(5 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberThe Prime Minister has appeared numerous times in the House of Commons and will be doing so later this week, but she has other matters to attend to as well. In response to the question put by the noble Baroness, no, I will not rule out the fact that there could be no deal. No deal is the absence of a deal. If the Labour Party is really serious about avoiding no deal, there is a deal on the table for it to vote for.
My Lords, as chairman of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, perhaps I may say that we fully accept the challenge which the Government are facing in this matter and we will do our duty as required.
I thank my noble friend for his extremely constructive attitude. It allows me to come back to a point raised by the noble Baroness which I did not answer. She said that there are 600 SIs to table. That is the total that will be required, and the figure has been revised down from our original estimate of between 800 and 1,000. We have already tabled more than 50% of them. The rest will be tabled in due course to allow for proper parliamentary scrutiny using the sifting committee chaired by the noble Lord.
(7 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberAs someone who uses regional airports regularly, the issue of air passenger duty is, of course, high on my agenda. I am sure the noble Lord will understand that, as a Minister only a couple of weeks into his appointment, were I to start rewriting the Chancellor’s Budget proposals at this stage I would not last very long.
My Lords, when the time comes to repatriate the regulation of civil aviation, will that be vested in a revitalised Civil Aviation Authority, as in the past, or left to the European Aerospace Agency?
The whole issue of Brexit and how liberalised air transport will go forward will be the subject of negotiation. We want to ensure seamless access to European air transport matters, and I am sure the European aviation industry will want to access UK policy, too.