Airports Slot Allocation (Alleviation of Usage Requirements) (No. 3) Regulations 2022

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her comments. Slot alleviation has become routine in the last couple of years. I have always accepted it as an important aspect of ensuring that we do not have unnecessary flights. “Half full” would be an overstatement; “almost empty” would be more accurate during Covid. However, I have got to the point where I question whether it is justified any longer in the current terms that the noble Baroness presents.

The Explanatory Note refers to an expansion of the list of reasons for slot alleviation, but that expansion is still in terms of Covid. Paragraph 7.2 of the Explanatory Memorandum refers to demand being at or around 80% to 85% of 2019 levels during May to July. Does the Minister now have access to figures for August and September?

The irony is that the reduction in demand over the summer was significantly affected by the cancellation of flights because airports instructed airlines not to fly, not because of Covid but because they did not have the ground-handling capacity. That happened at both Gatwick and Heathrow. The impact was, of course, to reduce the number of flights, but it also suppressed demand beyond those who thought that they had booked flights. I am sure we all know people who found that their flights were cancelled or deferred, and people who simply gave up trying to fly abroad as a result of the congestion at airports. There was suppressed demand over the summer, so the alleviation of slot rules could be said to be no longer appropriate for those reasons. It is time the Government reconsidered it, because it distorts the market.

Finally, I point out that there is no impact assessment for this. The grounds given for this are that it is for less than 12 months, but this has actually been going on for years, as the Minister pointed out in her explanation. I draw the Committee’s attention to the 12th report of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, Losing Impact: Why the Government’s Impact Assessment System Is Failing Parliament and the Public. At this stage, now that we appear to be through the immediate emergencies of Covid, it is important that the Government restore the standards they once had in legislation, in terms of impact assessments.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on taking over full responsibility for air—until the next reshuffle anyway. I think that happened last week.

These are very interesting regulations. As the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said, I can see that in the Explanatory Memorandum there is a sort of conflict between wanting not to lose slots at airports, wanting to preserve monopolies and wanting to encourage competition. We do not really like running ghost flights if that is the only way to do it.

The question I would like to ask the Minister relates, as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said, to some of these lists of reasons, which could become cop-outs for just about everything an airline or airport does not want. The noble Baroness mentioned shortage of airline or airport staff and strikes, which have been happening and will probably continue.

Then there is slot limitation. The noble Baroness mentioned Heathrow Airport limiting slots. I looked at the website for Schiphol Airport and it has similar limitations on slots, I suspect for similar reasons. Perhaps the Minister could tell us what is happening to these limitations on slots, certainly at Heathrow, because I think the present one finishes at the end of October. Is that matched with Schiphol and other regional or local airports in Europe? Presumably you have to have similar restraints at either end of a flight, and an awful lot of them go to Schiphol and places such as that.

The other interesting item in the list of reasons, for me, is in paragraph 7.6 of the Explanatory Memorandum, which is to do with the

“closure of airports or hotels”

and the effect that it might have on the passenger. That is a very subjective way in which to decide on slots, if one is relying on the number of people who are complaining, or what you think the solution is. I am not sure that the regulations will help matters much, in that way.