseas recitals. At the moment, large instruments such as tubas and cellos have to have an extra seat booked for them and orchestras understand that. However, it is with smaller instruments such as violins, flutes and oboes that there is total inconsistency. Although an orchestra may have informed the airline that an orchestra is being conveyed, that information is often not passed on to the check-in people and therefore a musician may be turned away, being told that he cannot take the instrument. That leads to total chaos. Will the Minister try to enforce at least consistency?

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I am not prepared to promote regulation by central government. It is for the airline industry to come up with consistent standards and we are not going to regulate on this. The noble Baroness touched on the position of orchestras. However, orchestras do not have this problem because they have significant buying power and sometimes hire the whole aircraft. The real problem lies with individual musicians, perhaps going to a show in southern Europe on their own, as they have very little buying power or clout.