Aviation: UK Civil Aviation

Lord Empey Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Gibson, on securing this debate this evening. It is very timely.

First, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Monks, about pilot fatigue. I have a son who is in that sector and his schedule over the past month frightened me. I have been in contact with the department on this issue for some months and I hope that when the EASA is considering this, it will not only follow much more closely the CAA guidelines but take into account the representations of the people who actually do this job, not the people who simply treat it as theory.

With regard to what the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, said, I would say to her that it will be the Thames estuary or Heathrow. We are not going to get both because airlines are not going to split their bases, their engineering, their back-up and so on. I suspect that they will be either at one or the other.

Following on from my introducing the Airports (Amendment) Bill to this House in December 2011, I want to draw the attention of your Lordships to the connectivity issues that exist in the United Kingdom, and to ensure efficient communications between our major regions and cities. We debated this issue in Grand Committee on 15 November, and I believe that there is a lot of support in this House to draw attention to the fact that, if you do not have adequate connectivity, it is not going to be possible significantly to build up your business efficiency and attract investment to the regions.

It is no use saying, “We can fly you to an airport in the basic region of the south-east or in London”, which under European directions you can give a public service obligation to do. It has to be between the major cities in the region and the hub airport, wherever that may be. The issue for me at the moment is that my Bill would give the Government a power which they currently do not have: to ensure that the CAA can pass judgment. I hope to go to Brussels next month to see the chairman of the transport committee of the European Parliament and to lobby there, because there is a significant European dimension to this.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Soley, I had a hub airport in what was my constituency and I have had issues with it over its opening hours and various other things, but we all use it. The fact is that the issue is not only the airport itself; it is how that airport is connected to the major centres of population. Unless you can get from the regions to the major hub airport, which for the foreseeable future is Heathrow, then we are doing a disservice to our country. We put large amounts of money, as does the European Union, into regional development. One of the key issues there is aviation connectivity. In Northern Ireland, for instance, we do not have a realistic alternative. We do not have rail connections. Yes, we have a ferry, but, realistically, that is not going to do the job.

As we move forward, I hope that the Minister will give us some guidance as to whether the Government will seriously consider the regional connectivity issue in the forthcoming consultation and the legislation that will be before both Houses later this year.