Air Passenger Rights and Air Travel Organisers’ Licensing (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018

Debate between Lord Deben and Lord Berkeley

Tuesday 12th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I share the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Deben, and my noble friend Lord Foulkes about the costs associated with Brexit. I recall the debate in this House yesterday about Seaborne Freight. The Minister said, and I am sure she is right, that,

“no taxpayer money has been transferred to the company”.—[Official Report, 11/2/19; col. 1704.]

However, the cost of dredging is probably several million pounds. Apparently it was being done by the Ramsgate harbour authority. I do not know where it will suddenly get the money from; I am sure it was not budgeted for. It was mentioned in another place yesterday that Slaughter and May had been paid £600,000 to advise the Government on how to write these contracts, which turned out to be non-existent. The Minister should commit to giving the House the total cost, rather than hiding behind, “We are not paying it directly because the dredging is being done by somebody else”, or something like that.

I should like to follow up on some of the questions the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, just asked because this SI is very confusing. The first question is: who is a UK carrier? Where will companies such as easyJet and British Airways be registered, and does that matter when defining what is a UK carrier—something that comes into quite a lot of these regulations? Could the Minister tell us not just what is happening today but also how the Government will tell members of the public who is a UK carrier—assuming that it matters? It seems to me that it matters.

On these regulations, there seem to be three different parties: the location of the airport, which may be in this country, the European Union, or a third country—maybe it does not matter; the air service or airline, and whether it is registered in the UK, the EU or a third country, as the noble Baroness mentioned; and who the passenger is. Are they a UK resident, an EU resident, or a third-country resident? There then seem to be different rules for whether you are going out, coming in or getting a return ticket. I do not know whether I am making myself clear—it is probably as unclear as the regulations. The Minister will have to tell us how all these different parts of the regulations I have discussed apply to all those different groups and combinations of groups.

What attracted me to this worry was the phrase,

“if the carrier is a UK carrier”,

in paragraph 7.3 of the Explanatory Memorandum and, in reference to paragraph 7.5, the question of who enforces these regulations. The CAA cannot enforce regulations on airlines from third countries that do not fly into this country at all, but if the CAA does not do it, who will? All these things should affect every traveller who will move by air after 29 March, and I can see some of them getting into real trouble and worrying about this unless there is some clarification. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

[Lord Deben]

My Lords, I am sorry to continue this but various people have an interest in this SI. First, there are customers, who I doubt will read this—if they did, I doubt they would get very far with it for the reasons the noble Lord has just adumbrated. Secondly, there are the airlines, and I am very concerned about what our definition will be—not only here but elsewhere—of, for example, a UK-based airline.

I understand that there are airlines such as British Airways which have a direct association—it owns Iberia. British Airways has said that it may well transfer its base of ownership to Spain. I will not make a statement about Brexit—it manifestly gets stupider and stupider as we move on to discuss the matter—but the truth is that this is a real issue. If British Airways decides that that is the decision it has to make because we have been so damaging to our future that that is the best place for it to be, is it any longer a UK-based carrier? We then have a situation in which we are passing an SI that does not actually apply to the largest airline with a single, dedicated terminal at our largest airport. This is a serious issue. I am sure there is a very easy answer to the question, but it is not one that lies to hand in the SI. What happens when or if it changes, and how do we deal with those changes? That also seems important to me.