Civil Aviation Bill

Debate between Lord Davies of Stamford and Lord Soley

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley]

Like other speakers, I welcome the general thrust of this Bill. I am sure that we shall make some improvements in Committee. I would like to see it in the context of a proper aviation policy, which I fear we do not have at the moment. I am rather nervous about some of the papers that might come out from the Government, although the Prime Minister today, in answer to Zac Goldsmith, the MP for Richmond Park, declined to give a commitment that, if re-elected, the Government would not build a third runway. This argument is moving and there are growing numbers of people who recognise that the only realistic possibility is the expansion of Heathrow. It is something that I have been saying for many years, but I will not spend a great deal of time on it now because the House and other people have heard my views on many occasions. I simply reiterate that at a time of economic recession, a third runway is estimated to add some £8 billion to the British economy, and all the investment is totally private sector. The idea of not doing it is crazy. If we do not do it soon, we will continue to lose out. A number of Members around this House have made that point.

I want to make an additional point—and this is where it would be good if the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, could talk to the noble Lord, Lord Rogan. I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, understands the concept of a hub airport. That is curious because he seems to love trains, and I presume that he understands the concept of what is in effect a hub railway station. People go to the big railway stations in big cities to interchange to get to other places.

Perhaps I may give the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, an obvious example, and I would like him to think it through, because the opponents are getting in the way of the advantages that would accrue to us if we took the necessary decisions. I could give him many examples similar to that of the Japanese businessman who wishes to invest in Europe and has investment meetings here. He wants to fly on to his factory in Liverpool and can do that by going to London, getting a train across to King’s Cross, getting the train to Luton, and then flying to Liverpool. Or he could go to Euston and get the train all the way to Liverpool. Alternatively, he can fly to Amsterdam, have his meeting there, decide his investment policies, and fly straight to Liverpool. That is true of dozens of regional airports around Britain. We are not just doing damage to London; we are doing damage to our regions and it is important to understand that.

I will not proceed further on that, other than to make the more general point that in aviation generally we still have the second largest and second most advanced aerospace industry in the world. Although we will not retain that position much longer, for all the obvious reasons about emerging countries, we can retain the great advantage that we have, particularly in science and technology. We can do that only if we have a good civil aviation policy and a defence policy that goes with it to support the aviation industry. Everyone in the industry understands that, and that is why when I make speeches such as this I get so much support from across the whole industry. That is generally recognised by all, and I ask the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, to talk this through with people, understand the concept of the hub and why you cannot have more than one hub airport in one major area. You can have several hub airports in a large country, but not otherwise. That is important.

I wanted to mention investment in Heathrow and so on. Although the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, who has had to slip out for a while, has saved me some time, I want to reiterate this issue—which the noble Lord, Lord Patten, also touched on. There is a problem here. My understanding is that it would not require much tweaking of the Bill to give Heathrow the protection that it needs in terms of investment policies in infrastructure. We could look at that in Committee, because it is an important matter which we should flag up.

I want to refer to two other matters mentioned by another speaker. Clearly, we must give the CAA a duty of efficiency, and the National Audit Office is relevant in this context. The idea of the CAA not being answerable to the National Audit Office is, frankly, dumb. I believe that we were thinking of doing that some time ago when we were in government and considered introducing a similar Bill. That was the intention.

I want to say a quick word about the issue of airline holiday sales and the Air Travel Organisers Licensing scheme. My understanding from the CAA is that it believes that airline holiday sales should come under the new ATOL arrangements. It was drawn to my attention that the number of people whose holidays are protected by the ATOL scheme has reduced considerably, and today only around 50% of holidaymakers travel with full financial protection from ATOL. Those figures are from the CAA. We should all recognise and support its proposal.

Security issues, dealt with in Clauses 78 to 82, are very important. This is perhaps not the moment to discuss them in detail, although we may do so in Committee. I am slightly worried about the way that we are tackling this area. It is difficult to get right, although it may be that the Government have received advice from the security industry generally, including the security departments of government. However, we need to get this right. I remember the Minister saying at one time that her plan was to make Heathrow better, not bigger. When you look at the queues at Heathrow you realise that, whatever else she has done, she has not achieved that.

Part of the reason is that we have not tackled effectively the whole issue of immigration, passport clearance and so on. The recent sacking of the head of that department has produced a situation where there is almost a work to rule. I am not justifying that, but if you tell the workforce that they must obey the Immigration Rules to the letter, they will do that—and that is what they are doing. That may be good, bad or indifferent, but you cannot easily blame those staff without recognising that the Government, by saying what they said and doing what they did, have made the problem far worse. We have to rely to a considerable degree on the good sense and, above all, the training of these people. If you tell them that they cannot use that good sense and training and give them a set of rules which you tell them to obey to the letter—and if you tell them that they will lose their jobs if they do not follow the rules to the letter—then they will obviously do just that: follow the rules to the letter. That would account for the terrible queues at Heathrow, which have done immense damage. The airport’s position in the international airline stakes is bad enough.

My noble friend and colleague Lord Davies of Stamford said that Heathrow was now number four in terms of aircraft movements. It has slipped to number eight in terms of the destinations it serves. That is by far the most serious slippage for a major airport. To compound that with a lack of effective ground operations in terms of clearing the queues and so on is therefore a major failure.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

Just to set the record straight, what I actually said was that Heathrow is currently third in Europe for aircraft movements—behind Roissy and Frankfurt—but that it will be fourth by 2020, behind Roissy, Frankfurt and Schiphol, both in terms of movements and passenger numbers.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Davies of Stamford and Lord Soley

Tuesday 1st February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, before getting to the substantive remarks that I wanted to make, as we have heard two interesting speeches I wonder whether it might be in order for the Leader of the House, on behalf of the House itself, formally to draw to the attention of the Electoral Commission the fact that noble Lords on both sides of the House appear to have had considerable difficulty getting in touch with the Electoral Commission by telephone. That is obviously a rather disturbing situation, particularly when everybody agrees that the Electoral Commission must play the key role in keeping the public informed as we move forward towards this referendum—if, indeed, we do. Although it would be nice to think that the staff of the Electoral Commission spent their free time reading Hansard of either House, that may be a rather hopeful assumption to make.

[Lord Soley]

The Electoral Commission staff do read Hansard. Indeed, I suspect that they watch some of the debate live, so perhaps I will soon get a text—I hope so.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I hope that, by whatever means, the Electoral Commission will address the issue raised by these two incidents, which hardly look as if they are purely coincidence. If noble Lords cannot get an answer from the Electoral Commission, what are the chances of an ordinary member of the public doing so? I suspect that that is a matter of concern not just to me but to the whole House.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Davies of Stamford and Lord Soley

Tuesday 25th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley]

Briefly, I support my noble friend on this amendment. I agree entirely that it would be better if the Government chose to go for the 10 per cent rule option, which would take a lot of the sting out of this Bill and reduce the dangers of long-term gerrymandering. One of the things that constantly troubles me about the Bill is that, although we might not like the amount of time it is taking, it is allowing a situation where, after every Parliament, a Government come in and change the rules on boundaries and numbers in the House of Commons in a way that suits their party-political advantage. Down that road lies gerrymandering and I really do not recommend it. They really need to think again but, if they are not going to move on the 10 per cent rule, the proposal being put forward by my noble friend is a good one.

I have a couple of points on this amendment. First, last night I raised the issue of “may” in paragraph 5 of the proposed new schedule in Clause 11 as opposed to “shall” which, as the Committee will know, has a much stronger legal meaning. It would therefore state that,

“the Boundary Commission shall take into account”,

instead of “may”. That was on an amendment put forward by my noble friend Lord Kennedy. Unfortunately, the Minister replying at that time was not able to respond because he was rather sadly taken ill, as we know. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, tried to deal with it in passing but if we were to have that in, along with my noble friend’s amendment today, it would give the Boundary Commission not only greater flexibility but the strength to say that there are certain geographical or other factors, as listed in paragraph 5, that would allow it to override the rules in the four points of the allocation method.

I do not want to spend too much time on it, but I draw attention to this; the Committee has heard quite a bit, over the past day or so, of the problem of large, rural areas and the drawing of their boundaries. I really do not want to go into the details of my previous constituency, or others, but at times—and this would have applied to my constituency and to many other inner-city ones too—the Boundary Commission is faced with particularly difficult situations on areas which have suffered as a result of a development there which has divided the community in some way. It might be a major road, a shopping site or whatever. The Boundary Commission needs to have the ability to take that into account. That is why I would prefer the stronger wording in paragraph 5 to allow the Boundary Commission to say, “We regard this as being of such importance that it must override the four points otherwise”.

There are many examples; the geographical ones are probably the best, inasmuch as they deal with both rural and urban areas where the geography changes significantly. For example, the building of the Westway in London divided communities very significantly, which had a big effect on my constituency. Obviously, in rural areas it would be mountains, rivers, estuaries or whatever. That geography example is very important. To put the Boundary Commission into a position where it is, in my noble friend’s words, tied in to such a degree that it cannot be flexible is a big mistake. The same applies to headings (b), (c) and (d) in paragraph 5(1). All of those will come up from time to time and the Boundary Commission will be faced with that decision.

As I indicated yesterday, I would prefer a situation where we change the wording in the proposed new Schedule 2 to read “shall” not “may” and, at the same time, to accept my noble friend’s amendment. The better alternative is to accept the 10 per cent rule but the Government seem thoroughly dug in on that, for many wrong reasons. It is one of the things giving us so much trouble on this Bill, because of its long-term implications for the political structure of our Parliament. The Minister is always very thoughtful on these things. I appreciate why the noble Lord, Lord McNally, could not answer the point about “shall” and “may” last night but perhaps the Minister could bear this in mind when he sums up: my noble friend’s amendment, combined with the use of “shall” instead of “may”, which therefore gives the Boundary Commission greater authority and strength in its decisions, would benefit the Bill. It would be a small step forward and I recommend it to the Government.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, this is a good moment in the Committee to look quite clearly at the contrast between the provisions in the 1986 Act, which currently apply, and those which the Government are trying to bring forward in this Bill and, against that contrasting background, to evaluate the amendment being put forward by my noble friend Lord Lipsey. The 1986 Act is really pretty clear; it establishes the rule about not crossing county boundaries as an absolute rule. In paragraph 4(1)(a) of Schedule 2 to the 1986 Act, it first says that,

“no county or any part of a county shall be included in a constituency which includes the whole or part of any other county or the whole or part of a London borough”,

and under heading (ii) that,

“no London borough or any part of a London borough shall be included in a constituency which includes the whole or part of any other London borough”.

That is absolute, subject only to the phrase:

“So far as is practicable”,

with regard to rules 1 to 3, which predominate. Those rules are that the number of constituencies should be 613, then that:

“Every constituency shall return a single Member”.

Then there is the rule about the City of London. We have already discussed the City of London and the issue of its single Member does not seem to be controversial in the modern world. In effect, the only real limiting provision on that rule in the 1986 Act is the requirement that the number of constituencies should particularly be 613.

What happened in the 1986 Act was that the recognition of the importance of county boundaries was stated as an absolute rule and the Boundary Commission has to look at it as such. Then at paragraph 6 of that schedule to the 1986 Act, the commission is told that it is given a let-out from an absolute rule. The rule is stated as absolute, subject to the conditions that I mentioned. Then there is this let-out:

“A Boundary Commission may depart from the strict application of rules 4 and 5 if special geographical considerations, including in particular the size, shape and accessibility of a constituency, appear to them to render a departure desirable”.

Our predecessors in 1986 thought that there was an absolute importance in having county boundaries respected and an absolute importance in having a particular number of constituencies, but the county boundary rule could be broken if there was an unreasonable outcome in terms of the size of constituencies. The Government have changed this completely in the Bill, in which the absolute criterion is not a total number—a different number, as it happens—of constituencies, but the 5 per cent rule; that the electoral quota must be observed, or must not vary by more than 5 per cent. That is stated as an absolute rule. Then, in paragraph 5 —we dealt with this yesterday—the Bill says:

“A Boundary Commission may take into account”—

there is no encouragement, let alone compulsion to take into account—

“special geographical considerations … local government boundaries … local ties … inconvenience”.

That is in paragraph 5 of the new Schedule 2 on page 10 of the text before us. That has been the shift that has occurred between 1986 and now, and the real importance is that the Government now think that the criterion of uniformity of number, or near uniformity of number of constituencies, is the only important thing. In fact, the phrase,

“A Boundary Commission may take into account”

is almost dismissive. There is hardly any suggestion that the Boundary Commission needs bother too much about that particular consideration.

My noble friend Lord Lipsey has brought forward a third model, which is that, while the uniformity of numbers point, the 5 per cent rule, remains enormously important, the Boundary Commission may waive that on one condition; that it states that these other considerations are of exceptional importance. That requires a very explicit decision by the Boundary Commission and would be something which the Boundary Commission would have to defend. Presumably it would have to be defended at judicial review—there is not going to be any parliamentary debate on the subject nor, if the Government have their way, any public inquiries.

Nevertheless, if there was some bar before which the boundary commissioners had to defend themselves, they would have to state very clearly how they came to conclude that these consideration were of exceptional importance. It is a very high threshold and any public body would be very cautious of stating that something was of exceptional importance—it is a very major judgment to make and one which potentially exposes them to a great deal of criticism, so they would be quite reluctant to make it. However, if they really felt persuaded that these other considerations were so important that a real scandal and injustice would be created, or real damage done to the fabric of our electoral system if, let us say, some local government or county boundary was not respected, they would, at least, have that let-out.

So it is a very small concession that the Government would be making if they were moved to accept my noble friend’s amendment. In most cases, it must be very much less than likely that the Boundary Commission would want to use this provision. By definition, they cannot say that everything is exceptional; they cannot say that most things are exceptional—if they stated that, they would be contradicting themselves. In practice, therefore, it is only on very rare occasions that they would be able to use this provision.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Davies of Stamford and Lord Soley

Monday 17th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley]

I answered that question before, but in a different way. I said, and I say again, that what matters is that, if you change the constitution in a way that reduces the chances of a political party winning an election, you cannot reverse what the Government have done. Removing hereditary Peers from here did not change the opportunity for a party to win an election. It is an important difference. That is why I make the case that one has to look at constitutional Bills differently. Of course, constitutional Bills about removing hereditary Peers or judges are very important, but when you change the composition of a House, which alters the ability of a major party to win an election, that party can no longer assume that it is in a position to reverse what the previous Government have done. That makes all the difference.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, has thrown in our face the deal done in 1997 or 1998 over the future of hereditary Peers. I hope that my noble friend will agree that that, surely, was a fine example of negotiation—a very delicate and complicated but very successful negotiation. I believe, indeed, that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, played a not-undistinguished part in that very successful and historic compromise. What we have this evening is a complete absence of any desire to even talk, let alone have a negotiation or a compromise. Surely that is the fundamental difference between the two situations.

[Lord Soley]

My noble friend is quite right and he has reminded me of something. I remember being in the Corridor outside when the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, had had talks with the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, or with his office, and William Hague, the then leader of the Conservative Party, had got to hear about the deal that my noble friend refers to. I happened to bump into William Hague as he came back down the Corridor having seen the noble Lord. His face was as black as thunder. I only heard a bit of what he was saying, but it certainly was not complimentary about the deal that had been done. I diverge, but the point is right. There was a negotiation.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Davies of Stamford and Lord Soley

Monday 17th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My noble friend has done a great service to the Committee by bringing to our attention the pamphlet of Andrew Tyrie—I remember it coming out, but I think that it has since slipped the memory of many of us. As he said, Andrew Tyrie laid down as a condition of a reduction in the number of MPs a proportionate reduction in the payroll vote in the House of Commons. Is it not the case that the Government have no intention as far as we know of reducing the size of the payroll vote but are going in the opposite direction? When I was in the Ministry of Defence, I thought that we could do better with one fewer Minister. Although the Government have come through with utterly irresponsible cuts in defence capability, they have increased the number of Ministers by one. That is quite extraordinary and shows that the Government are moving in totally the wrong direction.

[Lord Soley]

My noble friend puts his finger on a critically important point, which I want to cover, along with other related issues, in Amendment 59.