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

Lord Empey Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th June 2026 Grand Committee

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 9, which seeks to strengthen the consumer protection provisions at the heart of the Bill. This amendment would insert two paragraphs into Clause 1. We believe that both are desirable and necessary if this legislation is to deliver meaningful change for the travelling public. The first would add the requirement for

“standardised, comparable information at the point of sale”.

Anyone who has purchased an airline ticket recently will be familiar with the booking experience. I will not go through all the painful detail but suffice to say that, by the time you come to the payment page, the fee you are charged bears little resemblance to the one that first encouraged you to make the booking.

That is not an accident; it is intentional. It is a business model that has moved, frankly, from the sublime to the ridiculous. For example, at the moment, the CMA is investigating Ryanair’s mandatory charge of £8 each way for the privilege of sitting with your own children. It is a business model that harms consumers, distorts competition and corrodes trust in the aviation sector. Airlines that compete fairly on total price are undercut by those which strip out every possible cost, just to put them back in. We do not tolerate these practices in other markets—imagine for one moment that the same situation was in place when you were doing your online grocery shopping. It means that consumers cannot make rational or informed choices. Again, that is the intention. Families on modest budgets find themselves paying significantly more than they had intended to.

My amendment would address this directly by requiring airlines and all ticket sellers—I emphasise all ticket sellers, whether the airlines themselves, online travel agents or price comparison websites—to display the total price up front, including all fees, taxes and unavoidable charges. We believe this is not a radical proposition. It is not difficult for the airlines, if they are selling direct to consumers, or their agents to comply with. Most consumers reasonably believe that this is the case already, so this amendment aims to make it so.

The second element of the amendment concerns passenger rights. When a flight is delayed or cancelled, or a passenger is denied boarding, they are entitled to certain protections, and rightly so. But the evidence consistently shows that a significant portion of affected passengers do not know what those rights are and that airlines do not always volunteer that information. My amendment would require this information about passenger rights in disruption scenarios to be provided clearly at the point of sale, not buried deep in terms and conditions in the small print, and accessible only to those who know how to look for it.

Thirdly, the information element concerns environmental impact. Consumers are increasingly seeking to make informed choices consistent with their values. Aviation, as we know, is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. While the sector as a whole must decarbonise, individuals, too, wish to understand the environmental impact of their individual journeys. Standardised carbon footprint information at the point of sale would enable informed choices. It would also in time, we hope, drive competition on environmental performance, an outcome that we argue would drive consumer-led carbon-reduction measures.

The second part of the amendment includes mandatory minimum compensation standards and, critically, automated payment mechanisms for flight delays, cancellations and denied boarding. The right to compensation for significant disruption already exists in law. Yet, year after year, consumer bodies and passengers find that it is not happening. They are waiting long times and often having to go to court and take legal action. That is an unacceptable situation.

The solution that I have proposed is an automation system to make sure that, where delays happen, there is an automatic payment so that you do not have to go through a complicated process to do it. The airlines have all this information. They know who is on their planes, they know who is not, they know when they are delayed and they know when compensation needs to be paid. We do not believe that this requirement would be too onerous on the airlines. It would simply make it a more efficient, fair and effective system.

We welcome this Bill. We recognise the consumer protections, but we feel that they need to have real bite. That is what my amendments seek to do. Our worry is that, if we do not put stronger protections in the Bill, we will simply have gestures towards consumer rights without actually putting them in statute. With the inclusion of these amendments, we would take concrete steps to make sure that we are acting in the passengers’ best interests in making these systems fairer and more efficient.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 41. The question of responsibility for drop-off charges was mentioned in closing by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan. This has become a new and evolving tax in the last few years and it is quite substantial. Edinburgh Airport is now charging £8.50 for somebody to be dropped off. Our major airports, Heathrow and Gatwick, are around the £7 to £8 mark, and other airports around the country have various levels. What effectively is happening is that the sharp increase in business rates applied to the airports has been passed on to a passenger being dropped off at the front door.

This has a huge impact on the potential for growth. It has an impact on the cost of doing business in this country and on the cost of travel. While it might be nice to say that we would like as many people as possible to go to airports by public transport, the realistic situation is that there are many airports around the country where the practicalities of doing that are very limited, particularly if you live outside an urban area. We have to take these charges into account. It seems to me that more and more airports are making more money out of drop-off charges and car parking than they are out of running the airports. While I do not want to see the model of airports made less competitive, the fact of the matter is that this is a tax on travel and a tax on business. There are many parts of this country where, if you are going to do business, there is little alternative to using aviation. I think that is a very important point and I would like the Minister to address that.

The other issue I want to raise relates to Amendment 40 and air quality on aircraft. Obviously, we all fly, some of us more than others, but thousands of people work in the airline industry and are in aircraft all their working days. There have been cases, because the air supply in most aircraft—although changes and improvements are being made—comes from the turbines, of seals failing from time to time in those turbines and oil being vapourised and fed into the cabin, where it is visible. What worries me is that there will be many times when it is not visible. What is the Minister’s response to that? Who is monitoring this and at what levels? Are the levels reviewed and are any checks being carried out on those who work in the airline industry as to whether their health is affected by long exposure?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I note the noble Lord’s point on Heathrow and other airports that have a regulated asset base. Airports must retain the ability to manage their own infrastructure. The Government’s role is to ensure that competition and consumer laws are protected and upheld. Ultimately, each airport operator must justify the charges they levy and show that they are fair, transparent and carried out with proper accountability. For those reasons, I hope noble Lords will feel able not to press their amendments.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, for his amendment relating to reimbursement for airlines if delays are caused by air traffic management, and I note the support from the noble Baroness, Lady Foster of Oxton, and others. Long delays and cancellations that are caused by air traffic management decisions are considered extraordinary circumstances under the current law, and therefore compensation is not due to passengers in those cases. None the less, the airlines are responsible for providing refunds, or care to passengers, such as meals and refreshments, when there are such delays and cancellations, provided certain qualifying conditions are met.

I note that National Air Traffic Services is subject to a robust regulatory regime overseen by the Civil Aviation Authority, and it includes performance targets linked to delays and a financial penalty mechanism when these targets are not met, meaning that NATS must reduce what it charges airlines in the following period. This is at least currently the effective penalty on NATS for poor performance.

I recognise that the noble Lord has diligently pursued this issue across the previous Government and this one. With relative joy, I have discovered how many previous Secretaries of State there are not only on the opposition Benches but in this Room. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harper, for his explanation of what happened in the case that the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, referred to. He supposes that I have some sympathy with the proposition that, somehow, the charges levied on Network Rail did not act as the incentive that they were supposed to. He is right, which is why the Railways Bill does not go in that direction. I am grateful to him—seriously—for explaining what decision he came to in that particular case, because he is right that the shareholding of NATS is very far from a conventional commercial company with a range of shareholders.

I hope I have never been grudging. I may—as the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, probably thinks frequently—be unpersuasive, but I think I owe the noble Lord, Lord Young, at least the courtesy of a meeting on this subject to understand better what he has said and to see whether the current Government’s position ought to be the same as what the noble Lord, Lord Harper, described in his Government’s case, or whether there is a persuasive case for change.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

I thank the Minister for his response on Amendment 41 regarding drop-off charges. I understand the argument that an airport operator can manage its own property, but we have to distinguish between parking and dropping off. The dropping-off charge is almost a penalty for not parking. We also have to take into account the fact that these airports, by and large, are monopolies because of where they are: people perhaps do not have an option of going to another airport.

It is becoming a growing revenue stream and it can affect regional connectivity but also the economic model. It can put another charge on business, if that is what it is, or on tourism. I will look at Hansard and see exactly what the Minister said, but it is not a simple matter and I do not think it is an issue that will go away, because it is growing and growing. It started off at £1 and, as I said, in Edinburgh it is now £8.50. But what is the alternative for somebody going to drop someone off at Edinburgh Airport? Do they go to Glasgow Airport? It is a monopoly.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I should just say that of course I respect the views of the noble Lord, Lord Empey, and if he looks at Hansard and considers what I said, I will similarly consider further what he said.