Civil Aviation (Consumer Protection and Regulatory Reform) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Blencathra and Baroness Kennedy of Cradley

Report stage
Monday 13th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of Cradley (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support Amendments 5 and 9, to which I was delighted to add my name.

In truth, we live in an era of rapidly advancing technology, when other industries are bending over backwards to ensure their staff are trained to deliver a high level of quality service with an attitude of respect, and when digital means of communication are being used in abundance to ensure that customers have information that is clear and easily accessible. It is shocking to me that an amendment like this is necessary to ensure that the aviation industry steps up and does what should be standard practice to support disabled people—but it is necessary. The reality is that services for, and the treatment of, disabled people in the aviation industry are woefully inadequate—and they do not have to be. We know the issues and we know what needs to change. We now need to find the legislative framework to deliver that change. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 5; it is the only amendment to which I shall speak on Report.

I can tell the House that I have now beaten Frank Gardner’s record for being left on a plane. On 24 June, my flight back from Basel left the city 45 minutes late. We touched down at exactly 9.10 pm at Heathrow. At 9.15 pm the plane came to a stop, the seat-belt signs were switched off and we were parked somewhere out in the sticks. The pilot said that the buses had not arrived yet and would arrive in a few minutes. The first bus arrived 20 minutes later at 9.35 pm. The high-lift wagon to take me and other disabled passengers off did not turn up until 9.50 pm, but it turned up simultaneously with the food wagon. Since the plane was on a turnaround for Budapest, the food wagon was given priority over getting the crippled passengers off. So, at 10.05 pm, I and others were taken off in the high-lift wagon. At 10.12 pm, my wheelchair was loaded. Then we set off on a 15-minute magical mystery tour around various tunnels at Heathrow. At 10.25 pm, I was deposited at a door in terminal 5, and at exactly 10.30 pm I got to passport control. Things then speeded up considerably—but after all that delay, my luggage was still delayed.

That is one example—I have a few more I want to give to the Minister—to show that there are two things in this amendment that are essential: training, and returning the wheelchairs and the bodies to the aircraft door or to where they are supposed to go. I say to my noble friends on the Front Bench: I am not calling for some massive, gold-plated regulatory regime that will bring up costs; I am calling for some of the current law to be enforced and for improvements to be made. Of course, I accept that it will make no difference if we pass some gold-plated regulations here, because the cartel of airline operators that run IATA will simply not adopt it anywhere else in the world.

I will begin with training. I serve on the Council of Europe, and for the past 15 years I have had hundreds of check-ins at countries all over Europe. There has been one occasion only, and it happened last month at Heathrow, where the guy at the BA check-in desk actually had, for the first time ever, the information I supplied at least 48 hours beforehand. Every other time you send the information to airlines—the size of your chair; the weight of the chair; the batteries; blah, blah, blah—when you get to check-in, they do not have it on their computer. Then you get asked questions again and again—and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is right that they are about batteries, batteries, batteries. They are of course right to be paranoid about lithium batteries: if you put a lithium battery in the hold, whether in a wheelchair or in your phone, it is highly dangerous. But there are two types: lithium batteries, which are removable, and all the other bolted-on batteries—the lead acid ones, including the sealed lead acid ones, and the sealed non-spillable ones—which are not removable.

So they ask you, “Is it lithium?”, and you say, “No, it’s not”. Then, “Can you remove it?”, and, “Well, no, you only remove lithium batteries; you don’t remove these”. “But surely you could remove it”; “No, you can’t remove it”. Luckily, one’s wife says, after those questions have been asked 20 times, “Keep your temper; stay nice”—and, on most occasions, I have managed to do so. There is no point getting aggressive, because they have not been trained. I say to the Minister: that is the vital thing—for God’s sake, make sure the airlines tell them about the batteries.